Dec. 2025
Aron Heller

Alfred Brenner, the Man in the Flying Suitcase
 

It was a routine Associated Press reporting assignment. 

I was dispatched to a security conference in May 2015 to listen to panels of experts discussing Israel’s looming security threats. It was only when I was done and began walking back to my parked car outside the Armored Corps’ Memorial Site in Latrun in central Israel that the day took a momentous turn.

By sheer chance, I stumbled upon a closed-off construction site with a simple sign hanging on a surrounding fence informing me that this was to become the location of the future official museum for Jewish soldiers in World War II.
I’d never heard of such a thing. So, I started wandering around the premises. I found a relatively newly built, yet apparently abandoned, cavernous structure in front of a row of historic tanks from past wars.

The reporter in me took over. I started making calls and soon discovered that plans for such a museum had been in the works for over a decade but had gotten caught up in a bureaucratic stalemate with no end in sight.

It seemed like such a shame that this had yet to materialize. It struck me as a sacred mission, a complementary establishment to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. This was a place that could honor those who served and fought and not just those who suffered and perished. This could be a place to educate others about the men and women of my grandfather’s generation.

I knew firsthand how these veterans were aging, how each day more were passing away. It would be so meaningful to have something like this emerge while there were still some remaining veterans able to appreciate it.

Amazingly, with all my reporting on the Holocaust, its victims and survivors, and the heroism of the Jewish partisans and resistance fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto, I had never done a feature on the 1.5 million Jewish soldiers who fought for the Allies in World War II, of which more than 250,000 died in battle.

The 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day (VE Day) seemed like the perfect news peg to pursue it.
Aside from my professional interest, there was also personal motivation. Finally, there was some comfort in knowing that whatever I discovered about my grandfather’s murky military past, no matter how small, belonged in the context of something larger.

My upcoming story, and this whole venture, offered an opportunity to rekindle my inquiries under the guise of something bigger than him.

Knowing how my Zaidy had always been more forthcoming about the stories of others, I decided to pursue the friend angle first. Perhaps he had names, details, and photos he could share? Maybe there were other fellow veterans that he wished would be better recognized? He’d been cold to previous inquiries, but he loved history and museums and had a lot of pride about the Canadian contribution to World War II. I had a hunch he’d be more receptive this time around.
So, I dug into the research and then I fired off an email informing him of my findings and seeking his contribution. The material included a link to a collection of comic-like brochures I discovered online that the Canadian Jewish Congress issued in 1944 seeking to highlight the “Jewish War Heroes.”

The “hero” that most caught my attention was Flying Officer Alfred Brenner, a Canadian pilot who was credited with destroying a 5,000-ton German merchant ship on February 18, 1943, near the Frisian Islands, located off the coast of the Netherlands.

“We got that one, Alf. She’s sinking,” read the dialogue in the comic.

“Yes. And they got us too,” Brenner replied. “Can’t keep her up much longer.”

I figured Zaidy may find the brochure interesting. Little did I know that he and Brenner shared a connection that ran much deeper.

***

Brenner’s was a truly remarkable tale. His three-man crew were on a sortie off the Dutch coast when they came across a convoy of twelve Nazi merchant ships accompanied by five destroyers.

Merchant ships were basically floating warehouses that transported artillery, ammunition, and other war materials that were needed for battle. Both the Allied powers (Great Britain, US, and Soviet Union) and the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) did all they could to protect their ships since they were the lifeline for the fighting troops on the front. They did not hesitate to destroy those belonging to their enemy.

Brenner and his crew zeroed in on one of these prime targets. He plunged till he was almost at water level and then dropped his torpedoes.

Brenner and his two crewmates scored a direct hit on the merchant ship, which burst into flames. Then came the return fire. Brenner had taken out the freighter, but his own Hampden bomber was shot up so badly that he would have to crash land.

“All hell broke loose. Every ship in the convoy began firing at us,” Brenner later told the Canadian Press.
The Hampden was known as the “flying suitcase” because of its cramped cockpit and was considered one of the more dangerous war planes to fly. In fact, by 1942, it had already been removed from most war theaters because it was considered unsafe.

Brenner’s plane was badly damaged. The rudder, the port engine and the wing tips had been hit by the flak from the Nazi destroyers. Brenner also felt an immense flash of heat from a shell that penetrated the fuselage through the bomb bays, striking the armor behind his pilot seat.

Brenner climbed up to 2,000 feet, from which point the radio operator was able to send an SOS, before Brenner descended and settled the bomber into the cold waters of the North Sea, thirty miles from Great Yarmouth in England.
The plane sank quickly. But before it did, the crew members were able to inflate a rescue dinghy and escape. However, paddles, flares, sailing masts, and rations went down with the aircraft.

Brenner and his crew used their now-useless flashlights, with dead batteries removed, to bail water from the dinghy as they floated in dangerous waters. Miraculously, one crew member had managed to save the pigeon container, and the pigeons were dispatched back to Bomber Command with coordinates.

Not knowing their fate, the crew members held off from drinking their only fresh quart of water. For meals, they allowed themselves one energy tablet from a first aid kit that they managed to salvage.

Two days later they were spotted by a rescue unit and were picked up near the English coast after drifting for forty-three hours in the North Sea.

The rescue plane skimmed into the water after dropping a smoke flare to guide its way and Brenner and his crewmates were able to grab the rescue float as all the men were pulled on board.

The captain of the rescue flight reported that the men were surprisingly well after such long exposure to the elements. And despite not having had any water in two days, the three men seemed mostly interested in confirming that the merchant ship they’d torpedoed was a confirmed hit.

For these exploits, Brenner was honored with the Distinguished Flying Cross. King George VI presented the award to him on September 10, 1943, at Buckingham Palace.

The dispatch to the medal read in part: “Throughout his [Brenner’s] tour of operations, this officer has displayed the greatest keenness and devotion to duty.”

Brenner was one of nearly 200 Canadian Jewish servicemen who were decorated for heroism in battle. His actions were deemed so heroic that, in 2020, then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau chose to highlight them at the start of his address to parliament marking the beginning of Veterans’ Week.

“In the face of danger, Alfred and his crew chose to be brave,” Trudeau said. “They chose to put their own lives on the line for the greater good.”

***

Responding to my detailed report, Zaidy wrote back and casually informed me that Brenner was, in fact, his second cousin.

“Our grandmothers were sisters. But he was from a well-to-do family and went to a private school, so they gave me his hand-me-downs,” Zaidy said. “He was older than me and I used to get his grown-out clothes. All I ever wanted was a sweater, but we didn’t have any money, and I never had one. The private school he went to did not allow sweaters, only suits. So that’s how I ended up being the best-dressed kid in my school wearing a three-piece suit.”

The happenstance made me wonder what other kinds of colorful nuggets like these Zaidy had stashed away from those days. What more was there to discover?

I mean Brenner was a genuine war hero, straight out of central casting. He was essentially the Canadian version of the flyboys depicted in Masters of the Air, the Apple TV+ war drama miniseries about the 100th Bomb Group in the Eighth Air Force. In particular, Brenner reminded me of Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal, the highly decorated Jewish B-17 commander who flew fifty-two bombing missions and was shot down twice.

It was another reminder of how Zaidy may not have been a primary actor in the war theater, but he was a bit player on the set. Like the title of Jerzy Kosiński’s famous novel, Zaidy’s significance seemed to be merely “being there.” Or, to use another literary analogy, I never thought he would be the “Great Gatsby,” but I still hoped he could be the Nick Carraway who introduced the central characters.

Zaidy’s Band: The Untold Stories of a Jewish Band of Brothers in World War II, available for purchase at utpublishing.com and major book retailers. Learn more about Aron Heller at www.aronheller.com