Frederick Rippingale 1 of 4 Frederick Rippingale 1 of 4 Frederick Rippingale 2 of 4 Frederick Rippingale 3 of 4 Frederick Rippingale 4 of 4 Frederick Rippingale 1 minute ago RAF navigator and SOE agent who was shot down over Italy, escaped from a PoW camp and reported on partisan activity In the early years of the Second World War Italy did not prove susceptible to the sort acts of sabotage and subversion that the Special Operations Executive (SOE) had orchestrated in the German-occupied countries of north-west Europe and Scandinavia. Although never universally popular, the Fascists maintained widespread control until the armistice of September 1943 when partisan groups of varied allegiance began to spring up north of the Allied-German battlefronts snaking across the peninsula. “Rip” Rippingale was able to familiarise himself with the strengths and limitations of several such groups while hiding in the mountains after his escape from a prisoner of war camp. Having eventually reached the Allied lines, he was asked by SOE to volunteer to return to act as a link with them during the final stages of the war in Europe. He had joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve in 1939 and was commissioned following training as an observer-navigator. While serving with 45 Squadron equipped with Blenheim light bombers in the Western Desert in November 1941, his aircraft was shot down by an Me109 while returning from a sortie near El Adem. Injured in the arm and shoulder and badly burnt, he spent four months in hospital before being sent to a prison camp near Parma in northern Italy. On hearing of the September 1943 armistice, the Italian guards left the camp, allowing Rippingale and several companions to escape before German guards arrived. Anxious to quit the open plain of the River Po, they made for the hills and joined a group of partisans. It was there that he met Maria Berni, a local partisan, who was to become his wife two years later. He accompanied the partisans on operations against German lines of communication and military installations until the autumn of 1944, then took the opportunity of a lull in the fighting to head south for the forward areas of the US 5th Army near Bologna, where the Americans had paused for the winter. He finally crossed the lines to safety in November 1944. On repatriation to England he was invited to join SOE’s No 1 Special Force in Italy, possibly with a view to rejoining his future fiancée still with the partisans. After parachute training, induction into SOE techniques of sabotage and subversion, and promotion to flight lieutenant, he returned to Italy in time to be dropped near Piacenza, some 20 miles northwest of Parma, in February 1945. As part of SOE’s Operation Insulin, his mission was to arrange for the air-supply of the partisans in the region and, rather than allow them to waste lives attacking German installations, set them to work clearing obstacles and preparing landing strips for aircraft for the possible landing of troops as part of the Allied spring offensive. This activity brought an energetic German reaction, and difficulties of dropping supplies to the partisans due to the winter weather conditions led to deterioration in their morale and motivation. Communism, already the driving force in some partisan groups of the so-called Garibaldi Brigades, was also filtering westwards from north-eastern Italy, where the locally settled Slovene population was coming under increasing pressure to spread the communist creed from Tito’s partisans across the frontier. As political considerations began to predominate with the end of the war in sight, Rippingale and his companions of No 1 Special Force in the northwest of Italy were kept busy monitoring communist influence in the partisan groups to which they were attached until the Allies’ push into the valley of the Po in April 1945 concluded the campaign. In consequence he remained in Italy until July 1945. His appointment as MBE in the military division was gazetted on June 1, 1945, in recognition of his services since escaping from captivity in September 1943. Frederick Lionel Rippingale was born in London and educated at Erith County School. After SOE debriefing and demobilisation in December 1945 he returned to his prewar employment with the Royal Dutch Shell Group, eventually joining the board before his retirement in 1975. He travelled widely in the company’s interest but never lost his love of all things Italian, opera in particular. In 1945 he married Maria Berni. She predeceased him and in 1982 he married Claudia Maddocks. He is survived by her, two sons from his first marriage and a stepson. Frederick Rippingale, MBE, RAF navigator, SOE agent and oil executive, was born on September 20, 1916. He died on January 6, 2011, aged 94 http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/obituaries/article2923865.ece
