by R. V. Jones
What, of course, my explanation assumed was that every Giant Würzburg was so accurately made and performed so well that its absolute accuracy was good enough for it to tell where the bomber was with sufficient precision for its plots to marry up with those of a second Würzburg, at least within the error which would still bring the fighter close enough to the bomber for either a visual or an airborne radar contact, i.e. not much more than a kilometre.
It turned out that my interpretation was the correct one, and it was not the only surprise that we received of the same kind. Later in 1942, for example, we discovered a new form of German radar installation on the Channel coast, which was much bigger than Freya, and which I believed to be used for long-range detection. Because of its appearance I called the new equipment a ‘Hoarding’, because it resembled the kind of erection on which large bill posters are displayed on major roads; the Germans, because of its size, called it ‘Mammut’ (Mammoth). When I directed T.R.E.’s attention to the new equipment, they listened for it and found that, as we had guessed, its radar characteristics were very similar to those of Freya, so that the extra performance was being obtained from the same transmitting and receiving equipment, through the extra directing power of the larger aerial array.
However, our experts concluded that it was not a simple radar system but one that was intended for precision long-range bombing, and they backed their argument by the fact that the radio frequency and the pulse repetition rate were far more stable than would be required for ordinary radar purposes, and would only be necessary where extremely accurate range determination was necessary, such as determining the absolute position of an aircraft relative to a ground target. By this time there was more than one Mammut on the Channel coast, and every one had this same stability. It was not easy to challenge the experts on matters of technical detail, when these were supported by rational argument, but I got them to agree that the ordinary Freyas were intended merely for radar and not for long-range bombing; I then asked them to go out and check how stable the Freyas were, because I suspected that the high stablility that we had observed was merely another example of German thoroughness and precision, even where it was not required. A fortnight later the experts came back and told me that I was right: the stability of every German radar station was better than that of the best instruments that we had available to check them. In fact, Martin Ryle, afterwards to win a Nobel Prize for Radioastronomy, was one of our observers, and he told me that ever afterwards if he wanted to know whether a radar transmission was British or German, all he had to do was to check its stability.
I had come to have a ‘feel’ for the way the Germans did things. They would take simple ideas, and put them straight into practice no matter what technical effort was involved, because they had a far greater command of precision engineering than we had (some notable exceptions such as Rolls Royce apart). When we contemplated a development we would take the simple idea, look for the technical snags in the way of its realization, and think of ways of getting round them without having to go to the trouble of great precision of design or workmanship. In the end, I suspect that we often took as much trouble in avoiding the difficulties as the Germans did in overcoming them by good workmanship; as it turned out in the War, the advantage in the end lay with us, because while the German equipment was technically very good, it was also less adaptable, and we could more easily change ours to meet a new situation.
If the German night interception procedure seemed unduly elaborate, the precision of the Giant Würzburg was not entirely wasted on the war: in 1945 specimens were brought to Britain and America and converted to radio telescopes for radioastronomy. Another specimen that remained on site in Holland was used by Dr. van de Hulst to discover the radiation coming in from the hydrogen atoms in the spiral arms of our galaxy on a wavelength of about 21 centimetres.
As soon as I saw Tony Hill’s photographs of the Domburg Giants, with their lattice-like frames for the paraboloids, I was seized by a feeling that I had seen that kind of construction before: where was it? Then, in the spring of 1943 we heard a rumour that the paraboloids were made at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constanz. That was the clue: the old Zeppelin works! What I had been reminded of were photographs of the skeletons of shot-down Zeppelins in the 1914-18 war. A photographic sortie over the works showed them surrounded by scores of Giant paraboloids. I showed the evidence to Lindemann, now Lord Cherwell, and on 22nd June—on Churchill’s personal intervention—the works were attacked by No. 5 Group of Bomber Command; many paraboloids were destroyed and no aircraft were lost because they flew straight through to North Africa, to the bewilderment of the German nightfighters who were waiting, as usual, to catch them on the way back from the target. As we shall see, we had unconsciously struck a blow at more than the Würzburgs.
As I write this book and look at Tony Hill’s pictures of the Bruneval Würzburg and the Domburg Giants, I am once again amazed by the precision of his photography. Just two photographs on each occasion, one full view and one profile, almost in the centre on each exposure from an aircraft travelling at more than three hundred miles an hour and the photographs taken over the shoulder. I was to be acquainted with him for less than a year, and yet in that time I came to know him well, boyish ambitions and misdeeds and all, with his exceptional perseverence, skill and courage. Twice I had the pleasure of writing citations, first for the Bar to his D.F.C. after Bruneval and then for his D.S.O. after Domburg. And then on Trafalgar Day 1942 I had a dread telephone call from Wing Commander MacNeill, the Operations Officer at Coastal Command who supervised photographic activities. He simply said, ‘Tony Hill has not come back from a sortie on le Creusot. Can you find out what has happened?’
On 17th October 94 Lancasters had made a daylight raid on the Schneider armament works at le Creusot, and Bomber Command was anxious to check the results. On the following day the weather was bad and only low level photography was possible, so Tony Hill flew a round trip of more than 1,700 miles and took low obliques. On his return it was found that his camera had been loaded with previously exposed film. His friend Gordon Hughes went out on 19th October, but his photographs showed mainly the undamaged side of the works. Bomber Command—which had been complaining that it did not have a big enough share of photographic reconnaissance—pressed for full cover, and on 21st October Tony Hill went out again, considering the sortie so dangerous that he would not ask any of his subordinates to do it. This time the German guns were ready for him, and he broke his back in the crash.
Bill Dunderdale, our liaison with the French, found that Tony was in hospital, badly injured, and we organized a Resistance party to get him out. It was an occasion when I would have gone myself if it would have helped, but I arranged for the Resistance men to carry a message from me so that he would know that it was safe to go with them. I do not know how far the attempt got, but Andrew Brookes in Photo Reconnaissance says, ‘A special aircraft was laid on to fly him home, but as he was being carried out to it he died’.
I felt his loss more than any other in the whole war. Another young pilot, G. R. Crakenthorp, volunteered to take over the low oblique work, modelling himself—as he told me—on Tony Hill. He could not have done better.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The Bruneval Raid
THE PROBLEMS of dealing with the renewed radio beam threat on the one hand and of penetrating the German night defences on the other were so fascinating that we hardly noticed how depressing the general situation was as the winter of 1941/42 wore on. The fact that America had been drawn into the war on 7th December 1941 of course gave us great hope for an ultimate victory. But the success of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse on 10th December showed that battleships could not survive against bombers, despite Navy doctrine. And, if this were not already enough, Barham was sunk by torpedoes; and Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were both settled on the bottom in Alexandria, having been put out of action by two-man torpedoes by the Italian Navy. We had
been amazed by the capture of the first riders of these underwater chariots and could hardly believe the story, since it required courage of a type that we did not normally associate with the Italians. Once again we could not avoid respecting courage wherever we found it, even when it was being exerted so spectacularly to our disadvantage. To add to the gloom, there was the fall of Singapore on 15th February 1942. Some of us had long been worried about the Japanese threat, but had met with the argument that Singapore was three thousand miles from Japan—to which I always pointed out that it was six thousand miles from Britain.
A further exasperation had occurred three days before when on 11th/12th February Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, along with Prinz Eugen, steamed up the Channel. There are many accounts of this event, includ-the Official Enquiry which was published as Command Paper 6775 in 1946, on which Watson-Watt commented at some length in Three Steps to Victory, and Adolf Galland’s account from the German side in The First and the Last. I was only on the sidelines for this episode, since no problem of Scientific Intelligence was involved; but it was impressed on my memory because of the morning of 11th February Colonel Wallace (who had been such a help with his Radio Interception Unit in Queen Anne’s Mansions when we were taking the German radar plots) called to see me. I can remember his imploring tone as he said ‘Will you chaps take me seriously? No one else will. For days our radar sets down on the coast have been jammed, and the jamming is getting worse every day. I am sure that the Germans are up to something!’ Wallace was referring to the Army radar sets under the control of Home Forces, and he had reported the increase in jamming to the proper radar organization, but it seems that the increase from day to day was so gradual that most operators failed to realize how intense it had now become.
I was reminded of the particular technique of practical joking which which may be termed ‘acclimatization by slow change’. A classic example was perpetuated by one of the most famous of American experimental physicists, R. W. Wood, for many years Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Some of his jokes were simple and effective, such as leaving a suitcase on a railway platform with a large gyroscope spinning inside it, so as to disconcert anyone who picked it up and who attempted to carry it round a corner. As for acclimatization by slow change, Wood at one stage in his early career worked in Paris and lived in a block of flats. He observed that the lady in the flat below kept a small tortoise in a window-box. He secured a supply of tortoises of various sizes and by means of a grappling device consisting of wire at the end of a broom pole he fished out the original tortoise and replaced it by one that was slightly larger. Over the course of a week or so, by successive small increases of size of tortoise, the lady was convinced that her pet was growing at an astonishing rate. Knowing that Wood was a scientist of some kind, she consulted him and Wood at first referred her to a French scientist in the same block, hoping to make a fool of him, too. When the scientist refused to take any interest, Wood then suggested that the lady might write to a newspaper about it. This she did, with the result that the tortoise became the object of attention by reporters; and when these were well and truly ‘hooked’ Wood reversed his nightly procedure, and to everyone’s astonishment the tortoise gradually shrank to its original size.
This is just what the Germans did to us across the Channel, and what no one but Wallace spotted. I knew him well enough to accept his story completely, and I told him that I would get Derek Garrard to accompany him down to the coastal radar stations on the following day, 12th February—the very day that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau sailed through the Straits. The German radar officers, headed by General Wolfgang Martini, had subtly increased the intensity of their jamming over a period so that we would get acclimatized to it, without realizing that it was now so intense that our radar was almost useless. Once again they had scored against us.
To make things worse, the German warships should have been spotted leaving Brest, where they had been for nearly a year, and on which we kept a continuous watch. But despite the fact that there was more than one appreciation that they might make a dash up the Channel in the period between 10th and 15th February, it proved to be yet another example of a point made by Francis Bacon in his essay Of Delayes: ‘Nay, it were better, to meet some Dangers halfe way, though they come nothing neare, than to keepe too long a watch, upon their Approaches: For if a Man watch too long, it is odds he will fall asleepe’. In detail, the break-out was missed because of the failure of a radar set in a Coastal Command aircraft, which should otherwise have detected the ships, but had the watching system been on its toes and not perhaps lulled into dullness by months of waiting, some reserve arrangement might have been brought into operation.
One comic item was revealed in the post-mortem into why the watch on the battle cruisers had slipped. A report had indeed come in from France on the night of 11th February that they had moved out of dock, but it was not passed on by a duty officer. When asked why, he said he had already read it in a London evening paper and therefore assumed that the Admiralty knew of it.
The shock to our defences caused by the German ships getting so far up the Channel before they were spotted was such that all normal chains of command broke down. I was told that there were even air marshals sitting on one another’s desks during the course of the day thinking of individual pilots whom they might telephone and ask to find the ships which, even after their first spotting, were lost several times. After the war, I met Captain Giessler, who had been Navigating Officer on Scharnhorst for the operation. He had been appointed as my temporary A.D.C. when the Germans invited me as Guest of Honour to their Radar Conference in 1955. He told me that their most miserable half-hour was when they were hove-to, not very far past Dover, after they had struck a mine and were stationary for half-an-hour. Fortunately, there was low cloud and in the entire half-hour not a single British aircraft found them.
Morale was to some extent restored a fortnight or so later by our successful raid on Bruneval. It was undertaken as a result of Charles Frank’s alertness and Tony Hill’s superb skill in photographing the Bruneval Würzburg. Not long after we received the photographs I had happened to say ‘Look, Charles, we could get in there!’ pointing to the fact that although the Würzburg was on top of a 400 foot cliff, there was a continuous slope down to a small beach a few hundred yards away. I had sometimes noticed the legend ‘Descent des Anglais’ on French coastal maps, recording that at some time in the marauding past British forces had landed at the indicated spots, and it might be possible to add a similar legend at Bruneval. However, I doubt whether by myself I would have asked for a raid to be made, partly because I disliked risking lives unless it was absolutely necessary, and partly because I had developed something of a professional pride in solving all the characteristics of a German equipment before I actually had it in my hands.
What decided me was a chat with W. B. Lewis, the Deputy Superintendent of the Telecommunications Research Establishment, who by that time had seen the photographs. He told me that if I were inclined to suggest a raid, T.R.E. would strongly support me. Added to that was the fact that it had been part of Churchill’s policy ever since Dunkirk to occupy as much German attention as possible by isolated raids, and there was no doubt that useful information might well be obtained from this particular target. The idea was therefore passed from the Air Staff to Combined Operations Headquarters, whose Chief was now Lord Louis Mountbatten. He and his Headquarters accepted the suggestion enthusiastically, and plans were put in hand to mount the raid as soon as possible.
One of the prerequisites for the raid was a detailed knowledge of the dispositions of German forces to guard the Bruneval locality and the radar station. Signals were accordingly sent out from London to the French Resistance, and the responsibility for reconnaissance fell to Gilbert Renault, known to us as ‘Rémy’. When France collapsed, and with his wife expecting their fifth child, he had come across with one of his brothers to England and joined General de Gaulle. Such was the spirit in
his family that before the war ended his mother and five of his sisters had suffered imprisonment by the Germans, two of them in Ravensbrück; his brother Philippe, also deported, was killed in Lübeck Harbour a few hours before it was taken by British troops. After a short stay in England, Rémy returned to France to organize intelligence networks, having been given the whole of the French coast from Brest to the Spanish frontier to cover. Then, when the network covering North France from Dunkirk to Brest was destroyed by the Germans, Rémy was asked to build it up afresh.
One of the men he recruited was Roger Dumont, known as ‘Pol’, who proceeded on Rémy’s instructions to reconnoitre the Bruneval terrain. This he did, along with ‘Charlemagne’ (Charles Chauvenau, a le Havre garage proprietor). Together they established the positions of German strong points and the troop dispositions: they also made the important discovery that despite German notices to the contrary, the beach was not mined. All their information came back to Britain in time for the planning of the raid. Rémy survived the war but Pol was betrayed, cruelly, by the congratulatory message that he received after Bruneval; he died before a German firing squad in 1943.
As the plans for the raid developed, it was decided not to go in by sea in the first place but to attempt to capture the Würzburg by paratroops, who would also capture the beach so as to make a landfall for the Navy, through which the captured equipment could be evacuated. Obviously it was important that someone with technical knowledge should go on the raid and, much to his credit, Derek Garrard volunteered to go. Of course, as soon as he had volunteered, I had also to do so; but I was distinctly relieved when Portal forbade either me or any of my staff to go because we were in possession of so much information that we should be a bad security threat if captured. I tried to counter this by pointing out that we might also be all the more successful in misleading the Germans by giving them false clues about our own developments if we fell into their hands, but Portal wisely refused to entertain this argument. It was, however, agreed that a scientist who was less in the general security picture than we were should accompany the Naval force, so that he could land if the military situation were favourable, and for this D. H. Priest of T.R.E. was selected—I had known him as one of the original Bawdsey team with a penchant for high-powered cars. But the dismantling of the equipment might well have to be done by someone dropping with the paratroops and therefore at greater risk, and it was decided to call for a volunteer from the flight sergeant radar mechanics who manned our own radar stations.
