Most Secret War

by R. V. Jones

  Victor Tait, who was Director of Radar on the Air Staff, interviewed a possible volunteer on 1st February 1942. This was Flight Sergeant C. W. H. Cox, who before the war had been a cinema projectionist, and who had never been in a ship or an aeroplane. He was married with a few weeks’ old baby, and all he knew was that he had volunteered for a dangerous operation that required the services of a radar mechanic. Within a few days he found himself practising parachute jumps and committed to the Bruneval operation. One awkward aspect of the plan was that he should accompany ‘C’ Company of the Second Parachute Battalion, whose personnel, of course, would all be in Army uniform whilst—if nothing were done about it—Cox would be in Air Force uniform. Garrard drew my attention to this, whereupon I did my utmost to get Cox into Army uniform for the operation, and also given an Army number. Otherwise, if he were captured, he would clearly be ‘odd man out’ and thus the object of special attention from German interrogators.

  It seems incredible, even at this distance of time, but the War Office adamantly refused to co-operate, with the result that Cox had to go in his Air Force uniform. The only thing that I could do was to see Cox personally, tell him what had happened, and warn him about the danger if he were captured. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, sir’ he said, and then went on to tell me that he proposed to say that he was really the Despatcher in the aircraft and in a moment of enthusiasm had dropped with the paratroops. I told him that I doubted whether the German interrogators would ‘wear that one’, and he regretfully agreed. So I went on to warn him about the dangers of special interrogation, saying ‘Don’t be worried too much about physical torture, because I don’t think that they are using it. What you have to be tremendously careful about is being thrown into solitary confinement in a cold damp cell, with nothing but bread and water for a few days. Then a new German officer will come round on a tour of inspection, and will himself protest about the way that you are being treated. He will take you out of the cell, and explain that he will try to make amends for your bad treatment, giving you cigarettes, a decent meal, a warm fire and something to drink. After a while you will feel such a glow and so grateful to this very decent officer that when he starts asking you questions you will hardly be able to resist telling him anything he wants to know. So for God’s sake, Cox, be on your guard against any German officer who is kind to you!’ I can still remember Cox standing to attention and replying ‘I can stand a lot of kindness, sir!’—that was the sort of man he was.

  Cox’s job, of course, was to examine the Würzburg and, if possible to dismantle the key units: but it first had to be captured. This was what ‘C’ Company of ‘2 Para’ had to do: commanded by Major J. D. Frost, they were largely drawn from Scottish Regiments, including the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (Lieutenant E. C. B. Charteris), the Black Watch (Captain John Ross, Second-in-Command, Company Sergeant Major Strachan and Sergeant Jimmy Sharp) and the Seaforths (Sergeant Grieve) with an Engineer Detachment under Lieutenant D. Vernon. The total force to be dropped was about 120 strong, and was carried in twelve Whitley aircraft. Detailed accounts of the raid are to be found in The Red Beret by Hilary St. George Saunders and The Bruneval Raid by George Millar, himself the holder of the D.S.O. which he won for escaping and working with the French Resistance. Roughly, the plan was to drop the force in three components inland from the Würzburg (Plate 12). The first component (Captain Ross and Lieutenant Charteris) was to advance towards the beach and capture it, the second (Major Frost, Lieutenants Naumoff and Young) to head towards the cliff and capture the Würzburg, and the third (Lieutenant Timothy) to act as rear-guard and reserve for the other two. When the Würzburg was captured an Engineer party under Lieutenant Vernon with Flight Sergeant Cox was to advance and dismantle it.

  The raiding party was ready for action by 20th February—it had rehearsed as much of the operation as possible, partly with the aid of a scale model made by the Photographic Interpretation Unit at Medmenham and partly at full-scale on the south coast of England. Rehearsals had not gone well, but the operation had to be made within a few days, since a full moon was necessary for visibility on landing, and the tide had to be right for getting the landing craft in to the beach. A further limitation was wind—the night needed to be relatively calm if casualties were to be avoided on landing.

  Night after night the operation had to be ‘stood down’ because the weather was unsuitable. In fact, Thursday 26th February had been originally reckoned as the last night of the Moon, but when weather again destroyed any prospect of operations, it was decided to risk the raid on 27th February if the weather changed, rather than wait for a further month. The morning was bright and frosty: the wind had dropped: the raid was ‘on’. The Naval relief force headed into the Channel during the afternoon; some hours later the paratroops were played into their aircraft by a piper and took off. I was already home, wondering how many would return in the morning.

  It would have been remarkable if the raid had gone entirely to plan, for time had been too short to get everything right. What in fact went wrong was that two aircraft dropped their ‘sticks’ of paratroops about a mile-and-a-half south of the intended position, and these were the sticks that had been intended to capture the beach. They were under the command of Lieutenant Charteris who quickly realized that they were badly out of position, and succeeded in establishing the direction in which he would have to advance towards the beach. He and his twenty men set off at the double.

  The entire terrain was covered with several inches of snow but the parties that were intended to capture the Würzburg (Young’s) and the adjacent house (Frost’s) had no difficulty in finding their way. When Frost’s party arrived at the front door of the house there was a moment’s hesitation when someone said ‘What do we do now?’ and another replied ‘Ring the bell!’

  Flight Sergeant Cox afterwards gave the following account of his experiences:

  I met Mr. Vernon at forming-up point at approx. 12.35. We proceeded under Mr. Vernon’s direction to pull trolleys up towards house over various barbed wire defences and through snow, which was rather rough going.

  In about 200 yards Mr. Vernon went on to house and said we must make our way to left hand side of house and conceal ourselves until he whistled or shouted for us. This we did, and lay in a small ridge for what seemed to be quite a long while, but was really a very short time. Then one of the Sappers went over and said we must go through and meet up with the equipment immediately. Then we all went forward and through some more barbed wire to the equipment.

  I saw Mr. Vernon and he said ‘this is it!’.

  The barbed wire was not more than 2 ft. high, a criss-cross network about l0ft thick. Range of distance round equipment about 50 yards radius.

  In view of the obstacles, it would have been better to have made arrangements for carrying the equipment and tools etc. in haversacks, rather than on trolleys.

  I surveyed the apparatus and found it to my surprise just like the photograph. The first point of interest was the aerial, which I looked at, and one of the Sappers proceeded to cut it from its centre. I went round the back tracing the aerial lead to the top box of the paraboloid. A compartment behind the paraboloid contained a big box, at the top; two smaller boxes underneath; at the right hand side of the small boxes was a panel of push buttons, and in the base of the compartment was a thing which appeared to be a large metal rectifier, but this had round fins instead of square. I then proceeded to attack the equipment with the tools to try to get it out without damaging it. This proved unsuccessful except in one case, which came away easily, so we proceeded to rip the rest of the stuff out by sheer force.

  By this time the soldiers were getting impatient, and we were told to withdraw. During the whole period of working at the equipment, bullets were flying much too close to be pleasant, but while we were working at the back of the paraboloid we were protected by the metal of the paraboloid itself.

  I noticed on the paraboloid before the aerial was cut out, on the left han
d side, slightly above centre, the letters W.D. and a row of lines, horizontal lines arranged in a vertical scale, and against each line was a number about an inch apart.

  The whole equipment was very solidly made and turned on its base with the slightest pressure. All leads were sealed into it in concentric plugs and sockets. The aerial socket ended in a type of attachment known to us as a Niphan plug.

  The mounting was not on wheels, but looked as if it had been mounted on wheels and the wheels removed. There was no barbed wire on the boxes surrounding the equipment. We retired when the Army made us, and found that the equipment could be carried much better on our shoulders than by the trolley, so the trolley was abandoned. On coming down the slope we were met by a hail of machine gunfire from the opposite side of the cliff and we tried to dig ourselves in. Mr. Vernon told me to take charge of the Sappers while he went back with the rear guard. We lay on the bank for about 15 mins. and then received a hail from the village that the beach defences had been taken. We made our way down the slope to the beach and found we had to wait, so we stowed the equipment in a safe position under the cliff and as there was nothing else we could do, we just sat down and waited.

  After about half an hour the Navy came and we got the equipment aboard, with the wounded, and after the rearguard had time to make the beach and get into the boats, we pushed off. Slight enemy fire was directed against us from the cliff tops but was soon silenced by Bren guns on the boats.

  The withdrawal of the Würzburg party was delayed because the beach was still in German hands owing to the misplacing of Charteris’ men in the original drop. Only two of the four sections (of ten men each) intended for the attack on the beach were therefore at the assembly point. Sergeant Sharp was in charge of these two sections, and he decided to attack as best he could with one section while he sent the other section under Sergeant Tasker to take the German posts on the cliff half-way between the Würzburg and the beach. Sharp worked down towards the beach and reached the position on the German wire from which he was to have given supporting fire to Charteris’ sections if they had been in position. In their absence he had decided to attack on his own, when he heard the shout ‘CABAR FEIDH’, the war-cry of the Seaforths, which told him that somehow Charteris’ men had got into position. With much resource, Charteris had succeeded in finding where he had been misplaced on landing and had led his men northwards at the trot for a mile and a half along the road to Bruneval and round the village to their prescribed position. Their war-cry was the signal that they were attacking, and Sharp now knew that his section could revert to its original function of covering fire. The guardroom and strong point at the beach were captured, the Navy could come in, and the raiders with their booty and prisoners could be evacuated. Among those who had fallen in Charteris’ assault was a Gordon Highlander and an inveterate gambler, Corporal Stewart, whose pockets had been full of his winnings as he took off for the raid. Finding that he had been hit in the head, and thinking that the wound was fatal, he called to his nearest friend ‘I’ve had it, Jock, take my wallet!’ Lance Corporal Freeman (later a senior magistrate of the City of Nottingham) took it and examined Stewart’s head, telling him that the wound was only a gash. ‘Then gie us back my bluidy wallet!’ said Stewart and got to his feet.

  By 0235 hours on 28th February the operation was nearly over, and most of the force embarked. They left behind two men killed (Privates MacIntyre and Scott) and six missing (all of whom survived the war); the German report on the raid recorded the German losses as five killed, two wounded, and five missing. Two prisoners were brought back, one of them being an operator of the Würzburg equipment, as we had hoped. In his efforts to conceal himself on a patch free from snow, he had slipped over the edge of the cliff and fell about fifteen feet before he could save himself by grasping a projecting rock. He managed to climb back to the top, but was seen against the snow and captured.

  When I arrived in my office the following morning a signal had been received telling us of the successful execution of the raid, and that we could expect the captured equipment in the Air Ministry on the afternoon of Monday 2nd March. That morning I had agreed to go to the Headquarters of No. Eleven Group at Uxbridge, to advise them what they could do about the German radar, which was detecting the ‘Rhubarb’ fighter sweeps the Group was carrying out in the Pas de Calais. When I arrived I met a party headed by Air Commodore Harcourt Smith in the chair and including Wing Commander ‘Sunshine’ Wells, in peacetime a grammar school headmaster from Gravesend way, but now Chief Intelligence Officer of the Group. My hosts were adamant that the Germans must have developed a new form of radar that could detect bombs in aircraft. When I asked them for their evidence they said that they carried out two kinds of sweep. One included a few Blenheim bombers, which represented the ‘teeth’ while the other was exactly similar, except that it consisted purely of fighters. The main aim of these sweeps was to get the German fighters to come up and fight, in the hope of gradually wearing them down and establishing air superiority. This had at first been fairly successful but now the fighters would only come up if the bombers were present and the problem therefore was how the Germans could detect six or so bombers in the presence of fifty or a hundred fighters. The theory was that somehow the German radar could see the bombs in the aircraft.

  When I assured my hosts that as far as I knew about German radar, or indeed any other radar for that matter, it did not have the ability to achieve such a feat of detection, I was then challenged to say how the Germans could possibly know the difference between the one kind of sweep and the other. There was a silence while I thought, and then such an obvious solution occurred to me that I hardly dared to make it. Finally I said ‘Bombers have not got the speed of fighters. When the fighters are escorting the Blenheims, do they slow down?’ There was a stunned silence broken by Sunshine Wells exclaiming ‘Christ!’ It turned out that when there were no bombers the fighter sweeps were executed at standard fighter speeds, whereas the others were at the slower speeds of bombers so the Germans had a perfectly obvious clue. Thereafter we flew all sweeps at the same speed.

  I then went on to discuss with the Group what could be done about German radar, especially to provoke the German fighters to come up, and I told them of a scheme which I had outlined in my main report at the beginning of the year on German radar which would involve a receiver in an aircraft detecting the pulses from the German radar stations and then sending them back longer, beating echoes to make it look as though a whole formation of aircraft were present. This scheme had so far been dismissed as too elaborate, but I told Eleven Group that if they would press for it, it was technically quite feasible. They did, and the result was a device known as ‘Moonshine’ which was successfully used later in the year.

  After lunch, I went back to Air Ministry as quickly as my old Wolseley car would allow. The Bruneval booty was already in the Air Ministry, and it was obviously much better engineered than our own radar equipment, a fact which was readily admitted by our own radar men in their final report. Cox and his escort had done an excellent job. Only one important component had been left behind, an achievement all the more impressive because they had had only ten minutes at the Würzburg instead of the thirty which had been planned.

  Before the equipment went to T.R.E. at Swanage for detailed examination, we took some of it out to Felkin’s headquarters, to discuss it with the operator who had been taken prisoner, and who was very co-operative. We were disappointed that despite his readiness to help, his technical competence was far lower than that of any of our own operators. In fact, up to that stage in the war, he had had more time in jail than out of it. We spent the afternoon sitting on the floor with him, fitting the various pieces together, and listening to his comments. On his last leave he had remarked to his wife that his station was so isolated that the English might easily make a raid and capture it, and he was now wondering whether she might have been a Fifth Columnist.

  The low technical ability of the operator and
the high engineering standard of the equipment were not altogether dissociated. When I met General Martini, the Head of German Air Signals and Radar, after the war, I told him that these two factors had surprised me, and he pointed out that he had a very low priority in demanding personnel and had to make do with those who were deemed unsuitable for other duties. He had no skilled reserve to draw upon among radio amateurs, as we had, because Hitler had banned amateur radio before the war since it might provide communication links for disaffected organizations. Martini had therefore to ensure that the equipment was so well made, and so easily replaceable if any part broke down, that the system could be operated by relatively unskilled personnel.

  Despite the relative ignorance of the prisoner, which was certainly disappointing, we succeeded in extracting a large amount of information from the raid. For example, various items in the equipment had been replaced at various times, and each of them included a works number and the date of manufacture; and from these I was able to work out that the average rate of production of components was about 150 sets per month which, allowing for the production of spares, indicated that there was a total production of around 100 Würzburgs per month. We also knew by the time of the raid that the Bruneval Würzburg was of an early type, with a simple aerial, and that the later Würzburgs had a spinning aerial which would enable them to determine the direction of the target much more accurately. And we suspected that our main opposition as regards fighter control would come from the larger equipment such as the Americans had photographed in the Berlin Tiergarten; but it was clear that the same electronic components could be used throughout, and we therefore had the vital samples in our hands.