James Hardy Marks, DSO & Bar, DFC (19 March 1918 – 20 September 1942) was an officer in the Royal Air Force.

He was killed while returning from a raid against Saarbrücken when his Halifax was set afire from an attack from a German night fighter.

Marks stayed at the controls to allow his crew to escape before his aircraft crashed near Blesme in northern France.

By his late teens he had become a tall young man, with fair hair and an athletic build, who exuded a quiet authoritative presence.

In January 1939 he was part of a flight that gave an air display to the top ranks of the service and a delegation from North Africa.

At the outset the squadron was tasked with the dropping of leaflets over Germany and the occupied countries, with many of its early missions going to Poland.

[2] In January 1940 the leaflet policy was changed, and Bomber Command was freed to begin bombing raids against targets in Germany in earnest.

[3] In the coming months Marks was engaged on raids on variety of disparate targets, including Posen, Prague, Warsaw, Hanover, Trondheim and Oslo, and was mentioned in despatches "for gallant and distinguished services.

[5] On 20 May whilst attacking bridges in France Marks' aircraft was hit by flak and the plane's hydraulic system was knocked out.

For the rest of the month he was involved in attacking German transport support, striking Quesney Cross-roads in France on 23 May, Walcheren on 25 May and the Neuss railway junction on 27 May.

According to his citation, he "has shown tenacity of purpose, a high courage and thoroughness of planning and execution which is beyond praise.

"[4] In the early days of the war it proved difficult to attack targets from the air with a conventional bomber due to a tremendous lack of accuracy.

Following the German air raid against Rotterdam the center of the city was set afire, which could be seen at night from a very great distance.

He wanted the navigators to use the center of the fire as a start point of a timed run against German forces to the northeast of the city.

That night 20 Whitleys based at Driffield from 102 and 77 Squadrons set out to bomb the Fiat Works in Turin.

His log book comment referred to the return flight obliquely, stating simply "rather hectic."

[1] On 30 March he led the squadron in a low level attack against the German battleship Tirpitz in the Norwegian Fættenfjord.

[1] In June 1942 ideas for helping bombers find their target more easily came to fruition with the creation of the Pathfinder Force.

[13] The squadron, with hand-picked crews from the group, along with their ground support staff arrived in RAF Graveley the first day the force was formed.

Regarding the Halifax, nothing ponderable is being done to make this deplorable product worthy for war or fit to meet those jeopardizes, which confront our gallant crews.

"[15] On the night of 19 September 1942, just before he was to be made group captain, Marks stepped in at the last moment to take over an aircraft whose pilot was unable to fly on a raid against Saarbrücken.

[9] Said one of his crew members: "I was the last to leave the plane, and when I passed the captain on my way to bailout he was having to fight terrifically to keep the aircraft in any sort of trim.

Marks was the first commanding officer of the four founding Pathfinder bombing squadrons to lose his life.

When the problem was finally identified, Handley Page initially did not want to disrupt aircraft production to make the change.

Upon Cheshire's insistence the design was changed to a larger, trapezoidal-shaped vertical tail surfaces which solved the control deficiencies.

[7] On 19 September 1992, the 50th anniversary of the mission that cost him his life, a memorial to Marks and his crew was unveiled at Blesme in France, near the site where his plane went down.

For his fallen captain, Higgs offered "Jimmy Marks was a brilliant pilot, a wonderful leader, and a man this country could ill afford to lose.

"[18] Cheshire wrote an article after the war about his early days with 102 Squadron, and recalled the pilots he had known while flying out of RAF Topcliffe.