From the Electronic Telegraph in London...
     AIR Vice-Marshal Sir Alan Boxer, who has died aged 81, flew
 clandestine RAF operations for the Special Operations Executive
 (SOE) during the Second World War, picking-up and dropping agents,
 as well as weapons, in France, Denmark, Norway and Poland.
     Boxer's success on these missions, and the leadership qualities
 he showed, were such that within two years of joining No 161 Special
 Duties Squadron as a flight lieutenant, he was given command of the
 squadron.
     Pick-up operations, which in France usually necessitated finding
 and landing in a rough field on some secluded farm, were flown on
 moonlit nights. But on July 27-28 1944, Wing-Commander Boxer flew
 the only such sortie undertaken without the benefit of moonlight.
     Despite his experience, Boxer was sorely tested to find the small
 grass airfield at Le Blanc (to the south west of Chteauroux), where
 he was to deliver urgently required medical supplies along with four
 passengers, and to pick up four Allied aircrew who were in hiding.
     It was a particularly dark night, and Boxer had also to contend
 with heavy cloud cover at 1,500 ft. Furthermore, he was unaware that
 the occupying Germans had ploughed deep furrows in the airfield to
 frustrate just such an attempted landing.
     Although the Resistance reception party had done their best to
 restore a semblance of a landing strip, Boxer had to land his twin-
 engined Hudson on an appallingly rough and bumpy surface. His take-
 off was equally hazardous.
     Such operations demanded prolonged and exhausting spells of very
 low flying, which offered Bomber Command the occasional intelligence
 bonus. On May 28 1942, for instance, after parachuting agents from
 700 ft, west of Valenciennes, Boxer observed much industrial activity
 at the Brobiere railway yards, outside Douai.
    It was politic to offer such crumbs to Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris,
 who tended to consider SOE operations a sideshow which reduced the
 efficacy of Bomber Command attacks on Germany and targets in occupied
 Europe. As a further sop, aircraft designated to SOE occasionally
 helped to boost main bomber force numbers, as on the night of June
 2, 1942, when Boxer piloted a twin-engined Whitley in an attack on
 railway yards at Tours.
     Support for resistance groups in Poland, particularly during the
 Warsaw Rising, was the prime part of Boxer's long-range activies, and
 his 161 Squadron four-engined Halifax crews were predominantly Poles,
 with whom he established a warm rapport.
     Halifax engines were wont to give trouble on these long flights
 of up to 13 hours. On one return trip from Poland, an oil problem cut
 one engine and seriously affected another on the same wing. But Boxer
 was a skilled as well as physically strong pilot, and in conditions
 which would have forced down a lesser man, he managed to wrestle
 enough height to allow him to control the rate of descent, and so
 bring the Halifax home.
     Alan Hunter Cachemaille Boxer was born on December 1 1916, at
 Hastings, Hawk's Bay, New Zealand, and attended Nelson College. His
 father, an eminent radiologist, died when he was nine.
     As a teenager, Alan Boxer was left very much to fend for himself;
 he took a succession of jobs - tending orchids, working in the public
 works department, and venturing into business.
     Expecting war in Europe, he volunteered for the RAF and qualified
 in Britain as a pilot in 1938. Rated exceptional, he was almost
 immediately employed as an instructor, and in August 1942 moved to
 No 138, 161's sister squadron at RAF Tempsford.
     Following a long spell of operations, in May 1943 Boxer was
 posted to No 10 Operational Training Unit, as a flight commander.
 That August he became deputy chief instructor, and later he went on
 to serve in intelligence at the Air Ministry.
     In March 1944, Boxer returned to 161 in command. Operational
 Bomber Command staff appointments followed, and then in the New Year
 of 1945 he attended the Staff College at Haifa, returning from the
 Middle East as a member of the joint staff in the Cabinet Office.
     In 1948, after a year at the Staff College, Camberley, Boxer was
 posted to the US Strategic Air Command, with which he would fly B-29
 and B-29A bombers in the Korean War, as a member of the 326th Bomb
 Squadron of the 92nd Bomb Group.
     In 1952 he returned to Britain to join the Central Fighter
 Establishment, and after serving on the directing staff at the RAF
 Staff College, he received command, in November 1956, of No 7
 Squadron, seventh of the newly building Valiant nuclear deterrent
 bomber force.
     The next year, he led nine Valiants over London in salute to the
 Queen on her official birthday.
     In 1958, Boxer was appointed station commander at RAF Wittering,
 a Valiant base. A series of Bomber Command staff appointments fol-
 lowed until 1962, when he attended the Imperial Defence College as
 an air commodore, before joining No 1 Group, Bomber Command, in
 1963, as Senior Air Staff Officer.
     Finally, Boxer was the first airman to occupy the post of Defence
 Services Secretary, whose duties were to serve as the Ministry of
 Defence link with Buckingham Palace and the Royal Family.
     After retiring in 1970, he spent some years as a chairman of
 planning inquiries. He also had time to indulge his love of sailing,
 at Lymington, where he was at different times vice-commodore and
 commodore of the Royal Lymington Yacht Club.
     He was an accomplished carpenter, and while serving at 1 Group
 built a 26 ft Eventide, which saw the family through several sailing
 seasons.
     Boxer was awarded the DFC in 1943 and DSO in 1944. He was
 appointed CB in 1968 and KCVO in 1970. He was also decorated by the
 Poles with Virtuti Militari, and he held the US Bronze Star and Air
 Medal.
 Ray Marsh, Brisbane, Australia.        raymarsh@hotmail.com
 ===
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 Grateful Berlin to honor airlift veterans - Relief effort marked
 beginnings of Cold War, Western alliance
     Berlin - May 11, 1998 9:24 a.m. EDT - "They called me the 'Candy
 Bomber,'" Gail Halvorsen remembers. "But the kids in Berlin called
 me 'Uncle Wiggly Wings.' That's because I wiggled the wings of the
 airplane when I came in over Berlin."
     Fifty years ago, Halvorsen earned his unusual nicknames as a
 pilot in what many call the largest humanitarian mission ever. The
 Berlin Airlift brought needed supplies to the besieged city for 11
 months, in one of the first confrontations of the Cold War.
     Now Halvorsen and his fellow pilots are preparing to return to
 Berlin, to a city and a country reunited. Aboard the "Spirit of
 Freedom," a Douglas C-54 cargo plane like the ones used in the air-
 lift, he and a dozen others will fly to Berlin this week to take
 part in anniversary celebrations. U.S. President Bill Clinton, on a
 European tour, also will attend.
     Capt. Jack Bennett, who flew more airlift missions than any other
 pilot, made the trip last week. In an emotional meeting, Germans
 thanked Bennett.
     "It was the most terrible, one of the most terrible episodes in
 history," Bennett said. "They tried to starve almost 3 million people
 to make them into Communists, a very bad deal, so flying the airlift
 was for me the most rewarding flying I've ever done."
                'Candy bombers' raised spirits
     While their cargo kept Berlin alive, Halvorsen and other pilots
 helped sustain the spirits of the city's children, for whom memories
 of war remained vivid. The pilots dropped candy, gum, and other
 treats tied to tiny parachutes.
     "The airlift was our life," says Irmtraut "Nina" Jueterbock, a
 13-year-old schoolgirl when the blockade began. Jueterbock lived with
 her family in a one-room apartment without electricity, the best they
 could do in the war-ravaged city.
     But when arrangements were made to fly children out of Berlin,
 the Jueterbocks declined.
     "I didn't want to be separated from my family," she says today.
 "It was said the blockade couldn't last long."
     But last it did -- from June 24, 1948, when the Soviet Union
 closed off road and rail access to Berlin, until the roads were
 opened on May 12, 1949.
                     'No guns, just flour'
     After Germany's defeat in World War II, the country was split
 into zones administered by the United States, France, Great Britain
 and the Soviet Union. The wartime capital of Berlin, deep within
 the Soviet zone, was split along the same lines.
     In 1948, the U.S., British and French zones were inching toward
 unification, into what would eventually become West Germany. In an
 effort to halt that process, the Soviet Union blocked all road and
 rail access to the western part of the city.
     All of the necessities for the city's 2.5 million residents -
 - an estimated 4,500 tons of food, coal and other materials each day
 -- had to enter the city by air.
     At first, the pilots did not know how far the Soviets would go
 to maintain the blockade.
     "The first couple of times, we wondered if we were going to get
 shot," Halvorsen says. "We had no armor at all. We had no guns, just
 flour."
     But the Soviets, dismissing the airlift's chances, did not shoot.
 On its biggest day, the "Easter parade" of April 16, 1949, the air-
 lift sent 1,398 flights into Berlin -- one every minute. Before it
 was all over, more than 278,000 flights would carry 2.3 million tons
 of relief supplies.
     Only 11 days after the blockade was lifted, the western zones of
 Germany adopted a new constitution. The airlift continued for four
 months after the blockade was lifted, until the end of September
 1949.
     The airlift marked a rise in tensions between the West and the
 Soviets, but it also helped heal divisions left by World War II.
 Almost immediately, The United States, Great Britain, and France
 shifted from Germany's conquerors to its protectors.
     "The airlift was the starting point for Germany's inclusion in
 the West and for the reconciliation with the Western powers,"
 Berlin Mayor Eberhard Diepgen says.
 ===
--- DB 1.39/004487
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