Most Secret War

by R. V. Jones

  13.10 The success which they had achieved this winter would probably enable the conference’s recommendations to be accepted by the German Air Staff.

  Not all of my forecasts proved correct, but several did. The modulation change forecast in paragraph 13.4 did take place two years later when, despite our detailed warning, the countermeasures again missed it, and therefore failed to deflect the Baedeker raids. The method of using pulses to determine distances from two ground stations was taken up not by the Germans but by us, and developed as ‘Oboe’, the most accurate radio bombing system produced by either side. And Oboe became especially effective when it was used at centimetric wavelengths, as forecast in paragraph 13.9. And within a month or so of the report Kampf Gruppe 100 was raised to the status of a full Geschwader, thus becoming K.G.100.

  I prefaced the report by Goering’s New Year message to K.Gr.100:

  At the close of 1940, I express to the C.O. and to this Gruppe my sincere thanks for an achievement unique in history. I know what enormous personal effort it has entailed on the part of each individual, and I am convinced, my comrades, that in 1941 as well, you will know only victory. So I wish each of you much luck and continuous success in the coming year. Heil Hitler.

  In our own minds Charles Frank and I endorsed the message with an item of snark-hunting:

  ‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

  O Frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

  He chortled in his joy.’

  As I expected, the report produced a most violent reaction, particularly on the part of Lywood, and the next thing I knew was that the report had been recalled by Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of Air Staff. This proved the most effective way possible of getting every copy read from cover to cover before it was returned; and I noted the fact for use later in the war because the natural reaction of anyone who is asked for the return of a document is to peruse it intently to find out what it is that ought not to have been revealed.

  Lindemann sent for me, and told me that Portal had been discussing the report with him at Chequers, and had asked for his advice. Portal commented that he was as amazed by its brilliance as he was appalled by its indiscretion, and added that in his opinion I was worth twelve squadrons of Spitfires to the Air Force. Lindemann told him that he thought that my criticisms had been entirely justified, and together they decided that I should be transferred to the Air Staff with the rank of Deputy Director.

  Portal then consulted Tizard, who agreed, and minuted the Secretary of State, Archibald Sinclair, accordingly. The latter wrote to Lord Beaverbrook on 12th February 1941 as follows:

  Dear Max,

  I write to consult you about the position of Dr. R. V. Jones. You know the importance which we attach to his work on the German radio methods of navigation and our own countermeasures. If, as I am inclined to believe, we are at the moment on top in the silent and secret battle of the beams, the lion’s share of the credit should go to him… If, on the other hand, you agree with me that his work would gain in value if he were to be put definitely under the Air Staff here, I would appoint him as Deputy Director of Intelligence (Scientific Intelligence).

  I would be grateful if you could agree to this proposal and if you would let his assistant Mr. Frank come with him.

  Yours ever,

  ARCHIE.

  Beaverbrook thereupon sent for me to know whether the proposed move accorded with my own wishes. ‘It strikes me, Doctor, that they are trying to discipline you! Will you be happy at moving across?’ I told him that I thought that I should be able to look after myself, and indeed that I had suggested the move in the first place. In that case, he said, he would agree, but he was prepared to defend me if he thought I needed it. He also made a comment about Lindemann which I never understood. He said that the Prof had been under a bad influence, but was now under a good influence, and could be a great help.

  And so my move took place. At the same time, a difficulty cropped up which could have jeopardized our future. It all arose because our first baby was due early in February and I had to point out to Charles Frank that glad as Vera was to look after him she would be quite unable to do so in less than a fortnight. Charles was most apologetic, and asked me what he should do while he looked round for lodgings. I knew that there were a few beds in the basement of our Broadway offices, and suggested that he might stay there for a few nights, which was duly arranged. A few days later I was intercepted as I entered the building by Fred Winterbotham and the Chief of Staff. ‘Who’s this man Frank?’ they asked. ‘He is working with me,’ I replied. ‘Then, who let him in?’ ‘Technically,’ I replied, ‘you did, because I put all the papers through you to arrange for his security clearance.’ ‘In any case,’ said Winterbotham, ‘he’s got to go!’ I then asked what he had done and met with the reply, ‘He’s offended the Chief!’

  As I could piece the episode together, it seemed that Charles had sat down at breakfast at the same table where a middle-aged man had been chatting to the duty secretaries and something that the man had said was known by Charles to be incorrect. Charles, who had a rigorous feeling for truth, intervened in the conversation and told the man where he was wrong. The man turned out to be Stewart Menzies, who was understandably put out at being contradicted in front of the secretaries of the organization in which he was Chief.

  It was a desperate moment because I knew that Charles’ help was going to be invaluable. And so, although I had not met Menzies before, I asked to see him as soon as possible. I told him that I understood that my chap Frank had upset him, but that I would very much like him to stay because he was one of the ablest men I knew. ‘That’s alright, then,’ said Menzies. ‘I’ll stand anything if a man’s efficient—he can stay!’ This episode, which looked so disastrous, in fact put me into cordial contact with Menzies, to the benefit of my standing in the organization.

  Despite such distractions, of course, we were in full cry against the beams. In my report I had suggested a way in which we might bomb the stations using the beams themselves, because a beam station hardly ever emits a single beam, but usually a fan of beams of which one points in the right direction and the others out to the side. So if an aircraft could fly down the main beam and drop a stick of bombs which would ignite as flares when they hit the ground, the result should be a line pointing to the station. If another aircraft flew down one of the side beams, the result should be a second line intersecting with the first at the exact location of the station. Other bombers could then bomb the intersection by normal visual aiming.

  Sir Philip Joubert was keen that such measures should be employed, and he minuted the Deputy Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal A. T. Harris, to this effect. ‘Bert,’ as Harris was generally known on the Air Staff, was notorious for writing pungent minutes—I was told that one of them read ‘In order to get on in the Army, you have to look like a horse, think like a horse and smell like a horse!’ And he gave a similarly pungent reply to Joubert. Among other things he said, ‘Are we not tending to lose our sense of proportion over these German beams?… We use no beams ourselves but we bomb just as successfully as the Germans bomb, deep into Germany.… I do not agree that the beams are in fact a serious menace to this country, or that they have proved to be in the past. They are simply aids to navigation, and it is within our experience that such aids are not indispensable to the successful prosecution of bombing expeditions. I would go further and say that they are not even really useful.… Long may the Bosch beam upon us!’ The date of that minute was 1st February 1941, and I took a copy wondering whether its writer would one day see the light. On 22nd February 1942 he went to Bomber Command as the man selected to introduce the new policy of bombing by the radio aids about which he had been so scathing.

  The final twist to this chapter came from the recirculation of my X-beam report. When the original copies were being recalled, the duty fell to officers who were judged reliable enough to handle them and who were already in the Eni
gma picture. Winterbotham’s staff were therefore involved, and in particular Harold Blyth who had been of so much help to me. By luck, he was detailed to collect Lywood’s copy, and he recounted to me the exchange that then took place. On learning his mission, Lywood laughed and said that the doctors were now in trouble, and that he personally had caused the report to be recalled. ‘That’s very interesting, sir,’ said Harold, ‘but please may I have your copy?’ ‘No,’ said Lywood, ‘I was the one who had it recalled so I don’t see why I should give mine up.’ I‘m sorry, sir, but I have the Chief of Air Staff’s orders to collect your copy.’ ‘But it’s very useful to me,’ said Lywood. ‘It’s got a lot of information in it, and what’s more, I have got all my own comments written in it, the ones I am going to shoot up Jones with. I can’t possibly give it up.’

  Although Lywood was four ranks abovehim, Harold persisted loyally, ‘I’m sorry, sir, the Chief of Air Staff said nothing about comments, but I have his orders to collect your copy. If you don’t believe it, please telephone the Director of Intelligence.’ Lywood had little alternative, and the Director of Intelligence confirmed Harold’s statement. After further protest Lywood made it a condition that he should put his copy in a sealed envelope to be taken by Harold to the Director of Intelligence and kept sealed by the latter until the time came for re-issue. This arrangement having been made, Lywood gave Harold the envelope and then, as Harold was leaving his room, said, ‘By the way, which Section do you come from?’ ‘AI 1C, sir.’ ‘AI 1C,’ said Lywood, ‘isn’t that where Jones works?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ said Harold, saluting, ‘I am his personal assistant. Good afternoon, sir.’

  I do not know exactly what happened next but the Director of Intelligence’s office sent all the collected reports back to me. There was none in a sealed envelope, and yet they were all there. Indeed there was Lywood’s copy, out of its envelope, and I could only assume that the Director of Intelligence wanted me to see it.

  Comments were passionately sprinkled all through it. In the section describing the imaginary German conference, Lywood had risen to the bait about the uselessness of radio aids to navigation, and had adorned my own remark with, ‘The navigation officer might also have pointed to success with astro navigation methods and the increasing success in finding targets by dropping flares as practised by the British.’ As we have seen, this was widely believed by the Air Staff at the time, and even by Tizard, as he had said at Churchill’s Knickebein meeting. But, already, I was beginning to collect evidence that our bombing raids on Germany were rarely finding their targets.

  As I read the next comment by Lywood on my conference, I was reminded of Thomas Henry Huxley’s remark on Wilberforce’s outburst in the famous British Association debate on evolution, ‘The Lord hath delivered him.’ For what Lywood had written was this: ‘This sort of play-acting in a report of this nature, if advisable at all, would be more useful if the characters had some real experience of their jobs and were not merely puppets of one inexperienced young scientist’s mind.’ All I had to do was to write underneath, with due acknowledgement, Pitt’s reply to Walpole: ‘The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the Honourable Gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall attempt neither to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I shall be one of those whose follies shall cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience!’

  When the time came for the report1 to be re-issued on the more limited circulation approved by Portal I sent back the appropriate copies to the Director of Intelligence with a minute saying that I understood that the Principal Deputy Director of Signals was extremely anxious to have his original copy back, because it contained some valuable comments. If the Director would be good enough to look through it, he would see that I was at least as anxious that the Principal Deputy Director of Signals should have his wish.

  Tempers ran very high for a time, especially because Lywood had circulated a ‘refutation’ of my report which was full of inaccuracies.

  In the end Lindemann was brought in to try to make peace between me and Lywood. It was a strange role for him, but he did his best. ‘Now admit it,’ he said to me. ‘You lost your temper with them and said things you didn’t mean. I know, because I’ve done the same myself.’ It was very rare for him to make such an admission, and I much appreciated the effort that it must have cost him. But I told him that I had not lost my temper and that I meant everything that I had said. But I added that I now felt that I had had my revenge, and related how I had dealt with the charge of youth and inexperience.

  We happened to be going the same way from Cabinet Offices for lunch, and we walked together as far as the Haymarket, where he stopped to turn into the Carlton. He told me that he had a lady to take to lunch. ‘What, you, Prof!’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he replied and, with a jaunty wave of his umbrella, ‘You know, the atrocious crime.…’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wotan’s Other Eye

  MY REPORT on the X-Gerät had emphasized that there was yet another system in the offing which, as related earlier, seemed to be called Wotan, and which involved a beam plus a ranging system, the latter very possibly being on the lines suggested by the Oslo Report. This suspicion had been strengthened when on 6th October an Enigma message to a new station ‘Wotan II’, somewhere on the Hague peninsula (north-west of Cherbourg), said ‘TARGET NO. 1 FOR Y CO-ORDINATES 50 DEGREES 41 MINUTES 49.2 SECONDS N 2 DEGREES 14 MINUTES 21.2 SECONDS W’. The co-ordinates were those of the Armoured Corps Depot at Bovington Camp in Dorset, and they indicated a very significant difference from the X system. In the latter a series of beam directions were always sent out, each station being instructed to set its beam in the specified direction. In the new system, which may have been called Y as a successor to X, the position of the target was given to a single station, and so presumably this station had the entire means of directing the bomber to the target. The easiest way of doing this would be by determining the bearing and range of the target, and then getting the bomber to fly along a beam directed over the target until it was at the correct range for releasing its bombs, in the way that I had three months before conjectured for Wotan.

  A few nights later Bovington was attacked by two aircraft. They were not very accurate in direction, but were good as regards range. We had little evidence of any further attacks but our listening service began to report beams on frequencies of between 40 and 50 Megacycles per second which had quite different characteristics from those associated with Knickebein and the X-beams. Instead of right and left signals being labelled by dashes and dots, the signals were of equal duration, but there was a short pause in transmission and one signal, say the right, came immediately after the pause and then the other signal followed, in the sequence: pause, right, left, pause, right, left, pause, and so on. We gradually unravelled these new beams, which had been designed specifically to work a beam-flying indicator in the aircraft without the pilot having to listen to them. All he needed to do was to watch the instrument indicate whether he was to the right or left or accurately on the beam itself. As it turned out, such a beam was even easier to jam than either of the other two systems, but we did not realize this until relatively late in the battle. What attracted our interest, of course, was to find out whether the ranging system was indeed like that foreshadowed in the Oslo Report, and it was not long before we were able to confirm this suspicion.

  The aircraft using the new system were not from KGr100 but from Third Gruppe of KG 26, commanded by an outstanding officer, Major Viktor von Lossberg. The scientist in charge was Dr. Plendl who to some extent was the German counterpart of T. L. Eckersley. When I discovered this I asked the latter what he thought of Plendl, and met with the reply, ‘He’s not much good—he bases his theory on experiment!’ I talked to Dr. Plendl after the war, and he told me that he had been responsible for the development of the X system, which he handed over to Kuenhold while he himself went on to develop the Y system. He had tried
out the measuring principle at Rechlin in 1938, and in 1939 had started to develop the ground stations. Flight tests had only started in the spring of 1940, and so the Oslo Report had warned us of the Y system before any of the equipment was in the air.

  Plendl was proud of having taken the system into operational use within six months but thanks to the Oslo Report we were on the lookout for the Y transmissions, which we were quickly able to find and thus devise countermeasures. These were already being prepared when a KG26 aircraft was shot down near Eastleigh on 19th January 1941. The aircraft was so badly damaged that we could only see that it carrried equipment resembling but not identical to the X-Gerät. All members of the crew were killed, and almost the only useful relic was the radio operator’s notebook, charred at the edges, which Felkin sent to me. This included two handwritten tables of figures, of which the first ran:

  Loge 244 142 10

  Schmalstigel 454 149 11

  Bruder 372 120 11

  Süden 272 117 11

  Bild 405 137 11

  Rückflug.

  Charles Frank and I were able to make sense of the table on the basis that we knew that III/KG26’s home airfield was at Poix, 20 miles southwest of Amiens. We also knew that Loge was the German code name for London, just as ‘Korn’ had been for Coventry, and our interpretation was:

  Objective Distance to Poix Rhumb bearing to Poix Magnetic Variation