Messages posted by: Rob_Crane_COPP

Dragging this one up "from the vaults", I note that the book 'Stealthily by Night' lists all three as having spent time with Combined Operations Pilotage Parties.

I'm still going through the detail of that book, so hopefully it will give more details which I'll try to remember to post here.

Alternatively you can keep an eye on the website I'm building at the moment - coppsurvey.uk/a-to-z-list

I'd be really interested to hear what you find out!

I'm just pulling together a list of COPP personnel from the various different public sources before myself delving into official records as much as possible. Very much a work in progress at the moment, especially as different secondary sources tend to diverge from one another -- I've only completed the letter 'A' so far! https://www.coppsurvey.uk/a-to-z-list/ (Whole website is currently hidden behind a 'Coming soon' landing page as it's all still being thrown together.)

I've not come across the surname Riches yet. Closest I've seen so far is an SBS member, Richey, but he was a Corporal. Stealthily by Starlight lists him as being part of COPP 1 which was in the Far East at the same time as the first iteration of COPP 8 was out there, but I've not yet seen even Richey mentioned anywhere else.

There does seem to have been a second iteration of COPP 8 "about to be formed" by mid-April 1945. My grandfather's diary mentions this, but my grandfather was a Royal Engineer and he only lists one name, that of the Royal Engineer officer who would have been attached to that unit. https://www.coppsurvey.uk/the-copp-teams/#copp8

Good luck with finding out more! Was he a relative? What suggests he was in COPP 8?