Mike Cumberlege was tortured, and eventually executed, by the Germans after being captured while on Operation Locksmith in Greece.
16 Facts About Mike Cumberlege
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Mike Cumberlege was born into a naval family, the son of Claude Lionel Mike Cumberlege and Sarah Laetitia Crossley Couldwell of Gibraltar.
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Mike Cumberlege's father retired as a rear admiral in 1926, having served in the Royal Australian Navy in the First World War on secondment from the Royal Navy.
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Mike Cumberlege was educated at The Nautical College, Pangbourne, before entering the Merchant Navy as a midshipman on 1 May 1922.
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Mike Cumberlege then worked with British intelligence in Cape Verde.
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Mike Cumberlege was tasked with undertaking covert and disruptive action in Greece during and after the Battle of Greece.
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Meantime, Mike Cumberlege had participated in Operation Demon, the Allied evacuation from Greece.
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In Canae, Mike Cumberlege met with Captain Nicholas Hammond and Rhodesian private James 'Jumbo' Steele, the latter would eventually join him for Operation Locksmith.
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Mike Cumberlege had befriended the archaeologist John Pendlebury before the war and they planned to raid the Dodecanese islands but the German airborne invasion of Crete prevented the operation from being carried out.
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The engines of Dolphin II having given out, Mike Cumberlege commandeered the caique Athanassios Miaoulis and escaped from Crete with his cousin Major Cleland Mike Cumberlege, Hammond, Steele, Able Seaman Saunders and a Greek crew.
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Mike Cumberlege was centrally involved in the planning process, and led the mission.
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In January 1944, Mike Cumberlege was moved to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
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Arthur Reade, a prosecuting lawyer for war crimes who interviewed the commandant of Sachsenhausen, Anton Kaindl, believed that Cumberlege was killed in Flossenburg together with Sergeant Major James C Steele and possibly Sergeant Thomas E Handley.
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Mike Cumberlege was awarded a posthumous Bar to his DSO in 1946 for the second attempt to attack the canal.
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Mike Cumberlege is commemorated on the Chatham Naval Memorial and on the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp memorial plaque for British and Commonwealth forces.
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Mike Cumberlege was additionally honoured with a division at Britannia Royal Naval College named after him, which functions to train Royal Naval Reserve officer cadets throughout their stay at the college during the Accelerated Officers Programme.