November 2025

Phil Hadley
Nov 13
8 min read

The Helford River SOE base and anchorage

Necessity is the mother of invention or so the saying goes. It was certainly true that there were enormous advancements and developments in the scientific and technological realms during the Second World War in everything from medicines, radar and sonar, wireless communication, aircraft, ship and military vehicle design, life-saving gadgets right up to the harnessing of fission and fusion to make the atomic bombs. Thus it is exciting to see a fantastic project to recreate one of those small “innovations” and celebrate the men and story behind its wartime service. But first some background.

After the fall of France in the summer of 1940 Cornwall’s strategic position made it a focus for extracting the remains of the British Army still in France after the fall of Dunkirk. Operation Aerial saw over 300 ships sail into Falmouth bringing British troops and airmen, French forces fleeing the occupation as well as Czechs, Poles, other refugees, the Polish National Treasures and the world’s supply of heavy water. Thus when various groups wanted to return men and supplies to France then Cornwall was the natural launching pad.

Ridifarne, the house overlooking the Helford River which was the SOE base for the Helford Flotilla

In the early years of the war there were several different groups all doing their own thing, competing for scarce resources and with much friction between them. The Special Operations Executive set up their base, initially in Helston, and then at Ridifarne, the home of the Bickford-Smith family (inventors of the miner’s safety fuse) near Helford Passage on the north shores of the Helford Estuary. This was to be their transportation hub into Europe until air transport took over later in the war.

It was under the command of Lt Commander Gerry Holdsworth from 5^th November 1940 until he was replaced by Lt Commander Bevil Warrington-Smyth in early December 1942. Holdsworth, who had helped Gubbins establish the Auxiliary Units, had initially come to Cornwall to take a French fishing boat off the Bretons who had brought it to Newlyn and soon got permission to establish SOE’s base on the Helford. The shore establishment took over a second house, Pedn Billy, with its thatched boathouse in September 1942. SOE were to run the Helford Flotilla until a 1942 re-organisation.

The thatched boathouse of Pedn Billy used by SOE seen in 2018

Round the corner in Falmouth the Secret Intelligence Service Section D were operating and also running boats across the Channel. They had acquired No 77, a Belgian motor yacht at Newlyn, and were using it as a postal service for their agents and operations in France. In the summer of 1943 they also moved into the Helford, based on Lord Runciman’s yacht, HMY Sunbeam, which was moored on the south side of the estuary. The appointment of C.O. Nigel Warrington Smyth, the brother of SOE’s Bevil, did much to reduce the suspicion between the two organisations and improve co-operation.

The Royal Navy also ran their own operations with NID(Clandestine) who were based at HMS Forte IV on the Coastlines Wharf in Falmouth. The Navy took over the Helford Flotilla in 1942 and as the planning for D-Day developed Admiralty took over the oversight of all operations in the Channel from 1^st June 1943 under the Deputy Director of Operations Division (Irregular) known as DDOD(I) for short. The Navy’s Inshore Patrol Flotilla also moved from Dartmouth to Falmouth in 1942.

Finally there was the Free French. Many French fishermen had gathered in Newlyn when their country fell and while some were happy to simply fish in Cornish waters, others were to respond to General De Gaulle’s rallying cry to join the Free French forces. Those fishermen who were recruited used their boats to cross the Channel and help supply the pro-Gaullist resistance groups that began springing up in Occupied France. These boats used the harbour at Mylor where the small shed at the end of the jetty became their centre of operations.

By 1942 there was increased co-operation between the various British units and this became more co-ordinated as 1943 progressed, although some at SOE were never happy at the erosion of naval operations and they were switched to a greater training role for crews destined to serve in the Mediterranean and the Far East.

There is plenty to be read, both in print and online, on the various operations carried out from Cornish waters. I will simply highlight two to give a flavour of the bravery of all those involved and introduce you to the “innovation” hinted at in the introduction.

Richard Townsend's photo of the rescue of Remy & family shows Remy front left and Daniel Lomenech front right

Colonel Remy was the codename for Gilbert Renault-Roulier. He was a film producer from a large Catholic family. His last project, filmed in Spain, before France fell was a movie on Christopher Columbus. Gilbert came to Falmouth during Operation Aerial arriving on a Norwegian cargo vessel. He returned in August working for the Free French Deuxième Bureau (the French Secret Intelligence Service) based at 10 Duke Street (behind Selfridges) in London. With up to date French and Spanish visas in his passport he was the ideal candidate to be inserted back into France. He set up an intelligence network based largely on family and religious connections. Their intelligence helped plan the Bruneval raid to retrieve the German Wurzburg radar. Later in the war he was one of the few French men British intelligence trusted to supply information useful for D-Day planning without telling De Gaulle whose pro-Gaullist resistance networks were known to betray those who weren’t to the Gestapo in a move seen to enhance de Gaulle’s quest for power in a liberated France. The British found men of religious conviction rather than political were to prove more reliable in the cloak and dagger world of resistance in occupied France.

However, by the summer of 1942 things were hotting up for Remy and, fearful for his family still living in France, it was decided to extract them using the services of the Helford Flotilla. So Remy, along with his wife Edith, his 12 year old daughter Catherine, her younger siblings Cécile and Jean-Claude and baby Michael, known by the family as Mic-Mic, left France concealed in the small fishing boat Les deux Anges from the little port of Pont Aven. Thirteen hours later they rendezvoused with N51 – ‘Le Dinan’ under the command of Daniel Lomenech, a Breton who escaped in 1940 and joined the Royal Navy and First Lieutenant Richard Townsend – and the family were transferred. It meant another day and a half below deck for the family, although Remy, disguised as a sailor, was allowed on deck. Finally he was able to tell the family they could also come on deck as they were now in English waters and running the Ensign. The reached New Grimsby on the island of Tresco, SOE's forward base on the Isles of Scilly, and were able to board the Motor Gun Boat that took them to the mainland. Remy carried with him plans of the coastal defences of France which had been smuggled out of a German headquarters in a roll of newspaper by a painter and decorator working there.

During the last couple of months of December 1943 various attempts had been made to rescue a collection of downed US airmen and secret agents whom the Resistance were hiding in Brittany. All of them proved unsuccessful due to the weather and the difficulty of ship to shore communication. On the night of 1^st/2^nd December seven were rescued in one of three small boats sent ashore but only one made it back to the Motor Gun Boat. The six crew men in the two other small boats got left behind. On December 23^rd another attempt failed due to the weather and sea conditions meaning the small boats never made it ashore and only just got back to the MGB.

The problem of small boats successfully riding through the surf had long vexed the men of SOE. During August 1942 Lt Nigel Warrington-Smyth conducted trials on the beach at Praa Sands on a variety of boats and came to the conclusion they were using the wrong type of boats. He then set about designing a new one with Nicholson and trials on this vessel were conducted at Praa from the 16^th to 21^st March 1943. The key was creating a boat that was easy to control when surf-riding into the shore and then easy to row when heading back out into the surf surmounting considerable waves without inconvenience to its crew. The new innovation was a 25 feet doubled-ended boat that was known as SN2.

So after the crew from the December 23^rd mission had enjoyed a meal and a night’s sleep, aided by a Christmas hangover, news came through of another weather opportunity on Christmas night. It was decided to use the new SN2 boat but because of the lack of deck space to try towing it across the Channel. Towing trials had been done a month earlier in calm waters but this tow to Brittany would be a first. MGB 318 under the command of Lt Mason collected SN2 from the mouth of the Helford where it had been towed by the Inland Patrol Flotilla’s RAF 360. The journey across was uneventful and Lt Birkin, the navigator, found the anchorage off Ile Tariec, a rock ledge which was surrounded by treacherous reefs uncovered at low tide. SN2 and a smaller PD1 were launched and made their way to Ile Tariec, to which the escapers were able to walk across the beach from Toul-an-Dour on the neighbouring Ile Guennoc. Lt Howard Rendle took SN2 into the rock and both it and PD1 were able to take off a number of the escapers and deliver them to MGB318. He then returned a second time to Ile Tariec to take off the stragglers. In all 27 were rescued – 16 airmen from Britain, the USA, Australia and Poland, 5 agents including a wireless operator, and the 6 SOE crew from the beginning of December. On the return journey the engines on MGB 318 failed, but fortunately they had arrived just off the Lizard and so were soon able to effect repairs. She met RAF 360 at the mouth of the Helford, handed over the escapees and the surf boat and its crew headed back to their mooring in Falmouth. In Helford, SOE treated the 27 to a Boxing Day feast before they were put on the night train from Falmouth to London. They were carrying with them vital documents on the development of the V1 and V2 sites in France. This along with the intelligence, plans and technical details uncovered by Michel Hollard’s network (Hollard was an evangelical Christian and again proved a very reliable agent) which he took into his British contact in Switzerland, gave the British advance details of the V1 and V2 threat long before the first one had ever been fired at the UK.

The other success of the event was the performance of SN2. It had done the job it was designed to do without hitch or unforeseen problem. The use of this specially designed vessel, along with the co-operation of the Royal Navy, the SIS and SOE – something unthinkable just three years earlier – made this Christmas rescue the ultimate in such missions. In August1994 a new Stele with a plaque commemorating the Christmas Rescue was unveiled at the spot in France.

SN 2, the 25ft Surf Boat, pictured on the Helford shore

Now the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, having discovered the original plans for SN2 at their Greenwich counterpart, are constructing a replica of the vessel in their Museum boatbuilding workshop under the direction of Bob White, the Boat Collection Manager. It is anticipated that it will go on display in the Museum in the spring of 2026. What a tribute to the brave men who designed and built her, crewed her and escaped occupied France in her. The Museum have been posting some short videos on YouTube detailing their progress. Here is the latest at the time of writing: