Wilfred Edward Surplice

Wilfred Edward Surplice was born on 6 July 1914 and joined the Royal Air Force as a regular officer in the 1930s, serving on the North-West Frontier of India, where he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross (gazetted 17 October 1939) for operations in Waziristan between December 1937 and December 1938. By 1942 he was commanding No. 226 Squadron flying Boston light bombers, and it was for his leadership of the squadron’s smoke-laying operations over the Dieppe landings on 19 August 1942 — pressing in at low level through intense ground fire to screen the beaches with precise accuracy — that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (London Gazette, 2 October 1942). Rising to Group Captain, he later commanded the RAF Rivenhall airfield and No. 38 Group special-duties squadrons engaged in supply drops to the resistance in occupied Europe, leading a hazardous resupply sortie to Arnhem in September 1944. On the night of 2/3 November 1944 he captained a Short Stirling Mk IV of No. 295 Squadron on an SOE supply drop to Norwegian resistance forces; the aircraft iced up badly in a blizzard over southern Norway and became uncontrollable, and Surplice held it steady long enough for his six crew to bale out before he was killed in the crash, aged 30. He is buried in Oslo Western Civil Cemetery, Norway, and was the husband of Cicely Wilson Surplice and son of Henry and Florence Surplice of Sunbury-on-Thames, Middlesex.