The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92687   Message #1774696
Posted By: Dave (the ancient mariner)
03-Jul-06 - 09:25 AM
Thread Name: BS: The British who fought for Hitler
Subject: RE: BS: The British who fought for Hitler
Lots of British spies like this one Guest?

EDDIE CHAPMAN

A deserter from the Coldstream Guards in the 1930s he then turned to crime. A safecracker by profession and serving fourteen years in jail on Jersey in the Channel Islands, at that time under German occupation, he volunteered to spy for the Germans in England. He was trained at the Abwehr sabotage school at Nantes in France and then was parachuted into England on December 20, 1942, with a mission to blow up the De Havilland aircraft factory at Hatfield, in Hertfordshire, which was producing the new fighter-bomber, the Mosquito.

After landing, he contacted British Intelligence who contrived a plan to blow up part of the factory not in use, giving the Germans the impression that the mission had succeeded. On returning to Jersey for more work, Eddie Chapman (Code Name 'ZigZag') was decorated with the German Iron Cross. After the war, Chapman was also given a British decoration, the only Englishman thus awarded! Later he set up a health farm and died aged 83 in 1997 leaving a wife and daughter.