Hugh Verity

Who was Hugh Verity?

Hugh Beresford Verity was a Royal Air Force officer of the Second World War.

At the start of the war he joined a reconnaissance squadron, and in 1941 he joined the RAF's arm of the Special Operations Executive. In 1942, he took command of a section of Lysanders as No. 161 Squadron RAF. Under this title, in 1942 and 1943 he undertook 36 night flights to drop and pick up Resistance workers, SOE agents and other figures at secret locations in France. Most of these flights were in Lysanders, but some were in Hudsons. Among his passengers were Jean Moulin, Jean de Lattre de Tassigny and François Mitterrand. In 1978, Verity's history of all the RAF's secret landings in France, 1940-1944, was published as We landed by moonlight. A revised edition appeared in 1995 and this was later updated.