By 1975 the battleground between the loyalist Mid-Armagh Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the South Armagh IRA, in an area encompassing East Tyrone and Co. Armagh within the tactical area of operations controlled by 3 Infantry Brigade, was nicknamed the Murder Triangle. Working with Weapons Intelligence, 124 Intelligence Section tracked weapons and personalities from shootings and bombings. By the middle of the year the ceasefire had largely vanished and then, in January 1976, after the murders of twelve Protestant textile workers near Kingsmill, Prime Minister Harold Wilson announced two days later that the SAS, fresh from Dhofar, would deploy to South Armagh for ‘patrolling and surveillance’ tasks. However, justifiable concerns were expressed about the Regiment operating in an environment in which the ‘Yellow Card’ governed the Rules of Engagement.
Dhofar
The collapse of the Federation of South Arabia after the British left Aden in 1967 and the adoption of Marxist ideology by the People’s Republic of South Yemen (PROSY) saw the Omani province of Dhofar threatened by the nationalist Dhofar Liberation Front of several tribes living on the jebel above the capital of Salalah. South Yemen recognized that isolating Dhofar offered opportunities for further nationalism but when Sultan Sa’id bin Taimur was overthrown in 1970, there was little point in continuing the rebellion. But the Front had been infiltrated by the Marxist People’s Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf (PFLOAG).
Seconded to the Sultan’s Armed Forces was a British military mission, including Major Peter Goss, one of the two Brigade Majors, and a sergeant attached to HQ Sultan’s Armed Forces at Bait al Falaj as a collator. In 1970 British Army Training Team (Dhofar) was formed as a shield for the deployment of a SAS troop, in Operation Storm, with a strategy to focus on humanitarian and economic matters, collect intelligence and conduct psychological warfare by gathering information on local life and culture, the overall aim being to undermine subversion. Several Intelligence Corps served with the Regiment during the campaign. While the Sultan’s Armed Forces conducted operations on the Central Jebel against communist threats developing from Dhofar, the SAS formed irregular groups of independently-minded tribesman into firqat units. In 1969, Captain Philip Springfield was appointed its Intelligence Officer after its Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Slim, the son of Field Marshal Slim, wanted a specialist. Springfield, who had served in Aden and was parachute-trained, formed an Intelligence Section, which first consisted of two warrant officers, a sergeant, two corporals and a lance corporal. On one occasion, Sergeant Dave Duncan was with a naval patrol patrolling the western border when it was engaged by a 75mm gun and a machine gun. He was then mischievously asked to train a Bren mounted on the bow on several dhows that were being searched and recalls becoming queasy in the heavy swell of the Indian Ocean! Corporal John Boden, then serving with the Training Team, was part of a patrol taking ammunition to a Muscat Regiment detachment in contact with the enemy, which was ambushed several times and ran a gauntlet of mines. Another sergeant ran an intelligence-gathering network of local tribesmen in North Dhofar. By 1971 the Sultan’s Armed Forces had blocked insurgency supply routes through the Eastern Jebel to PROSY.
When Dhofar Area was formed the following year from the Dhofar Brigade, two members were the Arab linguist Major Peter Boxall appointed the Deputy Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General and Captain David Venn as GSO 3 (Operations). The Brigade had a seconded Intelligence Corps section, which included a corporal on his second tour. When the People’s Front attacked the SAS at Fort Mirbat in July 1972, in spite of the poor weather, Captain Venn played a crucial role in organizing an Omani Air Force Strikemaster strike at a critical time in the battle. After the defeat, the Front badly needed a breakthrough to maintain its credibility; however, a defector in a souk in Muscat spotted a senior member and alerted his escorting intelligence officers. The Intelligence Section mounted the surveillance Operation Yellow Shoes, because the suspect wore yellow footwear, and over several months collected sufficient information to implicate the People’s Front in a plot to take out the entire British and intelligence operation in Muscat and assassinate the Sultan on Christmas Day. The launching of Operation Jason in December to interdict weapon smuggling and the interrogations of forty rebels which led to to the recovery of a huge arms cache was a significant success at a pivotal moment. Five Omani officers were executed for their role. By mid-1975 the Sultan’s Armed Forces, reinforced by an Iranian brigade, had largely defeated the insurgency; nevertherless, the Corps remained in Dhofar for several more years providing seconded officers and other ranks and helping to develop the Oman Intelligence and Research Department. In proportion to its small size, the Intelligence Corps provided as many officers and men to the Dhofar campaign as any other regiment in the British Army, a fact that is commendable because the Corps was so heavily committed to Operation Banner.
West Germany
While Northern Ireland was dominating the Corps, security activities against the Soviet and East German intelligence services in West Germany were equally interesting. The principal threat being monitored by Intelligence Wing was the largely conscript Soviet 3rd Shock Army and its five tank and motor rifle divisions and its perceived axis of attack across Letzlinger Heath and Luneburg Heath before driving for the Channel ports.
Intelligence Sections earmarked to support brigades and additional intelligence officers were provided by 7 Intelligence Company, with Company HQ placed alongside HQ 1st (British) Corps, supported by 8 Intelligence Company and Intelligence and Security Group (V). In the late 1970s brigades were briefly known as Field Forces. Well-trained Intelligence Sections are a valuable resource, however, most experienced the same problem as the Intelligence Platoons of being administered by the Intelligence Corps but managed by Royal Signals headquarters and signals units. At brigade level it was not unusual for sections to be set tasks other than intelligence. Intelligence duties were usually confined to visits to War Rooms to amend maps. This mismatch applied equally to some staff intelligence officers, one in HQ 6 Armoured Brigade describing himself in 1971 as the ‘GSO 3 Air, Sport, Recreation, Intelligence and Security in that order’. The training year in West Germany revolved around a cycle of command post exercises in the winter and spring, the Corps-level Exercise Summer Sales in the summer, mostly practising defence but not necessarily including realistic adherence to Soviet tactics to test commanders, and two-week NATO field exercises in the autumn in which, again, intelligence was rarely played. Weakness of recognition training and awareness of Soviet orders of battle and tactics throughout the BAOR led, in 1976, to HQ 7 Company producing the first edition of the iconic Threat periodical that set out to educate on the Soviet threat with articles, photos, recognition training, unit structures and tactics. In 1990, Threat helped educate troops deployed to Saudi Arabia on Iraqi weapons and tactics. Two years later, in order not to upset former Warsaw Pact members clamouring to join NATO, the title was changed to the anagram, The Rat.
On 31 March 1958, 309 FSS had morphed into the British Intelligence Unit (Berlin) until, in 1960, it reformed as the Counter-Intelligence Platoon (Berlin). Five years later the introduction of Intelligence and Security Group (Germany) saw it converted to the largely independent 3 Intelligence and Security Company that combined Operational Intelligence, Protective Security and counter-intelligence. In 1971 it moved into Yorkshire Block at the pre-war Olympic Stadium alongside the British Security Service Organisation and the Royal Military Police Special Investigations Department.
With a role to provide HQ Berlin British Sector with an Intelligence Section, it liaised with the British Military Mission to the Soviet sector and Allied intelligence agencies and helped to maintain the British right of access to all parts of Berlin through East Berlin Flag Tours, which collectively developed into an intelligence operation to monitor Soviet troop activity, particularly after the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 and the crushing of the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia seven years later.
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sp; In April 1966 the Company contributed to a technical intelligence operation to recover a Soviet Air Force Yak-28 ‘Firebar’ fighter that crashed into a lake while ‘buzzing’ West Berlin. After the bodies of the two aircrew were returned to the Soviet Air Force, sensitive equipment was removed under the noses of furious Soviet observers for detailed technical assessments. The aircraft was later returned in smaller pieces than when it crashed.
Located within HQ Berlin Brigade and supported by a forward operating base in a small mansion in Potsdam in East Germany was the British Military Mission, or BRIXMIS, as agreed by the 1946 Robertson-Malinin Agreement. Intelligence Corps representation was initially confined to Russian linguists and two National Service collators until 1957 when the deployment was discontinued, however, the increased tension during the early 1960s saw Major Angus Southwood appointed GSO 2 (Operations) and then as Tour Officer between 1965 to 1968. During this period, BRIXMIS gradually switched to intelligence collection with Tours patrolling East Germany for between two and five days, seeking intelligence indicators that the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany was preparing to attack NATO. In the belief that three Soviet divisions surrounding Berlin were tasked to seize the city, its circumference was patrolled every day by an Allied Mission. The lack of expert collation was resolved in 1971 with the arrival of a corporal. Pre-posting training was formalized by attendance on the Defence Attaches Course at the School of Service Intelligence, and then the Defence Intelligence and Security School, until in October 1972 when the Foreign Armies Study Branch developed a four-week Intelligence (Special Duties) Course as a cover for the Mission. In 1974 the senior photographic interpreter was formally tied to the Corps, the first incumbent being a major, who undertook three BRIXMIS postings. Sergeant Geoff Greaves coordinated recognition training until it was upgraded to a Warrant Officer Two Photographic Interpreter and Foreign Army Studies Branch instructors. Intelligence representation grew with the establishment of the Operations and Intelligence Cell to analyse Tour Reports, study rail and road military activity, plot deployments, maintain Target Briefs and prepare briefings. The month-long annual Soviet troop rotation meant observing convoys, troop trains and airfields for evidence of Warsaw Pact mobilization and deployment of new equipment. Tours generally left West Berlin in the early hours in order to reach the first target before many people were about. Overnight halts were spent camped in hides. Intelligence scoops included that numbers painted on Soviet tank turrets and markings on East German Army vehicle windscreens, accompanied by a series of numbers, could be matched to units. An apple thrust into a barrel of a gun left an impression of its calibre. Rubbish collected from barrack tips and exercise areas proved so fruitful that in 1982 Russian and German interpreters joined BRIXMIS, their cover being the provision of an interpreter to support the guarding of Rudolf Hess in Spandau Prison. Discarded documents included the order of battle of an SS-21 missile regiment. But unlike the tolerance afforded to the Soviet Military Mission in West Germany, the East Germans regularly disregarded agreed protocols.
When new equipment was evident, tours usually swamped target areas in order to deflect the aggressive East German Military Intelligence Service surveillance teams, or ‘Narks’ from preventing surveillance. The ‘Narks’ generally worked in teams of about six cars that aimed either to trap BRIXMIS tours for several hours or hand them over to the Soviet Kommandatura (military police) and the inevitable accusations of espionage. Dangerous cat-and-mouse car chases resulted in tour cars being rammed. In early September 1976 an Opel containing Major Simon Gordon-Duff (Army Air Corps), Sergeant Bob Thomas, masquerading as a Royal Corps of Transport driver, and RAF Corporal Tony King, were observing an exercise area south of Berlin when an East German Air Force truck forced their car off the road while they were trying to avoid two civilian motor cyclists who were blocking it. Gordon-Duff and King crawled from the wreckage, concussed, however, Thomas was trapped with leg, rib and head injuries. After local villagers helped to extract him from the wreckage, Thomas was transferred to an East German hospital by a Soviet ambulance driver and underwent several operations until he was discharged sixteen days later. Arrangements were made for Mrs Thomas and their two daughters to visit him in hospital. A strong complaint about the ramming and the ‘incomprehensible attitude’ of a Soviet military police major at the scene was lodged with the Headquarters Group of Soviet Forces, Germany.
From 1945 until 1961, when air trooping became normal, the military train, ‘The Berliner’, ran from Hannover to West Berlin. At the Helmstedt crossing point, an East German locomotive was coupled up amid military ceremony that saw the Officer Commanding Train, his Warrant Officer and their interpreter formally exchange the passenger manifest list with a Soviet officer. As overt photography was forbidden on the journey through East Germany to West Berlin, one task entrusted to 3 Intelligence and Security Company by General Staff (Intelligence), Headquarters British Army of the Rhine and Berlin Brigade was photography of Soviet military activities bordering the Helmstedt Corridor railway for evidence of mobilization. Conducting its own operations, 6 Photographic Intelligence Company used aircraft and often gave technical help and provided advice on tasking.
While contributing to Anglo-American intelligence co-operation projects 6 Photographic Intelligence Company enjoyed considerable autonomy and also achieved a continuous study of military activity in East Germany. One advantage was that while the collection of intelligence by BRIXMIS was inhibited by Permanently and Temporarily Restricted Areas, their boundaries did not extend vertically. About forty per cent of Soviet and East German military installations lay up to ten miles astride the Helmstedt Corridors, which allowed Allied aircraft to collect the information without the risks associated with the penetrative sorties into East German airspace. After 1958 Intelligence Corps NCO photographic interpreters became common, with reinforcements supplied from 21 Intelligence Company (V). By 1972 the Company was supporting the Reconnaisance Interpretation Centres at RAF Bruggen, Wildenrath, Laarbruch and Gütersloh, where tasking was treated as the ‘real thing’ with annotated photos expected within forty minutes of engine shutdown. Images taken on exercises allowed Allied commanders to review camouflage and field discipline. The Midge surveillance Troops of 94 Locating Regiment RA in Celle, supporting 1st (British) Corps, possessed an operational radius of thirty miles. Imagery was processed in the Photographic Processing and Interpretation Vehicle commanded by an Intelligence Corps sergeant.
By 1970 13 Signal Regiment was employing about eighty Women’s Royal Army Corps on intelligence duties and feeding information to the Government Communications Headquarters. Its forward operating base at Gross Gusborn in the ‘Dannenberg Salient’ was manned between March and October, otherwise inclement weather prevented permanent habitation, until 1971, when the Americans converted the base into a permanent site. It was transferred three years later to H Troop, 1 Squadron, so named because of the design of the gantry supporting the antennae. It wasn’t until the mid-1970s that 1st (British) Corps gained a direct intercept capability, when Defence Intelligence pressed for real-time tactical electronic intelligence to be available to the divisions; 14 Signal Regiment (Electronic Warfare) was formed at Hildesheim in May 1977 from the independent 225 and 226 Signal Squadrons, 30 Signal Regiment in Blandford, and 9 Signal Regiment in Cyprus. It later moved to Ironside Barracks at Scheuen, near Celle, where the Intelligence Corps complement initially consisted mainly of officers trained on scanners, jammers and direction-finding sensors. Intelligence Corps other ranks arrived later. However, unfamiliarity about the quality of information and strict need-to-know impositions meant that 7 Intelligence Company sections were initially reluctant to use the product. The development of Intelligence Corps and Royal Signals Electronic Warfare Liaison Officers as interfaces eased the passage of information, as did tactical philosophies, for instance measures to prevent the jamming of a target from which another Allied Signals Intelligence unit was obtaining information.
In 1980 Lie
utenant Colonel John Dobson formed the Communications and Security Group (United Kingdom) from all relevant Signals Intelligence assets in the country.
In 1985 the Regiment replaced 94 Locating Regiment in Celle and was joined by 1 Squadron from Langeleben, minus a Troop commanded of a Royal Signals Warrant Officer 1 with an Intelligence Corps as his deputy and renamed ‘Field Station Langeleben’. N Troop, formerly 226 Signal Squadron and located in the German Army barracks in Wesendorf, near Celle, figured in more investigations than any other Signals unit. An example was when the word ‘Tontauben’ (clay pigeons) was incorrectly translated as ‘recording tapes’ (Tonbände) in an allegation involving a local person and a perceived attempt to subvert a member of the unit.
Sharing the Secret Page 38
