To all those men and women who, in the air, at sea or on the ground, contributed to the Allied victory in the Second World War by obtaining and exploiting air photography.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I must thank all the women and men who have written or recorded their experiences of joining the services and working in photographic intelligence throughout the Second World War. Some wrote for publications, and I thank them or the present copyright holders for permission to quote their words. Others wrote, or dictated, their memories as a record for their families, and here I am grateful to the families of Stella Palmer, Susan Benjamin, Barbara Mottershead, Elspeth Horne and Pat O’Neil for bringing them to my attention and allowing me to quote from them. Several writers put their memoirs into national archives, including Joan Zeepraat, Dorothy Colles, Pamela Brisley-Wilson and Mary Harrison, who all deposited their papers at the Imperial War Museum, while the RAF Museum has accounts from Shirley Komrower and Jeanne Sowry.
The Medmenham Collection is the national archive of British photographic interpretation and a major source of much that is contained in the book; this material is reproduced courtesy of the Medmenham Collection, for which I thank the chairman, David Hollin, and the trustees. The archivist and curator, Mike Mockford, his wife Shirley and my husband Chris Halsall, a trustee, have been consistently helpful and encouraging and it is no exaggeration to say that without them I could not have completed the book. I have worked as a volunteer in the collection for ten years, and have compiled biographical notes on many wartime members. When I started the research for the book, the Medmenham Club women members were some of the first to be interviewed. Invariably they gave me informative, and amusing, accounts and provided me with details of other women to contact. I am not forgetting the valuable help that many men have also given me, and I wish to mention in particular Geoffrey Stone, who wrote the foreword with the knowledge of RAF Medmenham and its attitude to women, which could only be expressed by a PI who worked there. I am most grateful to everyone who assisted me in the compilation of all the accounts and memories.
Between 2001 and 2005, Medmenham Club members Sue and David Mander made a number of audio recordings of men and women who worked at RAF Medmenham and overseas during the Second World War. Paul and Harriet Richard, US members of the Medmenham Club, kindly interviewed and recorded Pat O’Neil at her home in Maryland in 2009–10. When the Hughenden Manor staff created a visitor’s tour and display explaining its important wartime purpose, Peggy Ewert made audio recordings of the men and women who served there. I am grateful to Peggy and the National Trust for agreeing to the inclusion of some of their words in this book. All these valuable recordings, together with the letters and articles regularly contributed by members to the Medmenham Club newsletter since its inauguration in 1946, provide a unique primary source of information on wartime air photographic exploitation.
Many individuals helped by talking, on my behalf, to women whom, through infirmity or distance, I was unable to visit. Marilyn Ward, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, asked questions of Mary Grierson; Jane Crawford of Peggy Hyne; and Lindy Farrell spoke to her aunt, Betty Skappel. Paul Richard put me in touch with George Spear in Ottawa, who recalled Sarah Churchill’s kindness to his wife, while Sheila Middleton in Australia found details of Jean Starling for me. Steve Lloyd, of the Air Historical Branch, helped me find the other Australian WAAF, Jean Youle, with information on her Military Medal. Grant Thompson provided me with the technical information on Kodak Bromide Foil-Card.
Danesfield House Hotel has assisted in keeping the Medmenham Club in touch with its wartime base by welcoming members and guests to partake of splendid teas in the summertime. Sitting in the rooms where photographs were pored over day after day, or strolling in the gardens to the riverbank to contemplate the same view as the wartime staff, provides a remarkable feeling of being where history was made. The BBC documentary Operation Crossbow revealed the vital role played by RAF Medmenham in wartime and created a great deal of interest.
Members of staff at the Documents Department of the Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, were always helpful, as were those at the RAF Museum at Hendon.
I am grateful to Jo de Vries, Paul Baillie-Lane, Christine McMorris and Kerry Green of The History Press for their support and help.
During the past three years I have asked many questions of many people. Everyone has been unfailingly helpful and generous in their time and diligence in answering. Thank you.
Picture Credits
All the air photographs and the ground photographs of RAF Medmenham, including the personnel at work and off duty, Evidence in Camera, the sketches and posters, are held by the Medmenham Collection. All these items are copyright to the Medmenham Collection and reproduced by courtesy of the trustees.
Many women who contributed to the book also provided their own individual and group photographs for inclusion: I am particularly grateful to Millicent Lawton, Jeanne Sowry, Hazel Scott, Pat Muszynski, Elizabeth Hick, Suzie Morgan, Mary Espenhahn, Joan Brachi, Mary Harrison and the families of Diana Cussons, Stella Palmer and Susan Benjamin. The author thanks the copyright holder for permission to use Ursula Powys-Lybbe’s photograph, and the National Trust for the photograph of the draughtswomen at Hughenden Manor. The photograph of Jean Youle is reproduced courtesy of the Air Historical Branch (RAF), CH 14552 IWM and that of Sarah Churchill at Teheran, CM 005480 by permission of the Imperial War Museum.
The photograph of Pat O’Neil was taken by Paul Richard, a US member of the Medmenham Club in 2009, while Margaret Hurley and Xavier Atencio were photographed by Tim Dunn, the producer of Operation Crossbow, for the BBC in 2010.
Danesfield House Hotel provided the colour photograph of the house on a sunny day in 2011. Other photographs are the author’s own.
The WAAF watercolour paintings by Mary Harrison are reproduced with her permission and the daughter of Joan Zeepvat allowed the delightful ATS sketches to be used.
CONTENTS
Title
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Preface
Glossary of Terms
1 The Road to Medmenham
2 The First Recruits
3 Learning the Art
4 Possible, Probable
5 Off Duty
6 Watching the Enemy
7 Millions of Photographs
8 A New Purpose for Photography
9 Most Secret
10 Further Afield
11 D-Day and Doodlebugs
12 And Then it was All Over
Bibliography
Plates
Copyright
FOREWORD
The Allied Central Interpretation Unit at RAF Medmenham was a remarkable wartime establishment. When I first arrived there, I was at once aware that I was in a very unusual environment, more akin to that of an academic institution than a services unit.
Although the administration was run on orthodox lines, the work of photographic interpretation, which was the purpose of the place, was carried out by an extraordinarily interesting collection of individuals from surprisingly varied peacetime occupations, notably academia, the arts, business and industry. Together with a proportion of army, navy and Allied personnel, many of the interpreters were RAF officers who had been commissioned into the services almost overnight from their civilian occupations, primarily because of their existing skills of acute observation, meticulous attention to minor details, the capacity to make perceptive inferences from small clues, and sometimes to make insp
ired leaps of imagination. So among them there were archaeologists, geologists and people from the oil industry, many of whom were already experienced in using air photographs, but there were also actors and creative artists.
The outstanding feature of Medmenham, however, that distinguished it from almost all other service establishments, was that a substantial proportion of the highly skilled specialists were women who ranked absolutely equally with their male colleagues, and in some cases were their superiors. These women played a major part in the important contribution that ACIU made to the ultimate victory and this book is a well-deserved tribute to their achievements, little appreciated until now.
Geoffrey Stone
Geoffrey Stone was a wartime photographic interpreter in the Army and Communications Sections at RAF Medmenham; subsequently at the Army Photographic Interpretation Section, HQ 11 Armoured Division in the European campaign and HQ 1st Airborne Corps in the Far East; finally Officer Commanding, Field Security Wing at the School of Military Intelligence; Major, G2, Intelligence Corps.
PREFACE
The first British aeroplane to cross the German coast following the declaration of war on 3 September 1939 was a Blenheim reconnaissance aircraft from which air photographs were taken to confirm the position and number of enemy warships in the port of Wilhelmshaven.
One of the last flights of the war, made while victory in Europe was being celebrated in May 1945, was by a reconnaissance Spitfire that flew over the port of Kiel to determine by photography if German ships and troops were preparing to leave for a last stand in Norway.
In the years between those flights, Allied reconnaissance aircraft flew over the whole of Europe, the Middle and Far East, taking millions of photographs. Day after day the lens of the camera captured on film what was happening in enemy and occupied territory below. Once the film had been processed, photographs were plotted to mark the location where they were taken. They were then passed to photographic interpreters who analysed them to extract every scrap of information that could be seen, or deduced, from the image. Photographic reconnaissance and interpretation provided one of the largest sources of intelligence on enemy actions and intentions, and was used in the planning for virtually every Allied operation.
Women played an important role in photographic intelligence. Female and male photographic interpreters from all three services worked alongside each other and the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) formed the majority of the workforce in the processing and plotting sections. Their eyes were the first to see the Ruhr dams breached, the Tirpitz battleship contained in its Norwegian fjord, the D-Day beaches and the sites of German vengeance weapons aimed at England.
This book is an account of the women who worked with air photographs at RAF Medmenham, at associated units and overseas. They describe their work, their off-duty hours and the humour they found in adverse situations. The wartime thoughts and memories of these remarkable women were written or spoken by them and provide a record of their significant role in gaining the Allied victory.
Christine Halsall
March 2012
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
ACIU
Allied Central Interpretation Unit
ACW1
Aircraftwoman 1
ACW2
Aircraftwoman 2
ATS
Auxiliary Territorial Service
AOC
Aircraft Operating Company
A/S/O
Assistant section officer, the most junior WAAF commissioned rank, equivalent to RAF pilot officer
Capt.
Captain
CIU
Central Interpretation Unit, renamed ACIU in 1944
Cpl
Corporal
ENSA
Entertainments National Service Association – provided entertainment for British armed forces personnel during the Second World War
F/O
Flight officer, a commissioned WAAF officer rank above SO, equivalent to RAF flight lieutenant
Fw
Focke-Wulf, a German aircraft manufacturer
HQ
Headquarters
Int. Corps
Intelligence Corps
LACW
Leading aircraftwoman
Me
Messerschmitt, a German aircraft manufacturer
Mess
The building where personnel ate, socialised and sometimes lived. There were separate messes for officers, NCOs, airwomen and airmen.
NAAFI
Navy, Army & Air Force Institute, which ran canteens and recreational establishments for the British armed forces, and particularly those of junior rank, during the Second World War
NCO
Non-commissioned officer
OR
Other rank
PI
Photographic interpretation or photographic interpreter
PIU
Photographic interpretation unit from January 1940 to April 1941
PR
Photographic reconnaissance
PRU
Photographic reconnaissance unit, e.g. 1 PRU
RAF
Royal Air Force
RE
Royal Engineers
RFC
Royal Flying Corps
RN
Royal Navy
RNVR
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve
2nd Officer
WRNS commissioned rank, the equivalent of RN lieutenant
SD
Special duties
S/O
Section officer, a commissioned WAAF rank above A/S/O and the equivalent of RAF flying officer
Sgt
Sergeant
Sub
Subaltern, ATS commissioned rank, the equivalent of an army lieutenant
USSR
United Soviet Socialist Republic
VE Day
8 May 1945, when victory in Europe was celebrated
VJ Day
15 August 1945, when victory over Japan was celebrated
WAAF
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
WAC
Women’s Army Corps (from 30 September 1943), USA
WRNS
Women’s Royal Naval Service
USAAF
United States Army Air Force
YWCA
Young Women’s Christian Association, provided servicewomen with companionship, support and recreational activities during the Second World War
To avoid confusion, throughout the book women are referred to by the surname (which was usually their maiden name) that they had on joining the WAAF, ATS or WRNS, even though they may have subsequently married while still in the service. The end notes and index give, where appropriate, their married surnames alongside their maiden name.
Please note that RAF Medmenham was referred to by several different names during the war. RAF Station Medmenham was its official designation, often shortened to Medmenham; the sole unit at RAF Medmenham was the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU), later renamed the Allied Central Interpretation Unit (ACIU); many personnel referred to it also by its pre-war name of Danesfield House. They were all one and the same place.
THE ROAD TO MEDMENHAM
The Duke of Wellington is quoted as saying: ‘All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don’t know by what you do; that’s what I call “guessing what was on the other side of the hill”.’1
Throughout the history of warfare, commanders on land and at sea have sought ways of seeing over ‘the other side of the hill’ to gain knowledge of their enemy’s force dispositions and resources before engaging in battle. The introduction of aircraft to gain a bird’s-eye view of the enemy, and of photography to provide an objective and permanent record of his capabilities, made this possible and changed the nature of warfare. Not only was military information ‘captured’ for use on the battlefield; it also provided longer-term intelligence in the planning of future operatio
ns.
Aviation and photography, developing along parallel paths, became an entirely new profession in the world of military intelligence and was first used to considerable effect in the First World War. In the Second World War, in terms of quantity, aerial photography produced more information on enemy activity than any other source. Moreover, the information was factual, could be provided very rapidly in comparison with most other sources, and could also be directed to provide intelligence on almost any territory required and on a wide variety of subjects.
It was during the period 1939–45 that women played a significant part in photographic intelligence, a role that continues to the present day. With their male counterparts, a large number of them were based for most of that time in an ornate mansion overlooking the River Thames in the small village of Medmenham, in Buckinghamshire. Today, the house is a luxury hotel providing comfortable and peaceful surroundings for its guests. In wartime, with rather fewer creature comforts, the men and women who worked there analysed air photographs and saw over ‘the other side of the hill’ into enemy and occupied territories. The intelligence gained from their observations and reports was used in the planning of virtually every Allied wartime operation.
Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos Page 1
