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Summary
Jean de Selys Longchamps is famous for having strafed the Gestapo headquarters in Brussels during an unauthorised raid on January 20, 1943 in his Hawker Typhoon.
Jean de Selys Longchamps was born on May 31st, 1912 in Brussels from a Belgian aristocratic family.
In 1933 he joined the army in the 1st Guides Regiment and was promoted to Second Lieutenant in 1937.
In May 1940, during the German invasion of Belgium, he was enrolled into the 17th Infantry Division and fought all the way until the Belgian surrender on May 28th. However, Jean did not accept the surrender, instead choosing to flee to the United Kingdom on June 2nd via De Panne.
He did not stay in the UK for long, and went back to France in other to join the remaining Belgian troops fighting in France, however, as soon as he arrived, France signed the armistice with Germany.
Jean then joined other Belgians in Marseille in order to get back to Britain via Morocco, but he was arrested and sent to a camp near Montpellier. He then escaped the camp, crossed the Pyrenees into Spain and entered Portugal in order to go to the UK again, afted the Battle of Britain was over.
In Britain, he joined the Royal Air Force after lying about his age, making himself a few years younger in order to be accepted.
As a Typhoon pilot, he completed many ground attack missions, strafing trains and whatnot.
However, Jean was then told that his father had been tortured and killed by the Gestapo, which turned out to be false, but he did not know it then.
Furious and distraught, Jean proposed several times to his superiors an attack on the Gestapo headquarters in Brussels, but it was refused each time…
He then devised a plan for several months, until the fateful day of January 20, 1943.
After successfully completing a train-strafing mission near Ghent, he sent his wingman home and turned to Brussels. After flying at very low altitude for about 30 minutes, he reached Brussels and set his sights on the Gestapo building, firing his four 20 mm Hispano cannons upon the headquarters, hitting all 11 floors and sparing the neighboring buildings in the process. He then flew around and above Brussels, opened his canopy and dropped a massive Belgian flag on the Royal palace as well as dozens of smaller Belgian flags all over the city.
Following his successful raid, he turned back to Britain and, due to him disobeying orders, was demoted. However, he was also awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross due to his great courage and offensive spirit.
The attack claimed the lives of four Germans including SS Sturmbammführer Alfred Thomas, responsible for sending more than 18,000 Belgian Jews from Mechelen to Auschwitz, as well as dozens of injured.
Unfortunately, Jean de Selys Longchamps was killed while approaching the RAF Manston base. His Typhoon, damaged by German AA fire, “snapped” in half, after a successful mission near Ostend about 7 months after the raid.
