Dennis Herbert Cochran (13 August 1921 – 31 March 1944), was an officer in the Royal Air Force and member of a British Armstrong Whitworth Whitley bomber crew who was shot down and taken prisoner during the Second World War.

[1] He was well known as a premier league table tennis player in the London region when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force in 1941 as an aircrew candidate with the service number 1287613.

Flying operationally with No.10 Operational Training Unit aboard Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Mark V (serial number "AD671"), Cochran was a member of the crew of Sergeant C N Ellis when they took off from RAF St Eval on 8 October 1942 on a mission to hunt u-boats making passage in the Bay of Biscay between their home ports and the North Atlantic convoy routes.

[5] Their Whitley was intercepted by a German long-range maritime patrol aircraft Junkers Ju 88 flown by Leutnant Dieter Meister of 13 Staffel, Kampfgeschwader 40 and shot down into the Bay of Biscay.

Disguised in a uniform stained to resemble those of the displaced persons on forced labour duties all across Germany Cochran was positively sighted sweeping streets in Frankfurt am Main[10] before travelling alone to Freiburg[11] and then south only to be recaptured at Lörrach in distant southern German right on top of the French and Swiss frontiers.

[12] The following morning, 31 March 1944 in a soft-topped official sedan, they collected Cochran but the driver drove directly through Strasbourg to Natzweiler in error[13] and they had to leave the camp and stop in a wooded area nearby supposedly for a break before their journey.