Alan Michael Murphy

Wing Commander Alan Michael Murphy, known throughout the Royal Air Force as “Sticky,” was a clandestine-operations and intruder pilot who served with distinction from the early war years until his death in December 1944. Early in the war he joined the secretive world of special duties, flying the Westland Lysander with the units that landed and recovered Allied agents on rough fields in occupied Europe — work that demanded exceptional short take-off and landing skill and great coolness under fire — and he became one of the experienced pilots inherited by No. 161 (Special Duties) Squadron when it formed in 1942. It was for a December 1941 mission to recover a stranded comrade, during which he was wounded in the neck yet flew his aircraft back to England, that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, gazetted on 2 June 1942 (London Gazette, Issue 35583, page 2429); he went on to add a Bar to the DSO, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the French Croix de Guerre avec Palme to his record. Later he commanded No. 23 Squadron and, in 1944, flew de Havilland Mosquito night-intruder sorties with Bomber Command’s No. 100 Group against German night-fighter airfields. On 2 December 1944 his Mosquito (PZ456) crashed near Wezep in the Netherlands, killing both Murphy, aged 27, and his navigator; he is buried in Oldebroek General Cemetery, Gelderland, with the inscription recording that he was “known and loved by all who knew him, as ‘Sticky’,” and remembering his wife Jean and daughter Gail.