Gestapo Hunter: The Remarkable Wartime Career of Mosquito Navigator Ted Sismore

Gestapo Hunter explores the charmed life and exceptional career of Ted Sismore, widely considered one of the RAF’s very best wartime navigators and leaders. A quiet, unassuming man who was nicknamed ‘Daisy’ on account of his youthful complexion, Ted was one of only a handful of aircrew to complete a tour of operations in Blenheims in the summer of 1941. He is best remembered, however, for his long association with the Mosquito. Planning and leading some of the Mossie’s most famous raids against the Nazi regime’s most-loathed characters. He flew in the daylight attack on Berlin, timed to coincide with an address being given by Hermann Göring, for which he received the first of several awards for gallantry and which was widely publicized. He followed this with an attack on the Zeiss optical works at Jena during which their aircraft was hit over the target, and his pilot wounded. It was an attack at the extreme of the Mosquito’s range and marked the aircraft out for further special duties. Identified by Basil Embry, the mercurial AOC of 2 Group, as something of a kindred spirit, Ted joined the Group’s HQ staff, planning Operation Jericho, the famous attack on the prison at Amiens on 18 February 1944 and taking part on 31 October later that year in another ‘spectacular’ to bomb the Gestapo HQ at Aarhus in Denmark. Raids on the SS and Gestapo became something of a specialty, Ted leading further pinpoint bombing attacks on ‘Shell House’ in Copenhagen (Operation Carthage) and the Gestapo HQ at Odense. After the war, Ted teamed up with Mick Martin, the famous Dambuster, to break the flying record from London to Cape Town, in 1947, a journey of almost 7,000 miles. He later qualified as a pilot, flying Meteors, Javelins and Canberras, retiring as an air commodore. He died in 2012.