In 1938, with war on the horizon, a brash unconventional Australian named Sidney Cotton was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) to pioneer new methods of reconnaissance to investigate the build-up of German armaments. Cotton had First World War flying experience and had spent the interwar years in various entrepreneurial activities such as seal spotting in Newfoundland, setting up aerial survey companies in Canada and buying up a controlling interest in a colour film company. In the course of promoting the latter business, Cotton frequently flew to Germany and was on good terms with influential Nazi officials. Having agreed to the spying plan, he bought a fast aircraft and fitted hidden cameras in the fuselage that could be activated at the press of a button to take clandestine photographs. Throughout the months leading up to the outbreak of war Cotton flew to and from Germany on so-called business trips, taking secret photographs of military installations, airfields and naval bases. He flew the last civilian aircraft out of Berlin only a few days before war was declared, and despite being warned not to divert from his route, managed to get photographs of the German fleet on his flight home. In a few short months he, and the experienced pilots who had joined his daring enterprise, had provided invaluable information on German military forces.
‘Cotton’s Club’, as he liked to call it, was based in a hangar tucked into one corner of Heston Airfield, a civilian airport for British Airways Ltd, west of London. Shortly after the declaration of war, the RAF took over Cotton’s Heston flight and he was commissioned as an acting wing commander to be its commanding officer. He had proved conclusively that if reconnaissance pilots were to be effective in taking the required photographs and out-fly enemy planes, their aircraft had to fly fast, fly high, be highly manoeuvrable and merge into a blue-grey background. Cotton managed to acquire Spitfire aircraft that were just coming into service; they were ideal for reconnaissance purposes after certain modifications had been made. All the unnecessary items of armour, ammunition and radios were stripped out and cameras were fitted into the space created. Extra fuel tanks were fitted in the wings to increase the aircraft’s range and the overall reduction in the weight of the aircraft made it more manoeuvrable. An application of blue-green ‘Camotint’ paint helped the aircraft merge into the colour of the sky. Reconnaissance pilots flew alone in the extreme cold for long distances; they were unarmed and navigated by dead reckoning and in radio silence. To escape from enemy fighter planes and anti-aircraft fire the pilots relied on the supreme manoeuvrability of the Spitfire and its operating height of up to 33,000ft, plus their own flying experience and skill.
Flight Officer Ursula Powys-Lybbe was head of the Airfields Section at RAF Medmenham.
Heston Aerodrome, West London, in 1939, where Sidney Cotton’s planes were based.
A reconnaissance Spitfire of 16 Squadron, 1944.
There was another urgent problem to solve. Having photographed the enemy targets successfully, the PR pilots returned to base, the photographs were processed and then … what? The almost complete absence of PI training in the interwar years had resulted in just one experienced RAF interpreter and a handful of photo-readers being in post at the Air Ministry in the summer of 1939. Photographs waited at least several days to be analysed, which was useless when enemy movements were changing by the hour. Cotton tackled this problem in his usual maverick way. Bypassing the official service route, he contacted an old friend from his days in Canada, Major Hemming, who owned a civilian aerial survey company called the Aircraft Operating Company (AOC) in Wembley, north-west London. The AOC produced detailed reports for geological and survey companies using aerial photographs and the most up-to-date measuring machines available, manufactured in Switzerland. One machine, the Wild A-5, was capable of maximising information on the small-scale photography that Spitfires had taken at high altitudes. The Wild operators readily adapted to interpreting military targets instead of commercial subjects and, most importantly, their reports were delivered to the relevant HQs within hours of a photographic flying sortie rather than days.
A three-phase system of interpretation was set up at Wembley to ensure the timely analysis of photographs and delivery of reports. First-Phase interpretation was a selective analysis of top-priority photographs carried out by the PIs who worked at the airfield from which the aircraft had flown. The process was normally completed in less than 2 hours and could trigger an immediate tactical response; on occasion the decision whether or not to launch an attack rested solely on the PI report.
Second-Phase interpretation examined all the photographic sorties flown in northern Europe in a day and then issued twice daily up-to-date reports on every aspect of enemy activity. Any photograph that raised a query was passed on to the Third-Phase specialist sections, which were concerned with longer-term strategic analysis. The three-phase system was simple in concept but extremely effective in practice, ensuring that reports on enemy activity were issued to the relevant HQs according to their level of priority, in the most efficient and timely way. The system transferred successfully to RAF Medmenham, was replicated in all the overseas reconnaissance and interpretation units, and was adopted by the Americans when they entered the war.
The Aircraft Operating Company in Wembley, North London, with sandbag protection in 1939.
In a matter of months Sidney Cotton had revolutionised the principles of photographic reconnaissance and engineered the changes in the organisation of photographic interpretation. He was also instrumental in pioneering the employment of women as interpreters; a highly skilled, responsible job, very different from the clerical and domestic roles women had been confined to in the First World War. The attributes of patience, attention to detail and persistence, which Cotton considered women to possess naturally, made them highly suitable for PI work. In the months leading up to war, his girlfriend, Pat Martin, accompanied him on his secret flying exploits over Germany to get photographs of military installations; she was taken because she was a good photographer, not because she was a woman. Cotton records his spying flight on 27 August 1939, just five days before Hitler invaded Poland, over German-held islands with a co-pilot and Pat operating a Leica camera with instructions to look out for fighter patrols: ‘I had hardly spoken when she tapped my arm and pointed out of her window. There, not 300 yards ahead and to starboard, flying on an opposite course, was a German fighter.’ Cotton put their escape down to the ‘Camotint’ paint.8
By the middle of 1940 WAAF officers were being posted in to work as PIs at Wembley – the earliest date that WAAF regulations at that time would allow. Mollie Thompson was one of these officers. In 2009 she wrote:
I do not remember any tinge of ‘the old boy network’ or ‘the glass ceiling’ at Wembley or Medmenham. As far as the interpreters were concerned you did your job, you were capable and whether you were a man or a woman did not matter.9
This opinion was echoed by many of the women concerned: the most competent person to do a particular job got it on merit – regardless of gender.
The RAF took over the Heston Flight and the AOC at Wembley in January 1940. For the first fifteen months or so of the war, reconnaissance flights were flown from Heston and the air photographs obtained were interpreted at Wembley. Heston Airfield was bombed with high explosives and incendiaries on an almost nightly basis throughout the summer of 1940 and, although Wembley suffered less, its work was regularly disrupted by bombing and the consequent damage to buildings. The increasing numbers of male and female personnel put space at a premium on both sites and larger premises were urgently sought.
At the end of 1940, the Heston unit moved to RAF Benson in Oxfordshire and was renamed No. 1 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (1 PRU), remaining there for the rest of the war. Several senior PIs from Wembley set about finding a new, suitable home for photographic interpretation. The requirement was a property large enough to house the growing numbers of PIs and their equipment, conveniently close to RAF Benson and to High Wycombe, where HQ Bomber Command was sited. They found what they
were looking for in a Thameside village in the Chiltern Hills.
Medmenham – we have the Anglo Saxons to thank for the tongue-twisting name of the village, meaning followers of the Saxon leader Meda. Even today it is a small village standing on a wooded road 3 miles equidistant from Henley-on-Thames and Marlow. A string of houses and some old timber-framed cottages line the lane that leads down to a slipway on to the River Thames, where once there was a chain ferry. The population totalled less than 1,000 in the 2001 census; it was probably larger in 1086 when the value of its lands and livestock were sufficient to be recorded in Domesday Book. Seven centuries after that, the ruins of its Norman abbey achieved national notoriety as the location for Sir Francis Dashwood’s infamous Hell Fire Club. The other Norman building, St Peter’s church, still stands beside the Henley road with the sixteenth-century Dog and Badger Inn opposite.
An air photo of RAF Medmenham taken in 1945, showing Danesfield House, the gardens and the huts used as working and living space.
On the site of an Iron Age hill fort adjacent to the village, the present-day Danesfield House, destined later to become RAF Medmenham, was built. Robert William Hudson, son and heir to the ‘Sunlight’ Soap fortunes, bought the estate in 1897 and set about having a new house built for himself on the plateau overlooking a curve of the River Thames below. When it was completed in 1901, however, Hudson chose to sell it and a series of owners followed. Over 100 years later it is still a striking sight, built in the locally quarried white rock chalk. The flamboyant Italianate style of architecture provided the mansion with a gatehouse, courtyards, towers, large latticed windows, a sprinkling of crenellations and tall, decorated chimneys.10 Captain Derek van den Bogaerde (better known as the post-war actor Dirk Bogarde), who worked there during the war, referred to it somewhat disparagingly as ‘The Wedding Cake’. It was Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister, who reputedly coined its more familiar name, referring to it as ‘The Chalk House with the Tudor Chimneys’. He visited the house more frequently than is officially recorded to examine particularly interesting air photographs and to visit his daughter, Sarah, who worked there.
In 1938 the house was sold to a Mr Stanley Garton who renovated it just in time to see it occupied by eighty boys, evacuated from a London school at the outbreak of war. In 1941, the boys having departed, Danesfield House was occupied once more, this time by the RAF, who requisitioned it to rehouse the unit from Wembley. It was renamed the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) and of the fifty-three PIs who had moved to their new home by April 1941 one-third were commissioned WAAF officers.11 The RAF was administratively responsible for the CIU and designated it as RAF Medmenham, part of Coastal Command. It was one of the first truly joint-service organisations to be established, with army, navy and air force personnel working alongside each other. It was international too, with representation from the Dominions, European occupied countries and America. In recognition of this, the CIU became the ACIU (Allied Central Interpretation Unit) in 1944.
The women’s uniformed services were re-established before the outbreak of war. The new Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was authorised by Royal Warrant in September 1938, its role being to provide female volunteers who would undertake certain non-combatant duties in connection with the military and air forces. After a hard fight by Director ATS, a Defence (Women’s Forces) Regulation dated 25 April 1941 was published and among its provisions was the commissioning of female officers and a declaration that women enrolled for service with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and the ATS were deemed to be members of the armed forces of the Crown with military rank, with female officers enjoying equal status to male officers. Despite the fact that women replaced men on a one-for-one basis, they received only two-thirds of male pay rates – a disadvantage universal throughout the Allied women’s services and one that still rankled many years later.
The Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was speedily re-established in 1939 and had its own code of regulations. Members of the WRNS were not given equivalent naval ranks to men, could not wear the distinguishing marks of naval officers and their officers were not entitled to a salute. In this respect they were unique among the British women’s services, and there was a long-running dispute over the fact that they were denied the full status granted to both the ATS and the WAAF.
The recruiting drive that followed the setting up of the ATS in 1938 also produced the personnel to form forty-eight RAF companies within its framework. At first all recruits wore the ATS-issue khaki uniform, with the forty-eight companies wearing RAF distinguishing insignia. The Director ATS argued that a blue uniform for these companies ‘would encourage loyalty, enthusiasm and good discipline’, and in March 1939 the new uniform of RAF blue was authorised, although stocks of material were not immediately available. These forty-eight companies were transferred as the nucleus of the WAAF when it was formed in June 1939, although the volunteers had to improvise by wearing a mixture of issued uniform items and civilian clothing for several months.
With manpower shortages becoming critical by mid-1941, the War Cabinet announced the conscription of women on 2 December 1941; a step not systematically adopted by any other combatant power. All unmarried women and childless widows were made liable for compulsory service. At first only those between the ages of 20 and 25 were called up; the limit was later dropped to 19 and could be extended to 30 if required.12
A number of the earliest volunteers in the WAAF became clerks (special duties) and were sent to train as plotters in operations rooms where they were soon to be engaged in helping to direct the action throughout the Battle of Britain and subsequent bombing raids. Mary James, who was a plotter in the ‘ops’ room at Fighter Command’s HQ at RAF Bentley Priory in north London, wrote:
At first the authorities had been reluctant to use women in this role, claiming that they did not have enough mental dexterity. They were also thought unsuitable because of the need for high security – some would surely chatter about their work.
How little they knew about women:
It soon became obvious that the Waafs were far more dextrous and speedy than the men. Their job was to mark the positions of enemy and RAF formations in ever changing situations, from information fed to them by radio: new raids would be given to them while they were still working on earlier ones. It was gruelling, demanding, technically challenging work with great responsibility for accuracy – knowing that pilots and civilians could die if they made a mistake. At times when the ‘Ops’ rooms rocked with the bombing, the girls (their average age was 20) stood to their work with quiet coolness.13
Several of these WAAFs were later selected to train as PIs and were posted to RAF Medmenham, where they joined many others involved in the same work, some recently out of school, others older. Their analysis of air photographs and the accuracy of their reports could affect the success, or otherwise, of a planned raid or operation and the lives of those taking part in it. They were continually examining the facts, hints and snippets of information to be gleaned from photography, trying to determine what the enemy was doing, why they were doing it and, most importantly, what their intentions were. They worked for months on producing precise information for the landings in North Africa, Italy and Normandy. If any hint of a leak or gossip of what they saw and knew had reached enemy ears, it could have had disastrous consequences for the Allies and, more particularly, for the troops concerned. There were no leaks, there was no gossip. Friends working in adjacent rooms did not talk to each other about what they were engaged in, and decades later some have still been reluctant to discuss their work.
More words from Flight Lieutenant Cyril Tiquet:
Who are they, these men and women who saw so much? In the RAF they call them photographic interpreters. They would smile if you called them spies. They get their information, not by adventurous journeys into enemy territory, but by sitting at a desk poring over pictures. They peep, not through keyholes and forbidden places, but through the twin lenses
of a stereoscope. They are armed, not with gun and dagger, but with a slide-rule and a mathematical table.14
Now is the time to meet some of these women.
Notes
1. Wellington, Duke of, Croker Papers (1885), Vol. iii, from Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
2. Ticquet, Cyril, from an article entitled ‘Spies of the Skies’ in Chamber’s Journal, January 1946 (Medmenham Collection).
3. Foulkes, Debbie, www.forgottennewsmakers.com.
4. Leggat, Robert, www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/women.htm.
5. Richards, Peter, Cam (the Cambridge Alumni Magazine), June 1998.
6. Obituary, The Independent, 28 December 1989.
7. Obituary, The Independent, 26 February 1997.
8. Barker, Ralph, Aviator Extraordinary (Chatto & Windus, 1969).
9. Chadsey, Mollie (née Thompson), correspondence with the author, 2009–10.
10. Plaisted, Arthur, The Romance of a Chiltern Village (Village Bookshop, 1958).
11. AOC Wembley Report, PIU Wembley Organisation and Establishment 18 February 1941 (Medmenham Collection).
12. Cassin-Smith, Jack, Women at War (Osprey, 1980).
13. James, Mary, from an article entitled ‘The Big Picture’ in Royal Air Force Salute, 2010.
Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos Page 3
