Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke and Winston Churchill.
Aircraft flight tracks North Mayo Coast, 27 June 1942.
Click on pages below to read, highlighted are the entries which record a passing flight.
LOP 60 is the first sighting and reporting of the flight at 02.55am, flying along the coast, the aircraft is sighted at 03.00am at LOP63.
Ted Sweeney, Cpl. writes in the log book for LOP60. 27th June 42, Incident 1535, 02.55am. “Aircraft heard 5 miles west going NE, altitude speed nationality unknown informed Athlone 91 at 02.58. Vis moderate sky cloudy, wind SW light”. Signed E. Sweeney.Cpl.
On the 27 June 1942 a flight from Newfoundland crossed the North Atlantic. On board were Winston Churchill accompanied by Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke. This was the return leg of the only round trip by air that Churchill would make during WW2. With help from Noelle Grothier, Archivist, Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks, below are pages dated 27th June 1942 from the log-books from LOP60 Blacksod to LOP70 St Johns Point. (LOP59 Achill does not have a recording for that date and LOP58 Corraun is too far away). It is safe to assume that this flight made landfall over the Irish Coast near Blacksod, this is the route that the aircraft took along the North Mayo coast turning inland at the Donegal Air Corridor to enter British Airspace in Northern Ireland, a flight time of approx .25 minutes. In the war diaries of Sir Alan Brooke , from the cockpit of the aircraft, they see a light from a lighthouse flicking out of the darkness as the flight approaches the Irish Coast. In conversation with Vincent Sweeney, current lighthouse keeper at Blacksod, August 2022, he was of the opinion that this was most likely light from Eagle Rock Lighthouse.
Most interestingly the first sighting is at LOP 60, 02.55 am 27 th June 1942, the signature is none other than E.Sweeney Cpl of Blacksod Lighthouse. Blacksod lighthouse, the weather reports from which in June 1944 were to play a crucial role in the timing of the DDay landings. Below are the pages from the logbooks - click to view, notes below In Lord Alan Brookes War diaries (Page 273) "still above the clouds and approaching Ireland ..” , it is 4am British time (which was 3am Irish Time).
All documents courtesy of Military Archives, Cathal Brugha Barracks, Dublin
