Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos

by Halsall, Christine

  Just after the war, Cyril Ticquet, an RAF officer at Medmenham wrote:

  Let me introduce you to a spy. Not the kind you read about in novels, but the real, live 1939–45 version. The kind that saw to it that the Germans could pull no surprises, and then did the same for Japan. He is middle-aged with lined cheeks and thinning hair. You would guess that he used to have a school or university job, and you would be right. He, and hundreds of other men and women like him, spent their days staring at the innermost secrets of the enemy, discovering in advance his most hidden schemes.2

  While the many young men and women at RAF Medmenham during the Second World War would have raised their eyebrows at the ‘lined cheeks and thinning hair’ description, they would have recognised Ticquet’s description of their wartime work.

  The history and development of aviation and photography have been well documented. Women’s achievements in these spheres are less well known, despite being involved from their inception, and this short account will seek to redress the balance.

  Although it was work by an English physicist on the density of hydrogen in the latter half of the eighteenth century that provided the means whereby humans could take to the air, it was the French who dominated early ballooning. On 15 October 1783 Jean-François de Rozier was the first person to ascend into the air in a balloon tethered to the ground by an 80ft rope. Just six weeks later, the first free (non-tethered) flight, with passengers, took place over Paris.

  It could be assumed that involvement in early ballooning was an exclusively male preoccupation, with ladies’ feet staying firmly on the ground; however, in May 1784, just seven months after Rozier, three French ladies ascended in a tethered balloon. It was a French opera singer, one Elizabeth Thible, who was credited with being the first woman ever to leave the ground in free flight. On 4 June 1784 she ascended in a hot air balloon and floated for over a mile above Lyon as part of a group entertainment for the King of Sweden.

  One of the most colourful early balloonists was Sophie Blanchard, whose husband Jean-Pierre, together with a colleague, had been the first balloonist to cross the English Channel from France in 1795. Sophie’s first ascent came in 1804 when Jean-Pierre’s entertainment business was losing money and she was sent aloft as a ‘novelty’ to help solve their financial problems. She enjoyed it so much that she became the first woman to turn professional and pilot her own balloon. When her husband died in 1809, after suffering a heart attack and falling out of his balloon, Sophie set about paying off their debts by performing stunts to attract the crowds. Staying aloft all night, crossing the Alps, parachuting dogs (and herself on several occasions) and launching fireworks were just a few of the exhibitions that drew huge crowds from all over Europe. Napoleon appointed her ‘Aeronaut of the Official Festivals’ and she reportedly planned a balloon invasion of England. Alas, in 1819, while setting off a firework display from her hydrogen-filled balloon in a display over the Tivoli Gardens in Paris, the gas ignited and Sophie gained the dubious distinction of becoming the first woman to be killed in an aviation accident.3

  The potential advantages of using balloons for military reconnaissance purposes was soon recognised on both sides of the Channel. In England, the first balloon ascent and the first military flight of 20 miles by an army officer took place in 1784. The British military establishment remained unimpressed, however, and while recognising that making observations by balloon had advantages over climbing the highest vantage point available, they decided not to pursue the possibilities. The French were initially more enthusiastic, using a balloon for aerial observation in two engagements in the 1790s, but then discontinued the venture. Although military ballooning then fell into abeyance, or abandoned altogether by the European powers until the mid-nineteenth century, ballooning for entertainment purposes, many of which included women, continued to attract appreciative crowds.

  As progress in aviation, other than for ‘amusements’, was put on hold, photography became the new popular pastime and this time the English led the field. In January 1839, Henry Fox Talbot reported to the Royal Society in London on his ‘art of photogenic drawing’, a process called ‘Calotype’ that based the prints on light-sensitive paper: his first image was of a lattice window in his home at Lacock Abbey. Three weeks earlier Louis Daguerre had displayed his ‘Daguerreotypes’, which were pictures on silver plates, to the French Academy of Sciences. Fox Talbot made further improvements to his process that reduced the exposure time necessary for the image to develop and, by introducing the use of a fixing solution, enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light. Most importantly, the negative image of the Calotype process could be used repeatedly to produce more positive prints. It was this unique quality that led to its universal adoption and the demise of Daguerreotypes. The reproduction of any number of positive prints was a tremendous boon for private and commercial photographers and raised possibilities for military use.

  One of the great Victorian inventions had arrived. By the mid-nineteenth century photography had been taken up with enthusiasm by the leisured classes, interested in both the arts and sciences, and with sufficient money and time to pursue the new hobby. From the very beginning, women on both sides of the Atlantic were active in the field of photography. Fox Talbot’s wife, Constance, while assisting him in his work, also took her own pictures and processed them. Anna Atkins (1799–1871) used photography at an early stage to record her botanical specimens. In 1843 she became the first person to print and publish a photographically illustrated book, with 424 photographs of British algae.4

  The marketing of the first camera for amateur use by Kodak in 1888 put photography within the reach of many more people and increased its popularity. Another popular optical form actually pre-dated photography; this was the stereoscope, which gave the viewer a three-dimensional image of the subject when used with two offset pictures. Although originally only used for entertainment purposes, stereoscopy and the 3D image were to be of paramount importance to military intelligence in the years to come.

  In the spring of 1858, the skills of aviation and photography were brought together by Felix Tournachon, a French photographer and journalist, bearing the pseudonym ‘Nadar’. Tournachon took the first aerial photographs over Paris, using a camera fixed to the basket of his tethered balloon. He was soon producing excellent aerial views despite the tendency of the balloon to spin and the problem of having to sensitise, expose and develop the wet photographic plates while still aloft. The possibilities of combining balloons and photography revitalised the interest of the military establishment in several countries. The production of more accurate battlefield maps was made possible by using the overall perspective gained from a balloon combined with photographs. Tethered balloons were used in the American Civil War for reconnaissance purposes and to direct artillery fire by a system of predetermined flag signals or telegraph.

  In England, photographs were taken successfully from free balloons, at a higher altitude than Nadar, in 1863, and dry gelatine plates that could be developed after descending were introduced. Once again the military establishment considered ballooning too expensive to pursue, but a change of mind soon came about, for in 1878 a training establishment was set up by the Royal Engineers at Woolwich with the advancement of military ballooning, including photography, as its raison d’être. In 1883 cameras were fitted to free balloons and timed by clockwork to take exposures in a regular pattern. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, extensive use had been made of balloons by the French and British for reconnaissance and communication purposes in several military campaigns.

  The invention and development of the internal combustion engine caused the science of flight to change forever on 17 December 1903. On that day the first manned flight was accomplished by Orville Wright in a powered, fixed-wing aeroplane called Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first flight lasted only 12 seconds, and the aircraft travelled just 120ft over the sand dunes, but by the end of the day Orville and his brother, Wilbur, had ach
ieved a 59-second flight of 852ft. Flight was no longer totally subject to the vagaries of wind and weather, as the 12hp engine and a movable, vertical rudder put the pilot in charge of the aircraft’s speed and direction.

  Flying fixed-wing aircraft was taken up with tremendous enthusiasm in countries all around the world, by men and women. Each year saw new milestones reached, and then exceeded, in pilot achievement and aircraft construction. Photographs were first taken from aeroplanes in 1909, with America and France leading the way. John Moore-Brabazon was the first Englishman to make an officially recognised aeroplane flight in England in May 1909. He also transported the first live cargo in an aeroplane that November, when he put a piglet into a wastepaper basket strapped to a wing strut, thereby proving that pigs could fly.

  The years 1910 and 1911 were ones of firsts in aviation. On 8 March, Moore-Brabazon was awarded the Aviator’s Certificate No. 1 and became the first person to be granted a pilot’s licence in Britain. In France, on the very same day, Raymonde de Laroche, an actress and experienced balloonist, received her pilot’s licence from the Aéro-Club de France, the first to be awarded to a woman. She also carried the distinction of being the first woman in the world to fly solo. Edith Cook was reportedly the first British woman to pilot a plane, in the early months of 1910, but she died a few months later while parachuting out of a balloon. That summer Hilda Hewlett opened Britain’s first flying school at Brooklands, a motor-racing circuit in Surrey, and it was there that she became the first woman in Britain to receive a pilot’s licence on 29 August 1911. She received Certificate No. 122 from the Royal Aero Club after completing the test in her own biplane. Also in 1911, Harriet Quimby was awarded a pilot’s certificate by the Aero Club of America and became the first woman to fly the English Channel, but died in an aircraft crash the following year.

  Following the Wright brothers’ initial flight in 1903, the French military showed renewed enthusiasm for further involvement in powered aircraft. The War Office was not so encouraged, preferring to continue with experiments on airships, and even after a successful military flight in England in 1908, banned further aircraft work due to the cost. However, on 25 July 1909 Louis Blériot flew a monoplane across the English Channel in 37 minutes, causing widespread consternation at the ease with which Britain could apparently be ‘invaded’ from the air. This was just one factor that nudged the War Office into setting up the Army Aircraft Factory in 1911 at Farnborough, Hampshire. Amid concerns about the growing air power of France and Germany, the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) was formed on 13 April 1912, and much pioneering work was done at Farnborough in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in August 1914.

  The First World War saw Photographic Reconnaissance (PR), the acquisition of film, and Photographic Interpretation (PI), the analysis of that film, firmly established as a prime source of intelligence. For the first time in warfare, a controlled aircraft with a camera could travel ‘over the hill’ and return with an objective record from which information could be extracted. At first the aircraft were primitive, with a box camera containing glass plates fixed to the side and operated by the pilot leaning out of the cockpit. The quality of the imagery, though, taken from a relatively low altitude, could be remarkably good and enabled commanders to see their own and the enemy’s trench patterns, barbed-wire entanglements, weapons pits and much else. Aircraft design, range and capability gradually improved as manufacturers strove to provide the RFC with machines that could fly high and fast enough to escape German aircraft, while also providing a stable platform from which photographs could be taken.

  When the first RFC Photographic Section was set up in France in January 1915, Lieutenant Moore-Brabazon was appointed to command it, with Flight Sergeant Victor Laws, a young photographer who took every available opportunity to ascend in airship, balloon, kite or aircraft to take photographs, as a member of the new unit. These two men, with the active support of more senior officers, largely established the principles and practice of aerial reconnaissance and photographic interpretation. Alongside the progress made in aircraft, Laws worked with camera manufacturers to improve design and establish the introduction of film, which replaced glass plates over time.

  In Palestine, Lieutenant Hugh Hamshaw Thomas pioneered the use of air photographs and stereoscopy to produce the first maps of desert areas. He also set down many of the procedures that formed the principles of photographic interpretation in two world wars. Both he and Laws returned to serve with distinction in the RAF during the Second World War and Victor Laws’ daughter, Millicent, joined the WAAF in 1939 to serve in photographic intelligence.

  By 1917 the massive casualty losses on the Western Front had resulted in acute shortages of manpower. The authorities, albeit reluctantly, decided to set up women’s forces to replace men with female recruits – but only in carrying out clerical or domestic duties. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) were formed in 1917 and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was established in 1918. All three services were disbanded shortly after the Armistice, by which time more than 100,000 women had served in uniform. Although none had worked in photographic intelligence, two women who served in different capacities during the Great War were to join up again in the Second World War and serve as photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham.

  A First World War BE2c biplane with a C-type plate camera fitted to the fuselage.

  One was Dorothy Garrod, who was born in 1892, the only daughter of a distinguished medical family. She entered Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1913 where she read history and graduated three years later, although without a degree as the University of Cambridge did not award degrees to women at that time. By 1916 two of her three brothers had died of wounds on the Western Front and the third was to die in the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic. From 1916–19 Dorothy was a worker in the Catholic Women’s League huts in northern France and the Rhineland, nursing wounded troops and refugees. The death of all her brothers convinced her to pursue an academic career herself. In the years between the wars, she studied archaeology, led several pioneering expeditions to Iraq and then went to Palestine, where in the Mount Carmel cave deposits she found the first evidence of Neanderthal people outside Europe. In 1933 she took up the post of director of studies in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge.5

  Charlotte Ogilvy, later to be Lady Charlotte Bonham Carter, was born a year after Dorothy Garrod and her initial service in the First World War was in the Voluntary Aid Detachment when she worked as a nurse. She was then employed in the Foreign Office where at one stage she was seconded to the infant MI5 and involved in tracking Lenin as he crossed Germany before the Russian Revolution. She was also on the secretariat of the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919.6

  Although photographic intelligence was recognised as indispensable by the end of the First World War, it had been employed principally for battlefield use rather than strategic planning. This was largely due to the technical limitations of cameras and the restrictions on the range of aircraft. Through the interwar years little thought was given to PI by the RAF other than as a means of estimating bomb damage, and the aircraft assigned for reconnaissance were slow, low flying and of relatively short range. The army was sufficiently interested, as a result of their experiences in the Great War, to run advanced photo-reading courses. While not giving full PI training, these at least provided a nucleus of people who could be quickly trained up when the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) moved into France in 1939.

  Flight Officer Constance Babington Smith headed the Aircraft Section at RAF Medmenham.

  Meanwhile, the interwar years saw the civilian world go ‘aviation mad’ and many of the men and women flyers who had the money to pursue the new craze became celebrities. Amy Johnson and Amelia Earhart became two of the best-known pilots of the era, the former for being the first woman to fly solo in 1930 from England to Australia, and the latter for making the fastest crossing of the Atlantic on record in 1932. In Germa
ny, Hanna Reitsch was the first woman to qualify as a civil and military aviation pilot, the first to fly a helicopter and, at the outbreak of war, the rocket-propelled fighter, the Me 163 Komet. A woman who was not an aviator herself during the 1930s, but acquired a great deal of technical knowledge on aircraft and aviation was Constance Babington Smith. Writing as ‘Babs’, she attended air shows and aviation meetings in Europe as a staff journalist and photographer for the British journal, The Aeroplane. Constance was the PI who identified the Me 163, a great threat to Allied aircraft, in 1943 on an air photograph at RAF Medmenham.

  Photography also took great strides forward between the wars, with many women able to earn their living in various forms of the art. Dorothy Wilding, who concentrated on portraits, attracted film stars and celebrities to her studios in Bond Street, London, and in New York. In 1937 she was awarded a Royal Warrant to be the official photographer at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the first such award presented to a woman. Ursula Powys-Lybbe was a professional photographer who set up a studio in Cairo in the 1930s, moving to London later on to establish a business called the ‘Touring Camera’. Instead of photographing her subjects in a studio, she photographed ‘Society at Home’ on visits to country estates and town mansions, where her sitters positioned themselves in their everyday clothes among favourite objects. In 1937 Ursula walked into the offices of the society magazine Tatler with a composite portrait of Lady Mary Lygon, surrounded by images of beloved pets and the family home of Madresfield Court in Worcestershire. Mary was the third daughter of the 7th Earl Beauchamp and was considered to be one of the great beauties of the age. It was claimed that her beauty was such that it once caused the band to stop playing when she entered a ballroom. The Tatler promptly commissioned Ursula to produce a series of similar portraits that ran until the outbreak of war in 1939, when she joined the WAAF and became a PI.7 By coincidence, Lady Mary’s younger sister and devoted companion, Lady Dorothy, also became a WAAF PI and served with Ursula at Medmenham.