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

by Halsall, Christine

  WAAFs in the Photographic Section using pantographs to reduce plots to the required scale, watched by Margaret Hockenhull.

  Pat was then posted to work at RAF Medmenham, which she loved:

  Danesfield House had beautiful gardens. It was hard work there but intelligent humanity. All my free time was spent visiting relatives and sketching – I filled up four sketchbooks while I was there.

  The Photographic Section had started life in the old stables of Danesfield House, moving later to Nissen huts, which provided the necessary space to house the machinery and deal with an ever-increasing workload. Film from aerial cameras was processed into negative form at PR bases, such as RAF Benson, and then brought to Medmenham for the production and duplication of positive images for the Second- and Third-Phase sections on site. The section had the most up-to-date machinery to work with, much of it non-standard RAF equipment, and included continuous processing machines and the latest type of duplicators and multiprinters with an automatic exposure control. There were rectifying enlargers for producing a run of photographs called a mosaic; machines that could handle the extra-large prints, called photographic skins, needed in model making; and Rotaprint machines that produced target maps. The Photographic Section became the equivalent of a large and efficient commercial photographic organisation operating on a 24-hour basis with three shifts. By the end of the war the Photographic Section had produced over 19 million photographic prints and Rotaprints, and duplicated thousands of sorties. Pat remembers:

  Photographic reproduction on a large scale in the processing unit.

  From 10am the negatives from the film that the reconnaissance pilots had taken started coming into the section and they were processed and printed. We all knew that if we didn’t do our work properly we would be putting pilot’s lives at risk because they may have to repeat the sortie.

  The tanks used for processing were made of teak and lead lined – they were large enough for two people to stand side by side. We worked in dark red lighting and once the prints were run off they were taken off to the main building.

  People specialised in different ways, some did photographic mapping. I was always a processor and was promoted to Lance Corporal.

  RAF personnel, with a high proportion of WAAFs, made up the photographic workforce. Mary Tate was one of four WAAF officers in charge of up to 100 photographers on each shift, responsible for ensuring the required quality of photography for interpretation. Sergeant Sorrell was the senior WAAF NCO photographer at Medmenham and probably the first in the RAF. An efficient negative library was established to store the intake of sorties from the PR squadrons, other commands and the USAAF, which were all filed to assist in quick retrieval. In 1944–45, when the Allied advance through France and Belgium was under way, Section Officer Maddison was posted to 2nd Tactical Air Force (2 TAF) to take charge of the negative library located near Brussels.

  Winston and Clementine Churchill paid an official visit to RAF Medmenham in 1943. Section Officer Sarah Churchill was in attendance.

  Many distinguished visitors came to visit the Section including the Prime Minister on one occasion. His daughter Sarah visited the Section too and, remembering that Pat’s father had once been Winston Churchill’s lecture agent, she invited Pat and two friends to lunch at 10 Downing Street:

  The three of us decided to buy ourselves new service caps for the occasion so we did that first of all then took a taxi to 10 Downing Street. We went upstairs to the dining room and I sat next to John Churchill, the younger brother of Winston.

  Pat described herself as a solitary sort of person, not gregarious: her interests lay in exploring the countryside with her painting materials and visiting art exhibitions at the Tate Gallery in London. She enjoyed visiting relatives too, and met a whole new set of cousins in Belfast. On their off-duty days in the summer time, Pat and several colleagues went to pick peas for local farmers.

  Within 24 hours of the prints being received, all operational sorties were plotted on to maps to show exactly where and when each photograph had been taken, essential both for immediate interpretation and for any future sorties. Plotting was always a predominately female occupation. On 1 May 1940, ten WAAF officers, four sergeants and six ACW2s had been posted into RAF Heston, which at that time was the base for PR aircraft and the processing of film. None of the WAAFs had previous experience of air photography and most had been formerly employed on administrative duties. Two duty watches were formed, the night watch dealing with the urgent sorties that covered the invasion ports three times a day, while the day watch dealt with sorties received from PR bases elsewhere in UK and Gibraltar. In 1940 the plotters dealt with ten to twelve sorties per day, with each aircraft carrying one or two cameras; by 1944 that number had leapt to more than eighty sorties each day with each aircraft fitted with four or five cameras.

  The Plotting Section. Front row from left: Elspeth Macalister, Margot Munn, Pauline Kraay, Jo Gidney. Second row: Jan Magee, Diana Ashcroft (second in command of section), Betty Rumball. Back row centre: Jeanne Adams. Back row left: head of Section Flt Lt Beetham.

  Millicent Laws was one of the first WAAF officers to serve at Heston, which she describes as ‘the most bombed airfield in the Battle of Britain’, where the plotters worked in trenches making frequent dashes to grab more maps from the map store. She moved with the Section to RAF Benson on Boxing Day 1940 where, due to shortage of space, the Photographic and Intelligence Sections were set up in the village of Ewelme. By this time the numbers of plotters had been reduced so the shift system was abandoned and the Section worked as long as there was work to be done and took time off when things were slack:

  The plotters and PIs were billeted in an old house in the village whose owner had taken up a post in Motor Transport, leaving his butler and housekeeper to look after us. I shared a room with Elizabeth Weightman who was a PI seconded over from the AOC at Wembley.5

  In September 1941 three WAAF officers, including Millicent, were transferred to Medmenham to build up the Plotting Section and airwomen, several of whom had been tracers and artists in civilian life, were moved from other duties to learn the skill. The 8- and 16-hour shift system that Pamela Howie disliked so much at Benson also operated at Medmenham, with a WAAF officer in charge of each shift. The section came into being in the former library of Danesfield House but soon outgrew that space and moved to a splendid room that in earlier days had been the ballroom. The volume of photographs continuously increased and long hours were worked to keep up to date with the plotting. In 1944, in preparation for the Normandy invasion and in the search for V-weapons, the number and urgency of PR sorties mounted, and over 8 million photographs were plotted at Medmenham.

  Plotters used a pen called a stylograph, rather like a black ink fountain pen which marked with a pointed nib, and a stereoscope. With a ‘plotting square’ made from pieces of metal hinged to form adjustable squares or rectangles, and a pair of proportional dividers to hand, plots could be transferred from one scale to another. A sufficient supply of maps of different scales had to be held as during a busy spell up to eighty map sheets a day would be used. The only aid to identification the plotters had was the pilot’s trace, on which he recorded his course during the flight.

  Even when the trace erred in accuracy and cloud obscured a large part of the picture, the WAAF officer plotters at Medmenham became so expert at recognising the smallest dots of land or coastline, that they averaged a rate of plotting over 100 prints per hour.

  Pauline Growse draws maps out of the extensive map store.

  Jeanne Adams was posted to RAF Medmenham early in 1942 as a plotter and spent six months in the ranks to learn the nature of the job. Her pay was 18s 2d per week. Jeanne returned to Medmenham after being commissioned and passing her PI course. She explained her work:

  Our ‘customers’ were numerous and came from the War Office, the Admiralty, the Air Ministry, the service commands, the overseas commands and other secret services. All our reports were sen
t directly back to our ‘customers’.

  The work of PI was important, secret, demanding and at times, very exciting. When you are given the photographs you had no idea what you might see. We watched shipping movements daily, we studied air fields old and new, aircraft, marshalling yards and railways, ports and beaches. At one time I think I could identify any port from Norway to the South of France at a glance.

  I was a plotter in the Plotting Section which is where the photographs were located on the maps. This was done with a stereoscope and we used a set square to get the right scale. Usually the photographs were accompanied by a sketch from the pilot showing the targets he had covered. It was easy for the plotters if it was accurate but sometimes because of bad weather or the pilot being lost they were difficult to place. Sometimes the cameras would be switched on because the pilot saw ‘something that looked interesting down there’, but did not know what it was and occasionally, because of the weather, where it was! This could, at times, take all night to find, just a railway line with a wood beside it, or a dot that looked like an aircraft on a tiny strip of runway somewhere in Germany. After being plotted the photographs were passed on to Second and Third Phase.

  All this usually began to happen between 2am and 8am which was hectic and rather like being in Fleet Street. We all worked a long watch of twelve hours either by day or night. But between work there was lots of fun and the biggest bonus for a WAAF was that there were always more men than women, so that finding a partner for a mess dance was never a problem!6

  Jeanne mentions pilots taking a photograph of something that caught their eye and ‘looked interesting’. One of the PR pilots’ instructions was never to return to base from a sortie with unused film, as a chance glimpse of something unexpected or unusual could provide a clue to enemy activity. One of the ‘Points to Remember’, quoted below, was in the operational notes handed to all new PR pilots in 680 Squadron:

  REMEMBER that you are a RECONNAISSANCE PILOT. Keep your eyes open for all types of enemy movement, shipping, aircraft, tanks, MT, etc. both on your way to and from the target area.

  REMEMBER that from the height at which you operate appearances are deceptive. When you see anything you decide to report, note it’s POSITION, DIRECTION OF MOVEMENT and NUMBER and ALWAYS TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS.

  IT’S YOUR JOB!7

  Jeanne Adams plots a sortie on to map sheets by marking the locations where the photographs were taken.

  Elspeth Macalister was still languishing as a clerk at RAF Duxford:

  I was bored, bored, bored. I shared my tiny bedroom with the dirtiest girl on the camp, a cook, she never washed. She had a different man in bed with her most nights – I learnt quite a bit about sex. She stole everything of mine that she could lay her hands on, money, ornaments, even my mother’s photograph.

  In desperation I wrote to the Air Ministry and pointed out that I had joined up to do photographic interpretation and would they please post me to a proper station ie Medmenham. I got my posting there within a week. On arrival I had to report to Wing Commander Hamshaw Thomas and while I was waiting, the transport arrived from Phyllis Court and out tumbled some WAAF officers who I recognised from Cambridge, including my three fellow recruits – Ena, Sophie and Lou. And they expected me to salute them!

  I was allocated to the Plotting Section. Our job was to see what route the PR pilots had followed and whether they had covered the target. Each pilot had a flimsy piece of tracing paper which showed his route. These were invaluable and we worked with countless maps. First job was to see where he had crossed the coast as the cameras were always switched on there. Then we had to follow his route marking the photographs in black squares, each relevant square picking out landmarks, such as churches, canals etc – challenging but fascinating work. Not being artistic, at first I made an awful mess with my mapping pen and black ink and my plot would be a puzzle of inexplicable black lines.

  I made some of my very best friends on my shift. I loved the countryside – the smooth flowing Thames, the woods so beautiful in all seasons, lovely Henley, friendly Marlow, discreet little villages – we all had our bikes so we could explore. I always enjoyed night duty and having 24 hours off-duty ahead. We would rush up to London and probably see two plays, getting free tickets from the YWCA – London theatres were thriving – we ate in Lyons Corner House. How often we puffed up those steps at Paddington station to get the last train to Maidenhead and transport back to Marlow as being late meant being on a charge.8

  In 1943 ten of the plotters, including Elspeth, made their way to an officer training unit in the Lake District for their course in preparation for being commissioned:

  In due course the final exams came up and London tailors appeared to measure us for our new uniforms should we have passed. I chose Austin Reed for my first uniform, but not for my second when I saw they had written by my measurements, ‘Thick Thighs’. Our new uniforms came while we were on leave. I wore mine down to Cambridge and met a squad of new recruits marching along St John’s Street. The command ‘Eyes Right’ was given so there I stood, taking my first salute.

  Personnel of all services drawing previous photographs out of the print library to compare with new cover.

  After plotting, the photographs were passed to the PIs for examination and analysis, and then filed in the print library where 2½ miles of shelves were stacked with boxes and boxes of photographs, ready to be retrieved for comparison purposes at any time.

  The WAAF largely staffed the Library, Signals, Communications and Typing Sections. The teleprinter operators were the essential link in co-ordinating the work of the interpreters at Medmenham and the reconnaissance operational sorties, the teleprinter being the means by which an immediate signal could be sent with the highest priority. The telephonists who manually connected over 300 extensions on the switchboards also played a vital part in linking all the different sections at Medmenham and Nuneham Park. The typing pool frequently had to tackle reports from sections that ran into many pages. One, when completed, covered over 37ft of manuscript. Fine weather meant the typists faced an in-tray overflowing with top-secret and priority jobs and an average of 100 copies of each report to be rolled off the duplicators. Filing clerks ensured that papers and photographs were kept efficiently to ensure quick retrieval. All these essential support services relied on the accuracy and efficiency of the WAAFs who operated them and by all accounts they did an excellent job.

  When the Press and Publicity Section, ‘J’, was formed in May 1940, its function was to select suitable material for the press and for exhibitions. Photographs of a spectacular or topical nature were chosen from current sorties being flown if they were thought suitable for reproduction in the daily newspapers and weekly magazines. These provided a great boost to wartime civilian morale in Britain and overseas – and if some photographs did find their way into enemy territory they would provide encouragement to the people of occupied lands and excellent propaganda for the Allied cause. In some cases where good comparison could be made it was possible to provide the press with ‘before and after’ photographs of raids. There were also numerous requests for photographs to illustrate books, pamphlets and government publications.

  Telephonists at the RAF Medmenham and RAF Nuneham Park exchanges linked the many sections of the stations.

  Margaret Price had an unexpected beginning to her war. Her husband had already joined the RAF and on 1 September 1939 four little girls aged 6 and a helper arrived at her house:

  They were from the Royal Soldier’s Home in Hampstead – my evacuees. After ten months they left to join all the other children from the Home and I decided to join the WAAF and was posted to HQ Coastal Command in Northwood to be a teleprinter operator.

  Ten months later I applied for, and passed, the PI course then joined ‘J’ Section at Medmenham. I also became assistant entertainments officer in my spare time. My husband of seven years was killed in early 1942 – he was training to be a night fighter navigator. 9

  O
ne aspect of Margaret’s work was to select the photographs for albums covering important and interesting incidents of the ‘Air War’. These were prepared at intervals for special presentation to His Majesty the King; Prime Minister Winston Churchill; the Chief of the Air Staff; the Secretary of State for Air; and Mr John Winant, the US ambassador to Great Britain.

  One of the most remarkable and successful publications of the Second World War was called Evidence in Camera, which was a legal term for testimony given in secret, and an appropriate title for a magazine that provided confirmation by photographs taken covertly. Although it may seem contradictory for a secret establishment such as the ACIU to publish a magazine full of operational photographs, it had the lowest security category of ‘Restricted’ and fulfilled a valuable purpose. Shirley Eadon explained how it came into existence: