Aircraft need airfields, and a Third-Phase Airfield Section was established early in 1940 at Wembley. With the move to Medmenham, the Section was designated as ‘C’ and headed by Section Officer Ursula Powys-Lybbe, a professional photographer before the war, with a studio in Cairo and later a successful business based in London. In July 1939, when war seemed inevitable, she gave up her business and joined the Auxiliary Fire Service in London, hoping to be usefully employed. Through the following Phoney War winter there was little for her to do so she resigned and went to stay with a friend who lived in Medmenham village. By a series of coincidences, she joined the WAAF, worked as a records clerk until her selection for PI training, and joined RAF Medmenham on 1 April 1941.
Airfield interpretation revealed not only the enemy’s current status but also their future plans. The resources invested in airfield construction, with its associated buildings and communications, indicated an important strategic purpose. Early in the war, the Germans constructed standardised ‘tailor-made’ airfields, and PIs could deduce the function of the units based there – whether for bomber, mine-laying, fighter or transport aircraft – from the variety of installations in place. These distinctive clues could be applied to other existing or newly built airfields, landing grounds and seaplane bases in enemy or occupied territory. Regular monitoring ascertained if any airfield was being modified for a change of purpose.
Jane Cameron, the shy Scot who had worked in Coastal Command with a crowd of ‘rumbustious’ airwomen, was commissioned in August 1941, then posted to Medmenham. She wrote in her diary:
I suppose people keep diaries – or begin to keep diaries – for all sorts of different reasons, so I imagine getting one’s commission in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force is as good a reason as any other. Not that I ever imagined having a commission would be anything like this. When one is in the ranks of the WAAF, the ‘officers’ are a class apart. This is regardless of education or social standing in civilian life – everything. In the service, there are ‘the officers’ and ‘the other ranks’ and no matter how much of a social renegade one is, no matter how complete one’s scorn of social custom, this becomes part of one’s service mentality. One accepts the officers as a race apart.
On my appointment, I came down from Leuchars to London in a dazed condition, by the night train, in the company of half a dozen sailors and drank beer with increasing solemnity all the way from Edinburgh to London. Occasionally I told myself that this was the last journey of this sort that I would make. This was the end of irresponsibility – that ruling characteristic of all rankers. From now on, I would be ‘an officer’. It would be autre temps, autre moeurs. I felt a little sad about it all.
In London, I dumped my bags at a boarding house near Marble Arch and went shopping. That same evening, I stepped out of my boarding house on to the Edgware Road, an officer down to the second kid glove carried in the gloved left hand. At Marble Arch, an airman saluted me. I was now one of those ‘up there’. I had left the ranks behind. I was overcome with melancholy.10
Despite professing a preference for ships over aircraft on her PI course, ‘Jane’ was posted to the Airfield Section, which seems to have been her choice:
I passed that course in the end, and I got the job I wanted in this comic unit, and now, after six months of it, I am beginning to feel that I know a little more about it. So much to learn, and such mentally exhausting learning too! We are now in a new Mess at Henley, (Phyllis Court) full of priceless people – Anne Whiteman, an Oxford Don-ess, Lady Bonham Carter, a charming and intelligent eccentric, Vyvyan Russell [sic] who has a face like Dolores – our Lady of Pain – utterly beautiful. Ursula Powys-Lybbe, the most modern of hyper-sensitive moderns, who has much of my own uncomfortable flair for seeing round all the mental screens behind which people hide their motives from themselves and the world. I love her dearly. Then there is Babs Babington Smith who I am only now beginning to know, due to her admitted façade of other worldliness which I privately think a little precious but which is none of my business and anyhow I like her in spite of it – I wouldn’t like her if the otherworldliness were real, by the way.
Jane Cameron worked in the Airfields Section at RAF Medmenham.
A routine report on an existing airfield would include details on the dimensions of the landing area and the number, length and orientation of the runways with details on their serviceability – whether the surface of the runways was in a good enough state of repair to be operational or if there were obstructions and mines laid for demolition. The position of the fuel-storage tanks, the water supply and the ammunition storage were important, in addition to the number and size of the hangars, workshops and accommodation for personnel. Wireless telephony (radio) stations were always noted, as was the presence of a night landing facility called Visual Lorenz, which was a series of poles for carrying light cables that were sunk into the ground in line with the runway. The PIs could see this system clearly on photographs taken in daylight as the base of each pole appeared as a white dot. These were plotted for the navigators of RAF intruder aircraft, who would then home in on returning enemy bombers at the moment when the lights went on. Ursula wrote:
Our subject was as vital as any other at Medmenham, as we discovered, because we supplied information to the Air Staff, which could be used for the assessment of the order of battle of the Luftwaffe; the team being able to determine from the lay-out of an airfield under construction, the type of aeroplane likely to operate from it.11
Both Ursula and Constance battled with Air Intelligence departments at the Air Ministry, whose policy was to withhold information from other sources from the Medmenham PIs which would, on many occasions, have proved useful and time saving. Both eventually managed to visit the relevant departments and create lines of communication, although this was often dependent on the individual personality in post. Constance was consulted on aircraft development by several committees and was able to get her ideas across to them, although she became frustrated at the dismissive air or blocking attitude of some individuals, getting on better with the Americans, who listened to what she knew.
Kay Henry demonstrates the Altazimeter, an invention of Squadron Leader Claud Wavell, head of the Wireless Section. It was used to determine the height of aerial arrays on wireless transmitters from the angle of the sun.
The Wireless Section, ‘G’, had started at Wembley under the leadership of a mathematician, Squadron Leader Claud Wavell. Its outstanding contribution was the complete unearthing of the enemy’s offensive and defensive radio systems. The offensive transmitters acted as navigational aids to direct German air crew flying on bombing missions over Britain. The defensive system provided pre-warning of air raids in Germany and was later used to detect the first signs of invasion. The detection of the enemy’s radar installations in occupied territory was of first-rate strategic importance. The first WAAF recruit to this work was Section Officer Vera Marsden, who had been a radio-location operator before training as a PI; she became an area officer responsible for reporting on radar installations in France. Her colleague, Section Officer Kay Henry, was similarly responsible for reporting on radar in Belgium.
It was not until they had failed to invade Britain in 1940 that the Germans recognised their need for camouflage, smokescreens and decoys. The Third-Phase Camouflage Section, ‘E’, was established with the move to Medmenham and head of section was Flight Officer Mollie ‘Tommy’ Thompson, a graduate in economics, who had joined the WAAF in 1939 and worked at Wembley. She was an expert on the subject, a regular lecturer at the PI school at Nuneham Park and advised the British camouflage designers. Section Officers Pauline Growse, an actress, and Kitty Sancto, who had studied at the Slade College of Art, also worked in the Section, showing the necessary keen eye for detail and ability to study each photograph with an open mind. Camouflage was in large measure ineffective against air photography, and in wartime often only served to emphasise the importance of the object being hidden. Ursula Powys-Lybbe
wrote:
There is an explanation for the apparent ease with which the interpreters could see through camouflage, both literally and figuratively, while a pilot might have been deceived. Camouflage was primarily designed in colour to blend with the background, so that aircrew would be unlikely to identify the target as they flashed by overhead with no time to search for it.
Monochrome or black and white prints in front of the interpreters, meant that a range of neutral tone made it easier to define form, colour not being there to distract the eye, and also there was time for examination. If we had been faced with colour prints in those days, it might have been almost as difficult for us as for the pilot to find the target.
The main guides by which camouflage could be detected were from tonal dissimilarity caused by differences in the surface of any material used, even though it might have been indistinguishable in reality because of good matching colours. Shadows and vague outlines would always show through netting, and anyway the structure or framework itself might produce strange shadows after a period of being subjected to weather and ageing.
Elaborate enemy camouflage was used in attempts to disguise factories, railway stations and oil-storage tanks as well as military targets such as gun pits, coastal barrages and ships. Sometimes the roofs of large buildings were laid out with dummy houses and trees to give the appearance of being part of the surrounding housing area. Water was the most important feature to try to camouflage, as it reflected in the dark and acted as a ‘signpost’ and a marker on target maps for bomber air crews. Larger items such as aircraft hangars and ships were difficult to camouflage, although disruptive painting on the hull of a naval vessel could break up the outline and make it hard for a PR pilot to recognise it.
Smokescreens were also used to protect important targets from day and night attacks and as soon as German radar stations detected approaching aircraft, they would be raised. These were a severe handicap to the Allied bomber and reconnaissance aircraft but by the latter part of the war, PIs had built up enough information on position, extent, density and pattern to make it possible for air crews to avoid or minimise the effects of the smoke pall. Decoys were also used by the enemy by simultaneously raising one smokescreen over a target about to be attacked and another over an open piece of countryside some miles away where bombs would fall harmlessly.
The Decoy Section, ‘Q’, worked very closely with camouflage and the Target Section that produced material for briefing bomber air crews. Helga O’Brien worked with the head of Section, Squadron Leader Geoffrey Dimbleby, searching for decoy fire sites, such as mock burning buildings, near to large industrial concerns. These, like the decoy smokescreens, were designed to lure the night bomber pilots away from the actual target. As well as sham factory sites and dummy oil-storage tanks, the Germans produced complete decoy airfields, with one in Norway even having a model aircraft on rails to make it appear more real.
The Camouflage Section. From left: Pauline Growse, John Bowden RAF, Flight Officer Mollie Thompson (foreground), head of section, and Kitty Sancto.
Camouflage and decoys were, of course, also used defensively by the Allies to disguise their own industries, airfields and ports by building dummy airfields and pretend buildings in Britain. This was monitored to ensure its effectiveness by two ATS mapmakers at RAF Nuneham Park.
Joan ‘Bo’ Bohey was living in Dorset waiting to take up a teacher training place at Goldsmiths College, London, when the war changed her plans and she joined the ATS instead. At the end of her basic training at Aldermaston, all the ‘artists’ were picked out to train as draughtswomen, but Joan, whose main subjects at school certificate were geography and survey, was not classed as an ‘artist’ and was sent to be a clerk:
I was filing papers one day when I came across the draughtswoman trade test requirements and thought, ‘I could do that without even going on the course’ and managed to get sent to an aptitude assessment where I got the highest marks ever! As a result I was sent on the three-month draughtswoman course at Ruabon in North Wales. I met Barbara Chandler there, who was a talented calligraphist, and she and I were posted to the Drawing Office at RAF Nuneham Park where we worked on map making. The photography came from RAF Benson or bomber stations and we dealt with all the English cover and the small amount of cover, usually taken by accident, of neutral countries such as Sweden, Switzerland, Greenland and Iceland.
Barbara and I were the only two ATS at Nuneham. Our work was so secret that every week we had to walk to the guard room by the gate to the station to collect our pay from an officer sent over from Oxford, but not allowed in! Standing in the guard room the two of us each gave our number, saluted, were handed our pay and signed for it.12
Joan Bohey ATS (left) with a colleague at RAF Nuneham Park.
The English cover Joan refers to was used to test the adequacy of Britain’s own protective camouflage and decoy system. She and Barbara marked out the camouflaged areas using the varying textures and tones seen under the stereoscope in the same way as the Camouflage Section at Medmenham.
The Industry Section, ‘D’, was one of the earliest Third-Phase sections to be set up, designed to gather information relating to the output of enemy war material. It worked closely with the Wild Section for measurements and production of plans used for monitoring and assessing industrial plants. These were used to identify new manufactories and assess industrial output, in the allocation of targets for the Allied bombing campaign, and for the Damage Assessment Section to calculate the necessary time for an industrial plant to become operational again. Scientists, engineers and those with a specialised industrial knowledge, such as the oil geologists, were recruited to the Section as German oil production was always of crucial importance. While men predominated in the Industry Section, because at that time the majority of scientists and geologists were male, several women, including Ruth Langhorne, a geographer from Oxford University, Winifred Bartingale, who became a doctor, Celia McDonald and Anne Whiteman, an Oxford historian, all worked in the Section.
The storage and, later on, the production of oil was always a major part of the work of the Section. Oil-storage tanks were easy for PIs to spot but soon the enemy made it harder by constructing huge underground reservoirs concealed from sight with trees planted on top; fortunately the ventilators were still visible on photographs. With the failure to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus for their use, the main German source of oil came from sixteen synthetic plants constructed across Europe, which manufactured oil from lignite. These were subjected to Allied precision-bombing raids, however, which had a decisive effect on the German capability to continue the war.
Charlotte Bonham Carter at work in the Ground Intelligence Section.
The search for information on a new project or query from any section at Medmenham usually began in the Ground Intelligence Section, responsible for keeping all reports from ground sources, including an extensive reference library of maps, charts, guidebooks, periodicals, trade and telephone directories. There were also illustrated brochures, plans and handbooks of industrial processes produced by companies in pre-war Germany, which were consulted by the Industry Section in the search for oil plants. Early on, the ACIU was refused access to information from the interrogation of prisoners of war and agent’s reports, as it was thought that interpreters would be biased and find on their photographs ‘what they had been told was there’. In no other form of scientific thought involving logical deduction had it ever been suggested that those carrying out the work would be biased by being provided with supplementary information, nor was there any evidence that such a tendency had ever been shown by photographic interpreters. The imaginative use of ground information in conjunction with photographic evidence actually served to enlarge the scope of photographic interpretation and helped develop new techniques.
Anne Jeffery had graduated in classics and archaeology from Newnham College, Cambridge, and spent some years in Athens before war intervened when she enrolled as a VAD nurse be
fore volunteering for the WAAF in 1941. Her keen attention to detail, visual memory and archaeological knowledge soon brought her to Medmenham, but it was found that her stereoscopic vision was lacking, so her time was spent on intelligence rather than interpretation. Anne worked in Ground Intelligence with Charlotte Bonham Carter and Flight Lieutenant Villiers David. He lived with his sister at Friar Park, in Henley-on-Thames, the same house lived in years later by the Beatle, George Harrison. There are as many anecdotes concerning Villiers as there are about Charlotte, including one that Ann McKnight-Kauffer recounted:
When at last Villiers got rid of his Rolls Royce and chauffeur he got a motorbike. On the first morning he came to Medmenham on it, he found to his horror that he didn’t know how to stop it. He did the circuit from front gate to house past the much-amused guards until his petrol ran out.13
There were many tennis and croquet parties held at Friar Park and sometimes Scottish dancing, when ‘Villiers leaping about in red braces was a sight to behold’.14
Joan Bohey had good reason to be grateful to Villiers David for his hospitality, as it gave her an opportunity to meet her future husband, David Brachi, on social occasions. They had initially met through scouting, as Joan helped with the Cub pack in Marlow and David was associated with the Henley Scouts. Later on, when they started going out together, it had to be in secret, as Joan was an NCO and David an officer; such liaisons were not only frowned upon, but were against King’s Regulations. For that reason Joan never wore her uniform when they met on a date, instead wearing a variety of civilian clothes gleaned from other women in her hut. They had very little space for storing personal clothing and usually uniforms were worn for all on- and off-duty occasions. Joan and David could meet at Scout and Cub functions and at several houses whose owners, Villiers in particular, were sympathetic to their plight:
Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos Page 14
