by Helen Fry
Norman Crockatt commented that there was much material which ‘had no Service value, but deals with Party scandals, local colour, erotic stories and low-class jokes. Such material, we are assured, is of great propaganda value’.104
The MI5 counter-intelligence department, working out of Room 055A at the War Office, confirmed:
Not only do we obtain technical knowledge from the reports, but we get also a line on the standard technical training given to German air force personnel . . . The German text is of great value, not because there exists grounds for criticism of your translations, but because the text in the original language occasionally conveys something which is lost in translation.105
Much of the achievement of this period was due to the interpersonal skills of Kendrick himself. At the sites, he frequently entertained the top brass of British intelligence as well as important personnel from the Admiralty, Anti-aircraft Command, War Office, Foreign Office, Air Force and Army. By hosting lunches, he built up the necessary rapport for total cooperation between himself and other departments. A tour of parts of the site, within certain limits, enabled them to see first-hand the nature of the work and how it had a bearing on intelligence gathering for their departments.
Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Pile of Anti-aircraft Command headquarters, Stanmore, wrote to Kendrick after one such luncheon: ‘In future, when I read the reports I get, their value will be enhanced at least fifty per cent by knowing how these reports are arrived at . . . I get more value out of them than out of any of the intelligence summaries which reach me.’106
The M Room operation was running like clockwork.
CHAPTER 4
Prized Prisoners, Idle Chatter
The results of the M Room were to prove crucial during 1941, especially for the Battle of the Atlantic. Prisoners captured during this period still comprised mainly U-boat crews and Luftwaffe personnel.1 German air force prisoners spoke about specific bombing raids. One prisoner commented: ‘When it is full moon, it is better to attack Plymouth and the other seaports, then you can see every street, every lay-out and every building.’2 Plymouth was one of the cities to receive devastating attacks from the German air force, reducing much of the city centre to rubble.
In the first two months of 1941, the bugged conversations from U-boat personnel gave the first indication that Hitler planned to intensify U-boat attacks from March and carry out a blockade of Britain to starve the country into submission.3 They also provided advance intelligence that U-boats were about to start attacking shipping escorts as well as the supply convoys.4 Kendrick’s first six-monthly report for 1941 noted that the number of prisoners from the German navy amounted to 288, 5 from the Italian navy, and 238 German air force personnel.5 Their interrogation and bugged conversations enabled British intelligence to keep abreast of the movements, numbers and losses within the U-boat fleets, as well as U-boat tactics in attacking convoys.6 Invasion of Britain was no longer a major theme of conversation amongst the prisoners, and if mentioned, doubt was expressed that it would take place at all.7 Throughout 1941, several copies of the transcripts were sent to each of MI9, the Admiralty and Air Intelligence, and when necessary to MI6. These organisations sifted the intelligence and sent it to the relevant departments within their organisation.8
During May 1941, a very different picture began to emerge. Prisoners spoke about heavy U-boat losses and the increased difficulty of attacking British shipping from the air because of improved defences by the RAF. One prisoner sought to explain the losses in these terms: ‘We were great poets and philosophers, we had Schiller and Goethe, but we have never achieved unity in Germany. That brought us to the edge of the precipice.’9
Prisoners still believed they had outsmarted their interrogators. A bomber mechanic captured on 21 February 1941 told his cellmate: ‘He [the interrogation officer] asked what engine the Do 217 had. I said, I don’t know. As a matter of fact, I do know that it has the Bramo double-row radial engine.’10
The following month, a Commando raid, codenamed Operation Claymore, was mounted against the Lofoten Islands. The Norwegian islands were under German occupation and important to Germany’s war industry because of the production there of fish oil and glycerine. The raid resulted in the capture of 43 German naval, military and air force personnel. In addition, 169 German civilians and 323 Norwegian patrols (including eight women) were brought back to Britain by the raiding force.11 All were interrogated at either Trent Park, a command cage (under the aegis of Colonel Scotland), or by MI5 at its interrogation sites.12 The raid resulted in the capture of documents and, by the end of March, a further influx of prisoners from the operation.13
This period also saw the arrival at Trent Park of crew from three U-boats, other German naval personnel and a heavy influx of German air force personnel from the night-fighter successes.14 Air force prisoners spoke, for example, about three big attacks by the RAF on Wilhelmshaven, a key German port and naval base. One told his cellmate: ‘A lot of damage was done – a lot of houses were smashed and about 400 killed and injured.’15
Construction work continued as a priority at MI9’s two new sites. The MI9 war diary noted that work was ‘actively continuing to complete the two new sites at Latimer House and Wilton Park, and part of the premises at Latimer was to be available by 19 May 1941’.16
GERMAN WARSHIPS AND U-BOATS
Intelligence from naval prisoners was an absolute necessity in fighting the U-boat menace. The intense battle at sea continued: in the first six months of 1941, two former crew members from the Admiral Graf Spee, an armoured cruiser, passed through Trent Park.17 Inevitably the two prisoners discussed the movements, tactics and details of the German battleships, the Gneisenau, the Tirpitz and Scharnhorst.18 Not only did they discuss how the battleships refuelled at sea, they also helpfully leaked technical details about their armour, armament, construction and engines. Other prisoners provided descriptions of the damage inflicted on German vessels at the port of Brest, and of submarine schools located at Kiel, Neustadt, Pillau and Gotenhafen.19
Survivors of the battleship Bismarck described her last voyage in considerable detail, including the damage inflicted during her fight with the British warships Hood and Prince of Wales, and her sinking on 27 May 1941.20 The Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were two of the largest battleships ever built by Germany. British commanders had been closely tracking their movements: the Bismarck was tasked with raiding British shipping from North America to Britain and became one of the main surface threats in the north Atlantic. She engaged and destroyed the British battlecruiser HMS Hood at the Battle of Denmark Strait on 24 May. Two days later, the Bismarck was pursued relentlessly by the Royal Navy and attacked by torpedo bombers from HMS Ark Royal. The following morning, 27 May, the British cruiser Dorsetshire finished off the Bismarck which had been reduced to a helpless hulk by fire from the battleships King George V and Rodney. German accounts provide an alternative explanation and say that she was scuttled.
When survivors were spotted in the waters the British destroyer Maori moved in to pick up 110 Germans from an original crew of 2,200. They were transferred to Trent Park for interrogation and clandestine monitoring by M Room operators.21
The significant number of U-boat losses led to a shift in attitude amongst the prisoners. They began to express doubt to each other about the use of U-boats as a decisive weapon in deciding the outcome of the war. They also provided precise details of losses and numbers of U-boats still operational at sea.22 In May 1941, one prisoner, described by CSDIC as an anti-Nazi, discussed with his cellmate precise numbers of U-boats, saying that its full strength was fifty, of which twenty were at sea, twenty in port and ten in dock.23 Other prisoners confirmed that more than seventy U-boats had been in operation, but thirty-five had been sunk, and there was a shortage of trained U-boat crews. References to the loss of a specific U-boat often reached British intelligence through the M Room operation weeks before any official announcement had been made in the German
press. It enabled British intelligence to keep abreast of the German threat and fighting capability.
From the M Room came information about mines and torpedoes, including Germany’s target areas for mine-laying in British waters.24 It was discovered that the Germans had introduced a new type of mine with delayed action, acoustic and water-pressure, as well as an improved version of the magnetic mine. Accompanying this information was considerable detail about the various heights from which certain German aircraft dropped mines. As a result, it enabled the Director of Torpedoes and Mining to form an accurate picture of the situation and ‘recognise the new object directly it arrived and have an officer on spot without any delay and to issue a warning and guidance at home and abroad’.25 The information gleaned therefore proved to be crucial.
Due to the improvement of British defences, the German air force had largely abandoned dropping mines from a low altitude. To maintain accuracy from a higher altitude, the Germans were developing a mine-bomb, fitted with fins and without a parachute.26 Information picked up in secret recordings and interrogations revealed that the enemy was about to make alterations in mining attacks. Praise of this work was received from Godfrey (head of Naval Intelligence), who wrote to the Director of Military Intelligence:
Without them [the Special Reports] it would have been impossible to piece together the histories of [enemy] ships, their activities and the tactics employed by U-boats in attacking convoys. The hardest naval information to obtain with any degree of reliability concerned technical matters … I wish to convey to the staff at the CSDIC my warm appreciation of their work.27
Stewart Menzies (head of MI6) wrote to Norman Crockatt to reinforce the importance of the work at Trent Park:
From my point of view, the reports are of distinct value, and I trust the work will be maintained and every possible assistance given to the Centre [CSDIC]. It is essential that the Service Departments should collaborate closely by providing Kendrick with the latest questionnaires, without which he must be working largely in the dark.28
INTELLIGENCE ABOUT THE GERMAN AIR FORCE
Naval prisoners from two Kondor aircraft discussed the new German 109 fighter and the long-distance bomber HE177.29 Further discussions on navigation and communication on aircraft provided extremely useful information to MI9. Prisoners continued to mention Knickebein, Elecktra and X-Gerät, and Britain’s interference with navigational beams.30 One of the most significant pieces of intelligence in this period related to the new heavy bomb termed ‘Max’ (2,500kg), mine-laying techniques and ‘the introduction of 1lb incendiaries with a small explosive charge’.31 At the end of April 1941, two bomber pilots were recorded talking about bombs on aircraft. After interrogation, A830 (captured 8 April 1941) told his cellmate A777 (captured 13 March 1941), ‘They knew about our new 5,000kg bomb here’, prompting A777 to ask: ‘Really! What aircraft carries it?’
‘It is not carried. It is towed. It has sort of little wings which somehow fall off at the moment the bomb is released … Here they know that 5,000kg bomb exists, but they maintain that we have no aircraft capable of carrying them. They don’t know that it has wings and is towed,’ replied A830.32
Most of the information coming out of the M Room was of direct relevance to the Air Ministry and ‘enabled Air staff to keep abreast of enemy technical developments and in some instances to take effective counter measures.’33 Gauging the impact and effects of RAF bombing raids on German cities was not easy once a British pilot had completed his sortie and returned to base. It was here that British intelligence relied on the M Room operators to pick up these details from German prisoners who revealed that substantial damage had been inflicted on places such as Kiel, Wilhelmshaven, Hamburg, Mannheim and Berlin.34 Morale amongst the German air force was already in decline in 1941 due to heavy losses sustained during their attacks on British shipping and in raids over Britain. Prisoners began to criticise Germany’s bombing strategy. Kendrick noted, ‘Outspoken pessimism about the outcome of the war is rarely met, but occasional discussion of the possibility of losing the war is in strong contrast to the prevailing mood during 1940 when such talk was virtually unheard of.’35
Friendly conversations between a British army officer (one of Kendrick’s officers) and a U-boat commander were recorded in the grounds of Trent Park. Prisoner N511 (as he was known) had been present at the launching of the battleship Prinz Eugen. He revealed an idolisation of Adolf Hitler when the Führer had stepped on board:
I shall never in all my life forget the moment when I saw the Führer. An electric shock went through and through me and it is just the same when he speaks … As he stood there on the platform and looked around it was really quite unforgettable. The Führer casts a spell over anyone he looks at.36
The weakening of belief in an early victory, often promised by Hitler, led some prisoners at Trent Park to express a considerable measure of political criticism.37 Kendrick noted: ‘Hitler remains for the majority of prisoners above controversy, but towards the end of the period under review, there were several unusually irreverent references to Hitler by Naval personnel.’38
In terms of German military strategy, naval prisoners spoke freely to each other about the movement of German aircraft to Romania and U-Boat personnel to Bulgaria. Relations between Germany and Russia were said to be strained and heavy fortifications were being constructed on Germany’s Eastern Front. There was talk of the deployment of a new long-range bomber, HE177, against cities like Moscow and increased references to the movement of troops to the East. This was accompanied by some withdrawal of aircraft away from the West. From these conversations, British intelligence could monitor Hitler’s military build-up for the invasion of Russia, so that British intelligence was already prepared by the time news broke of the German invasion of Russia on Sunday 22 June 1941. By this time, British intelligence had had in its custody for six weeks the highest-ranking German prisoner ever to be captured in the war – Hitler’s deputy and designated successor, Rudolf Hess.39
RUDOLF HESS
On 10 May 1941, Kendrick received a call from Stewart Menzies (head of MI6) that Rudolf Hess had bailed out of his Messerschmitt over Scotland. It took a few days before Hess’s real identity was verified. Kendrick temporarily left Trent Park for four months to become one of Hess’s three minders on behalf of the intelligence services, under the codename ‘Colonel Wallace’, with SIS colleague Frank Foley and ‘Captain Barnes’ (whose real name remains obscure).40 Much mystery still surrounds Hess’s mission to Britain, widely believed now to have been to negotiate some kind of peace deal through the Duke of Hamilton, whose estate lay close to where Hess bailed out. What is unknown is whether Hess came with or without the sanction of Hitler. Historian Michael Smith argues that Hess was lured to Britain by MI6.41 If true, it would mean that Hess’s flight on 10 May 1941 was expected.
Hess was transferred by train from Scotland to London and held in the Queen’s House at the Tower of London for four days. He was then transferred to Mytchett Place near Aldershot, where bugging devices were installed to monitor him. Although some of the information covering subsequent months in the care of Kendrick, Foley and Barnes at Camp Z, as his holding site was codenamed, is available, much of the Hess material remains classified. However, there is a single brief report in Foreign Office files, dated 23 May 1941, and signed by Denys Felkin of AI1(K) whilst based at Trent Park.42 The report was destined for the desk of Flight Lieutenant E.H. Baring, Personal Assistant to Air Vice Marshal Charles Medhurst (Assistant Chief of Air Staff Intelligence). It informed Baring that Hess had been declared ‘a vulnerable case’ and as such over a hundred military guards were guarding him. Felkin then wrote: ‘So far nothing can be ascertained about either the second occupant of the aircraft, or regarding the Canadian Bearer Bonds.’43
Hess was found to have been carrying the bonds when he was captured, but Felkin’s comment about a second man in the plane is odd given that Hess was believed to have flown to Britain alone.
> Cynthia Turner (née Crew) worked for Felkin at Latimer House in 1944. She commented: ‘It was generally understood that one of our senior RAF officers, Squadron Leader Spenceley, was sent to interview him [Hess].’44 Whilst this was based on hearsay around the site, Spenceley did work for Felkin in ADI(K) and his interrogation report of Hess has not been released.45 Theories surrounding Hess will remain as long as the files are withheld from the public domain.
M ROOM INTELLIGENCE: JULY–DECEMBER 1941
In the six months from 1 July 1941 to 31 December 1941, the secret listeners transcribed 1,324 Special Reports.46 Although no German army prisoners were captured during this period, matters relating to army intelligence were often provided by U-boat crew or Luftwaffe pilots. They gave away evidence of civilian resistance in Holland and Norway (both under German army occupation) and German fears of sabotage, and in north-west France there were suggestions of attacks on U-boats in their pens. Conditions in Germany itself seemed favourable with little evidence of any hardship yet being suffered from the war. In southern Germany and Austria, food conditions were less favourable and there were suggestions that the religious persecution of Jews was unpopular.47
Kendrick’s six-monthly survey shows that the unit dealt with 341 personnel from the German navy and U-boats. Other ranks amounted to 301 individuals, captured from various German naval vessels: the Bismarck, Alstertor, Gonzenheim, Egerland, Lothringen and Ketty Brövig, and also prisoners taken from Raider 35 (Pinguin) and Raider 16. Special Reports revealed that a new fearsome warship, the Tirpitz, had completed her trials and was ready for Atlantic operations. Damage from RAF bombing of the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst was discussed by prisoners, as well as the refit of the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper. Criticism was expressed from both U-boat and other naval POWs that the German High Command had shortened the period of training for new recruits and was drawing heavily from the Hitler Youth.
