Les 'Juicy' Adams - RAF rear gunner

**Matt Poole** · 11-01-2009, 03:20 PM

Attached is a copy of the Les Adams photo from the Australian War Memorial database.

Details from the AWM:

ID Number: SEA0030

Summary: Digri, Bengal, India. 1944-11-28. Flight Sergeant Les Adams of Hyde Park, Leeds, England, the half-back in the English Rugby League football team which toured Australia in 1932, inspects an Indian's fishing line. He is now ball gunner in a Liberator bomber aircraft of No. 159 (Liberator) Squadron RAF flown by 422785 Flying Officer V. E. Willing of Rose Bay, NSW. Two other RAAF members in the crew are Warrant Officer W. H. Wheeler of Bellevue Hill, NSW, and 421484 WO A. R. Williams of Bagotville, Richmond River, NSW.
Copyright: Copyright expired - public domain

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Another excerpt from Graham Jeffrery in 1992, regarding Les Adams, the crew, and the Lib.

With Bradley and Lowery at Wing, six NCO’s in one mess at 159 Sqn, and me in the other one, there was little chance of the full crew meeting together between operations. In fact I never saw Bradley and Lowery between flights and only Adams on one or perhaps two occasions, and that by special arrangement because I had found out that he was a Rugby League international scrum-half whom I had seen play and who lived in Leeds – my home town.

If you are surprised that we did not meet together between flights please remember that this was a time of intense activity and most of the time between operations was spent recovering from one and preparing for the next one.

BZ938 was an old aircraft carrying obsolescent radar detection equipment. I can remember the NCO in charge of its maintenance telling me that the engines were OK because they were changed when necessary but the airframe might shake itself to bits before long.

**spidge** · 11-01-2009, 07:24 PM

Originally Posted by Matt Poole

Geoff,

Thanks for the Singapore Memorial photos. I see quite a few names of Liberator airmen I've researched.
Cheers,

Matt

In my research of Aussies in other allied Air Forces, I came across this chap who was a gunner at (43) in a Liberator in New Guinea.

HORDER, HARRIS H.
S/Sgt
10641078
321st B/Sq
8/08/1943
43
USAAF
USA
Plot P Row 0 Grave 555
HONOLULU MEMORIAL

Harris Horder was a world champion cyclist pre war.

These "Aussies" were not Liberator crew however they were interesting finds nonetheless.

One flew off the carrier Yorktown at the Battle of the Coral Sea, was awarded the Navy Cross and had a Destroyer Escort named after him in 1943.

Another was a C-47 crewman in a USAAF aircraft whose remains were found post war. Not being able to distinguish the remains from one another, they were buried together at Arlington National Cemetery, the only Australian ever to be buried there.

Cheers

Geoff

**Matt Poole** · 11-04-2009, 01:09 AM

Geoff,

Yes, some interesting stories there.

Livepool Annie mentioned the dogtags of Arthur Williams that are in his RAAF service file, on line. These have confused Arthur's nephews and myself. We wondered if someone found the dogtags in Burma and returned them to Australia after the war, which would suggest that Arthur's body had been found. The National Archives of Australia has not been able to explain where they came from, but we don't believe the ID tags were found in Burma.

WERE ONLY ONE SET OF TAGS ISSUED TO AN INDIVIDUAL? I imagine that, on occasion, dogtags/identity discs were lost when removed for activities or if the chain broke, and that replacements were issued. This could explain the Williams case.

He is officially missing, with no known grave, though I have found several notable instances of airmen from RAF Liberator squadrons in the Far East who are officially missing but whose gravesites were known soon after the war but ignored nevertheless. This really makes my blood boil...Major screwups, compounded by the fact that next of kin were not told of the existence of graves.

Cheers,

Matt

**Lizandmick** · 09-30-2011, 05:57 PM

Hi Dave I'm also in contact with Les Adams daughter as we both live in Australia. I have contacted her re this web site and I hope we can make contact and possibly obtain more details for her.
Also I have a Granddaughter that works in " The Australian War Memorial, so now I have details through this wonderful site of his service number and the crash details and type of aircraft, I should now be able to access more information for his Daughter. Look forward to getting your reply. Regards Michael (lizandmick)

Originally Posted by Matt Poole

Hi, Dave and Annie.

I stumbled upon this message thread the other day and was pleased to see the photo of Les Adams as a rugby player. My compilation of crew details/fates was posted to Robert Quirk's RAF Liberator website, and that's where Annie found her info posted back on 11 Sept. For over a decade I have been involved in various aspects of the story of Les and his crew aboard WOTTAWITCH!! on their secret 159 Sqn radar/radio snooping op. Have corresponded with various kin of the crew, including Les' daughter in the Melbourne, Australia area, and also the nephews of RAAF airman Arthur Williams. It was Arthur's scanned Casualty File that you guys accessed -- such a fabulous service the Aussies provide (unlike the PATHETIC policy in the UK.

Googling on Les' name, I found a total of three photos of him as a rugby player, plus some fantastic background info on his rugby career. I knew of his international experience, but until this past week I did not realize what a star he was.

Also, the Australian War Memorial collections database (easy to find in a Google search) has a photo of Les in uniform in India...and I have one other image of him from India. Will share if you send me your e-mail addresses via the private message option.

About five years ago, using the lat/long found in the Williams Cas. File, I searched surviving 1945 aerial reconnaissance imagery at the US National Archives and came up with before and after photos, in detail, of the burn zone where WOTTAWITCH!! impacted into the dry season rice paddy stubble. Then, two friends of mine in Burma trekked to the site and talked with the current landowner, who inherited the fields from his parents. The parents told him of the crash, which ruined the crop for many years - discolored rice from the petrol, primarily. Now everything seems to be lush green, although the area was in the flood zone of last year's devastating cyclone. Supposedly there is considerable wreckage buried on site, including at least one wing. Unfortunately, my friends visited before the rainy season had concluded, so the rice had not been harvested yet and they could not really look for any small pieces of wreckage (to give to the kin of the crew).

One of the Williams nephews is scheduled to visit the site next January, led by one of the two who made the trip there last time (a multi-talented Burmese woman living in Rangoon, and formerly my neighbor in the Washington DC area). In the dry season it should be easy to reach the spot, as opposed to last time, when there was a fair bit of mudslogging involved.

Then there will be a visit to Rangoon War Cemetery to pay respects to the graves of the four crewmen who were executed so brutally by the Japanese. I have been there, back in 1993. Have photos of the four graves, but of course Les was one of the three missing lads...no graves for them. One of them was seen to fall into a mangrove swamp trailing an unopened parachute...a terrible death, but at least he did not suffer like for of his crewmates.

One of the other Les Adams items I found via a Google search the other day was a Yorkshire Post newspaper interview with his 65 year old nephew, himself an ex-professional rugby player. This recent story can be found at: Final replay evokes emotional feelings - News - Yorkshire Post

Most of the Internet info on Les has incorrect details, but now at least you folks have it straight.

Incidentally, the daughter of Les' skipper (S/Ldr James Bradley DFC) was tracked down in California, and she sent me copies of her father's logbook and also a booklet about her father's war career, used for Christian proselytising. He and the navigator (A.G. Jeffrey) - the only officers among the six captured - had been sent to Rangoon Jail and had survived to be liberated. Bradley said in this booklet that WOTTAWITCH!! was shot down by a fighter, and there is a similar reference in his logbook, but Jeffrey did not mention a fighter attack in his mid-1990s correspondences with me and with one of the Williams nephews.

No other sources say it was a fighter, including Japanese researcher/author Hiroshi Ichimura, who is a scholar on the Burma Air War and who has access to more Japanese records and diaries and such than anyone else, I'd say. (His most recent book is the Osprey publication on Ki-43 Oscar aces.)

The bottom line, then, is that it is uncertain if a fighter really did bring down WOTTAWITCH!!, or whether it was sudden engine trouble. Personally, only a fighter attack makes sense to me.

So there you go...a few more basics, and there will be more developing on this story in a couple of months or so.

Les' daughter has been very cordial to me, but I do sense that she needs her space, so I have not pestered her lately. If the Williams nephew does, indeed, make it to the crash site, he will be taking photos and maybe video, and this will be shared with the daughter.

Cheers,

Matt, near Washington, DC.

Matt

**Kitty** · 10-01-2011, 09:41 AM

welcome to the forum Michael, I'm glad the information our members have posted is proving useful to family members. BTW I've removed your email for your security, whilst we do our utmost to protect our members and make sure only genuinely interested parties join, we cannot guarantee a human spammer may not read the thread and start attacking your email. Our members will ping you if needs by via the PMs.

**Matt Poole** · 12-04-2011, 10:08 AM

Hi from Maryland.

The second posting on this thread quoted from something I'd posted on the web -- and I want to correct the date. WOTTAWITCH!! (BZ938) did not go down on the night of 30/31 Jan 1945. Instead, it was the next night -- 31 Jan/1 Feb 1945.

I'd shared extensive info with Les Adams' daughter, including the superb material from Arthur Williams' RAAF casualty file. I tried sending her an email last week, to pass along some new info, but it bounced back.

Michael, do you have an email address that is current? Kindly contact me at feb2944 AT aol DOT com (making the obvious changes).

Glen Smith, the nephew of Arthur Williams, visited the WOTTAWITCH!! crash site in late Jan 2010 and read a prayer. He also visited the graves of Les' four executed crewmates at Rangoon War Cemetery and took photos. Maoist rebel turmoil in West Bengal, India prevented Glen from visiting the vast, abandoned airfield at Digri, where WOTTAWITCH!! was based. A Powerpoint presentation of his visit, with background information, can be viewed here:

Wottawitch Ppt Presentation

I must point out some very minor errors in Glen's presentation. The two airfield images Glen says are Digri are actually Salbani, another RAF Liberator base about 12 miles away. I had sent 1944 photo recon images of both Salbani and Digri to Glen.

Also, the date for the start of the forced POW march from Rangoon Jail is, without a doubt, 25 April 1945 (departing at 4 pm), not the 26th as Glen stated. (Another minor error, pointed out by someone who noted his own minor date error, above...)

The caption to the sequence of photos of S/Ldr Bradley as a free man erroneously gives the date as 28 April; this cinema footage was shot on 30 April. The bulk of the force-marched POWs, including Bradley and Allan Graham Jeffrey, the WOTTAWITCH!! navigator, reached Allied lines overnight on 29/30 April, so the photos of Bradley really do show him in his first hours of true freedom.

A week ago I was contacted by the great-nephew of Stanley Woodbridge, a wireless op aboard WOTTAWITCH!! who was the last of Les' crewmates to be executed, and who was posthumously awarded the George Cross for his defiance and courage. Stanley's brother Ralph gave the nephew the original diary kept by Stanley and Ralph's father James when he flew to Rangoon (at his own expense) to sit in on the full war crimes trial of the six surviving Japanese who were most responsible for the atrocities. The nephew, in Hollywood, is writing a screenplay based upon the trial, though it is a part-time endeavor due to a very active life (which may include a 4th military deployment, this time to Afghanistan). He purchased 1200 pages of the 1947 war crimes transcripts from the UK National Archives at Kew -- harrowing reading.

James Woodbridge, although just an observer at the trial, debunked the time/date alibi being used by the defendents, or one of them -- possibly Hiroshi Okami who beheaded Stanley -- and this was a turning point in the trial.

All six of the Japanese put on trial were convicted. Four received the death penalty (death by hanging), but only three were actually hanged, on 7 July 1945. One more had his sentence reduced to 10 years' imprisonment, and the last two had 2- and 1-year sentences. I don't know if any of them served their full sentences.

Les Adams, as a flight sergeant like his four executed crewmates, would most likely have been murdered with them, had he survived the baleout from his Liberator. The two officers who were captured, Bradley and Jeffrey, survived because they were sent on to Rangoon Jail.

Les' nephew, Phil Adams -- himself a rugby player in his day -- was interviewed by the Leeds paper a couple of years back. His facts on how his uncle died are inaccurate, but here is the link to the story:

Final replay evokes emotional feelings - News - Yorkshire Post

The original on-line version of the story had an image of Phil holding a photo of Les from his playing days, plus a second photo of Les as a player. I saved these as images at the time, so here they are.

Lastly, a cigarette card caricature of Les as a rugby player is found here:

Leslie Adams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have attached this caricature (hopefully).

Cheers,

Matt

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