4th January 2024 • The HERALD • Page 73 v INDEPENDENT, LOCAL AND PROUD v VAUXTECH LOCAL GARAGE Tel: 023 8086 9496 Unit 5, New Forest Enterprise Centre, Totton, Southampton SO40 9LA LOCAL GARAGE EST 27 YEARS • Servicing & Repairs • MOT’s (arranged) • Brakes • Clutches • Tyres • Air Conditioning • Collection & Delivery Locally Friendly & Reliable Onsite Café Facilities All Makes & Models MY NEIGHBOUR, CHURCHILL’S NAVIGATOR by Robin Somes, Fawley and Blackfield Memories I rst met John when he had a house built on a vacant plot near us, soon a er his retirement in the 1970s. ere was a lot of noise, the water table being so high they had pumps running almost full-time, to sink the foundations. I knew he had served in the armed forces, and if pressed I might recall that it was the RAF; beyond that, I knew little of either him or his wife, Brenda. ey were, however, kindness itself to us; thoughtful and sociable without being pushy, and two years running, they lent us their cottage in Alderney, so that we could holiday there. In the late 1980s, they moved to Lymington, but continued to stay in touch and visit. It was only a year or so before he died, in 2016, that I eventually found out what Air Commodore John Lewis Mitchell, LVO, DFC, AFC, AE actually did. Born in 1918, he initially worked for the Customs & Excise, before joining the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1939, training as a navigator. His rst years were served on Whitley bombers over Germany and Italy, for which he gained the DFC in 1941; he then went for specialised training, excelling in astro-navigation. A er a period spent teaching, he was selected for the crew ying Winston Churchill’s custom-built Avro York transport plane, Ascalon, tted out as a ying conference room. Ascalon’s maiden voyage was in May 1943, carrying Churchill, Anthony Eden and a bevy of generals from RAF Gibraltar to Algiers. John ew Churchill to, among others, the Tehran and Yalta conferences, to meet with Roosevelt and Stalin. He also took Mr and Mrs Churchill to Moscow; with inadequate maps and no radio navigation aids, his skills were put to the test. He ew King George VI several times; the King was so impressed with the crew’s service that he appointed them members of the Royal Victorian Order. Postwar, John continued to work in the RAF as a senior instructor in long-range navigation; ights included a round-the-world trip and a ight over the North Pole. His astro-navigation skills once again were vital. A er a spell at the British Embassy in Washington, he joined the Air Ministry to develop navigation systems for V-bombers (the Vickers Valiant, Handley Page Victor, and Avro Vulcan). He then served in intelligence in Cyprus, and as the defence attaché in Moscow at the peak of the Cold War. He married Brenda Stroud in 1943; as she was serving in MI5, neither was allowed to tell the other what their job entailed. A remarkable couple, whom I remember very warmly. John’s book, “Churchill’s Navigator” is still in print, and is a compelling read. John Mitchell and his wife Brenda (right), outside Buckingham Palace gates
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