Helias Doundoulakis

Helias Doundoulakis (July 12, 1923 – February 29, 2016) was a Greek American civil engineer who patented the suspension system for the at-the-time largest radio telescope in the world (the Arecibo telescope).

During WWII he served in the United States Army and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as a spy.

Helias Doundoulakis was born in Canton, Ohio to Greek immigrant parents, Demetrios and Evanthia (née Psaroudakis) Doundoulakis.

When he was two years old, his family emigrated to Crete, Greece to care for his blind grandmother in Archanes.

By 1941, Greece had fallen to the Axis powers save for Crete.

On May 20, 1941, German paratroopers, invaded Crete while Helias was in high school.

The Battle of Crete lasted ten days, during which Helias' brother George Doundoulakis worked as an interpreter for the joint Greek/British military headquarters.

After the battle was lost, the Doundoulakis brothers joined the Cretan resistance.

"Monty" Woodhouse, a Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent, approached George after witnessing his competence and leadership abilities.

He asked that George help him evacuate British soldiers stranded on Crete.

George formed an underground organization by recruiting friends, ex-military officers, and civilians from Heraklion and Lasithi.

George's organization supplied key intelligence to the SOE by collaborating with Woodhouse, then with Thomas Dunbabin ("Tom"), and later, Paddy Fermor ("Mihalis").

Helias was assigned to the Heraklion Airfield, where he relayed to a nearby peanut vendor the number of Luftwaffe planes returning from Rommel's Afrika Korps in Egypt.

George's informants uncovered intelligence which was relayed to Dunbabin.

The information led to the sinking of a German convoy destined to resupply Rommel in 1942.

For their action, George and Dunbabin later were decorated by Great Britain, the former receiving the King's Medal and the latter the Distinguished Service Order.

George's organization was betrayed to the Gestapo by a local Cretan after two years with the SOE.

Leigh Fermor urged Helias and George to depart immediately to the south shore of Crete through the Psiloritis Mountains and await exfiltration by the SOE.

After hiding in caves for a month, the Doundoulakis brothers were rescued by a British torpedo boat.

Along with thirteen others, they were bound for Mersa Matruh.

As they were about to board, Helias and George reunited with Leigh Fermor and partisan leader Petrakogiorgis.

Petrakogiorgis had returned to Crete on the same boat ferrying the Doundoulakis brothers to Egypt on June 7, 1943.

The brothers would not see Leigh Fermor again for forty years.

After the war, Leigh Fermor was immortalized in the British film, Ill Met by Moonlight for his role in abducting General Kreipe from Crete.

) After safely arriving in Mersa Matruh, Helias, George, John ("Yanni") Androulakis and three others were transported to an SOE villa in Heliopolis, an affluent suburb of Cairo. This chosen group was destined for saboteur training at the recommendation of Leigh Fermor. The other escapees were sent to the exiled Greek Army.

The OSS was eventually informed of the Doundoulakis brothers' involvement with the SOE from Leigh Fermor.

It dispatched OSS Captain James Kellis to recruit them as they were Americans.

They enlisted in the United States Army on September 16, 1943.

The Doundoulakis brothers then joined the OSS, the newly-formed American intelligence service.

Their commanding officer was Major John Vassos, RCA's well-known industrial designer.

Prospective agents were trained inside an elaborate palace rented from Egypt's ruling monarch, King Farouk.

Helias was trained for six months in the arts of espionage in a facility known as the 'Spy School,' by the Secret Intelligence Branch.

Advanced commando and parachute training was provided by the British at their SOE STS-102 training facility in Haifa, Palestine.

Upon completion of his training in March 1944, Helias was dispatched on a mission to Salonica, Greece by Major Vassos.

He set up a phony business in a factory once owned by Greek Jews.

Helias remained embedded undercover in Salonica from April to December 1944, sending encrypted radio messages to OSS-Cairo on German activity.

One message resulted in the destruction of a German troop train by a squadron of Allied B-25 bombers.

His radio transmissions were pinpointed by German triangulation methods, but he escaped.

Although constantly hunted by the Gestapo and the Greek police, he eluded capture.

He was never suspected of being an American spy — outwitting both the Germans and Greeks.