Peter Stevens (RAF officer)

Peter Stevens
Peter Stevens MC, 1961
Birth name	Georg Franz Hein
Born	(1919-02-15)15 February 1919 Hanover, Germany
Died	16 July 1979(1979-07-16) (aged 60) Toronto, Canada
Allegiance	United Kingdom  Canada
Service/branch	Royal Air Force  Royal Canadian Air Force (Auxiliary)
Years of service	1939–1952 (RAF) 1952–1958 (RCAF)
Rank	Squadron Leader
Battles/wars	World War II
Awards	Military Cross
Other work	MI6

Peter Stevens MC (born Georg Franz Hein, 15 February 1919 – 16 July 1979) was a German Jew who flew bombers in the Royal Air Force against his own country in World War II. As an enemy alien living in London in the late 1930s, Hein assumed the identity of a dead schoolfriend in order to join the RAF at the outbreak of hostilities.

Shot down on a bombing raid, he was captured by the Germans and held a prisoner of war. Aware that if his true identity was discovered he would be regarded as a traitor he made repeated escape attempts, but was always recaptured. Liberated from the POW camp at the end of the war, he finally obtained British citizenship. In 1947 he transferred to MI6's East German section, retaining his RAF commission. After leaving MI6 he emigrated to Canada in 1952, embarking on a business career.

Stevens was born Georg Franz Hein, on 15 February 1919 in Hanover, Germany, part of a wealthy German-Jewish family. In 1934 his widowed mother sent him to school in England. He remained in England after finishing school, but ran up gambling debts and was jailed for fraud. He was released just days before Britain declared war on Germany, and should have reported to a police station for internment as an enemy alien. Instead he assumed the identity of a dead schoolfriend, Peter Stevens, and joined the RAF.

He trained as a bomber pilot for 18 months, all the while the subject of a manhunt by British police. Having reached the rank of leading aircraftman, he was commissioned as a pilot officer on probation in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve on 2 November 1940.

Joining RAF Bomber Command's 144 Squadron in April 1941, Stevens flew 22 combat operations in the Handley Page Hampden before his aircraft, Hampden AD936, was damaged over Berlin, and he was forced to crash-land near Amsterdam on 8 September 1941. Taken as a prisoner of war, he spent three years and eight months as a prisoner of his own country (without protection from the Geneva Convention). Had the Nazis discovered his true identity, he would have been subject to immediate execution as a traitor. Although in captivity, he was promoted war substantive flying officer on 2 November 1941, and war substantive flight lieutenant a year later.