Most Secret War

by R. V. Jones

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  El Hatto

  ALTHOUGH THE Intelligence attack on the German night defences was our main work throughout 1942, we had a wide field of other activities to cover; and there was always the danger that by concentrating exclusively on the German nightfighters, important though they were, we should fail to detect some other and even more important development and so fail to avoid a national disaster. I had no golden rule for this general watch—it depended on having alert colleagues like Charles Frank, Bimbo Norman, Denys Felkin, and Claude Wavell, who had sharp instincts for anything that was odd; we were all so saturated at times that something could have been missed, but I still know of no automatic substitute for the human mind when some new situation has to be faced.

  In the episode which I now recount, the alert mind did not belong to an immediate colleague but, most probably, to Kim Philby. My first assistant, Harold Blyth, had gone to work with him and was very impressed by his ability. Moreover, he was so critical of the way in which M.I.6 was run, and of the abilities of some of its officers, that it seemed a matter of touch and go whether he would be thrown out, at least after the war. So long as the war was on there was always the chance that he would survive on Churchill’s principle that, ‘In war you don’t have to be polite, you just have to be right!’ And Philby had a habit of being right. I think that these characteristics completely prevented any doubts about his ultimate loyalty to the country, if not to various officers in M.I.6.

  Philby’s main task was to watch and frustrate the activities of the Abwehr, the principal German Secret Service. Thanks to another type of cryptographic break, it was clear that that the Abwehr was mounting some kind of operation near Gibraltar, and Philby had the relevant signals sent to me. In his own words from My Silent War, ‘The Abwehr code-name for the operation was Bodden. The Bodden is the name of the narrow strip of water separating the island of Rügen from the German mainland, not far from the wartime scientific research station at Peenemünde. Taken together with additional evidence that the Bodden experts, with their instruments, seemed to be closing in on Algeciras, this seemed a clear enough indication that something affecting the Straits of Gibraltar was brewing. We therefore consulted the formidable Dr. Jones, head of the scientific section of S.I.S., who …’ The adjective ‘formidable’, coming as it did from Philby, was quite a tribute.

  When I looked at the evidence, it seemed peculiarly relevant to my pre-war interests, because it suggested that the Germans were trying to set up a great infra-red burglar alarm across the Straits of Gibraltar to count our ships in and out of the Mediterranean. There were to be three parallel barrages, with infra-red searchlights mounted on the southern coast of the Strait, just west of Perejil Island. The searchlights were directed northwards across the Strait and were to be detected from a point near Algeciras. The distance across the Strait was about ten miles, and I suspect that the Germans might well have found the barrage unreliable because of the ‘twinkling’ that occurs in the disturbed atmosphere near the surface of the ground or sea. Certainly, when the Admiralty had tried similar barrages over much shorter distances for harbour protection this had been found a difficulty. In any event, the Germans were going to supplement this barrage with an infra-red detector rather similar to that which I had made for the aircraft detection trials at Farnborough in 1936 and 1937, but much bigger and therefore with a longer range. This was to be sited near Algeciras, looking southwards over the Strait, to detect any ship with hot exposed parts such as funnels. I arranged for photo reconnaissance of the suspected sites, and these confirmed that they were active. We also had some agents on the ground who were able to supplement in a minor way the information we had obtained from cryptography.

  The problem now was what to do. Obviously the Admiralty had to be brought in, because their activities were clearly the main target for the operation. If we could not stop it going on, our ships would either have to have their funnels lagged and screened, or we should have to provide so many false indications by interrupting the barrage and steaming backwards and forwards across the infra-red detector that the Germans would not be able to see our real activities. The results of Philby’s work and my own were therefore sent to the Director of Naval Intelligence, who passed them up to the First Sea Lord, Sir Dudley Pound. The threat was a serious one, for this was the summer of 1942, and we were hoping to pass many ships into the Mediterranean for Operation Torch, the landing of American and British troops in North West Africa to drive eastwards as the Eighth Army chased the Afrika Korps westwards from Alamein, and we wished to avoid giving the Germans an indication of our build-up.

  As for the fighting in North Africa, Rommel himself had swept eastwards at the end of May and this had resulted in our retreat to el Alamein. His main hold-up had been at Bir Hacheim, which was magnificently held by the Free French. I can still remember Rommel’s signal saying that he was held up by a ‘fanatical resistance at Bir Hacheim’ and that until he had overcome this his right flank was pinioned. It conjured up a picture of the band of men, led by General König of the Cuirassiers, to whom the honour of France still meant something, with a determination to fight to the last. To me, it was the beginning of a French revival that has continued long into the subsequent peace. It is today an encouragement that we, too, could again revive after the age of abdication that has paralysed us since 1945.

  Before proceeding with the Gibraltar narrative, we must also remember the defence of Malta, where three old Gladiators, Faith, Hope and Charity, for a time faced the Luftwaffe alone. I had a little to do with that episode, for the Germans had installed some powerful new jammers on Sicily so as to render our radar on Malta useless. This would, of course, deprive the Malta air defence of any early warning, and a signal arrived in Air Ministry from the Signals Organization in Malta telling us that they were now badly jammed and asking if we could provide any help. I knew that the Germans judged the success of their jamming by listening to our radar transmissions to see whether, for example, they ceased to scan, as they might well do if they could not be used. I therefore signalled Malta to go on scanning as though everything were normal and not to give any kind of clue that they were in difficulty. After a few days the Germans switched their jammers off.

  At the end of the War, I spent several days talking to General Martini, the Director General of Signals of the Luftwaffe, when he was a prisoner-of-war. He had been in his post since 1933, and had a long and detailed memory of the many events in which he and I had been opponents. At one point he specifically asked me about the jamming of Malta, and he told me that he had installed the jammers fully expecting to paralyse the Malta radar, but they seemed to have had no effect. He wanted to know what kind of anti-jamming devices we had installed in our radars so as to render them immune. He laughed ruefully when I told him that he had in fact succeeded, but that I knew the clues on which he would judge his own success, and had therefore advised the Malta radars to pretend that they were still working.

  As for the Gibraltar barrage and the Admiralty, I found myself facing an extraordinary problem. Because of the opposition of their Directorate of Scientific Research, there was still no scientist in the Admiralty in the corresponding position to mine on the Air Staff, and I was in effect doing their Scientific Intelligence for them, in collaboration with part of the Signals Section of the Directorate of Naval Intelligence, N.I.D.9. The Directorate of Scientific Research had, however, to be brought in if countermeasures such as the lagging of ships were to be developed, and so a member of that Directorate was shown the evidence on which my conclusions were based. Actually, there was no need for him to be told that the main source was cryptographic, and N.I.D. certainly did not intend to tell him because of the ultra high grade of security imposed.

  Somehow, though, the First Sea Lord overlooked the security considerations and passed down to the officer concerned some of the raw cryptographic material. This officer was highly conscientious and thought that it was all wrong that such
material should be available and that his superiors in the Directorate of Scientific Research could not be shown it, and he refused to keep the information to himself. An officer from the N.I.D. came to me and asked for my help in persuading the scientist involved that the First Sea Lord had committed an indiscretion, and that the matter was so secret that it must not be revealed. The N.I.D. officer and I saw the scientist concerned but we completely failed to dissuade him from what, according to his own lights, was his duty. We had reached an impasse and my N.I.D. colleague was near desperation, when I said, ‘Well, we had better come clean’.

  I gambled on the distrustful nature of the human mind, and went on, ‘As a matter of fact, we have been telling the First Sea Lord a cock-and-bull story about the cryptography, because we haven’t really broken the German codes at all. What we have actually done is to infiltrate an agent into the German Secret Service headquarters in Madrid, whose position is so delicate that we dare not tell even the First Sea Lord, and so we have made up the cryptographic story. What you have seen are messages alright, but our chap has pinched them from the Abwehr office! What I will do is to write a full account which you can see, and which you can show to your Director if you like—but it must be kept to a very small circle!’

  I returned to my office and wrote a report on ‘German Equipment for Ship Detection in the Straits of Gibraltar’ which started:

  The information upon which this Report is based has been gathered by the S.I.S. through three separate channels: (A) our agent network operating in the Straits area, (B) the technical investigations of Mr. D. J. Garrard, (C) the reports of our ‘el Hatto’ source who has fairly frequent access to the German H.Q. in Madrid and whose duties with the German S.I.S. enable him to visit out-stations from time to time. Since much of the evidence depends upon the reports of this last source, it may be mentioned that although he is non-technical, he has reported faithfully on even more important subjects than the present, and there is a good deal of internal confirmation in his statements. The other agents, in the Straits area, have not the same penetration and can only be relied upon for grosser details such as positions of activity and the passage of large items of equipment.

  This did the trick, for the scientist had found something to justify his suspicions for our reticence, which were now directed towards the duplicity of N.I.D. in kidding the First Sea Lord that we had broken the German code whereas we had really got an agent in the Abwehr. I received the grateful thanks of N.I.D. for extricating them and the First Sea Lord from an awkward situation. The humour of the story lay in the naming of the source as ‘el Hatto’ for Hatto was indeed the name of one of the men at Bletchley who was handling the Abwehr decodes—Mr., now Professor, A. T. Hatto, of the Department of German at Queen Mary College.

  The problem now was to deal with the Abwehr, and it was decided first to make a diplomatic approach to the Spanish Government, in the hope of getting them to stop the German activity. Our Ambassador in Madrid was Sir Samuel Hoare, and we had to brief him by telegrams. This proved a severe challenge because he had no technical knowledge, and yet he had to make a convincing case to the Spanish Government, without providing any clues which, if they were passed on to the Germans, would indicate the true source of our information. It proved a most tedious and delicate process, but in the end it was successful in that we showed the Spaniards enough to give them cold feet about any further support for German operations. The German effort was therefore withdrawn, and our build-up for the autumn offensives in North Africa could proceed without undue risk of our intentions being detected.

  The episode, though, had a further repercussion. The following year I found evidence that the Germans were setting up a station near Lugo in northwest Spain, of the type known as ‘Elektra Sonne’ which would transmit a fan of beams out into the Atlantic and over the Bay of Biscay. This, with a similar station near Brest, would provide a cross pattern of beams by which an aircraft or a U-boat could very easily determine its position. Remembering what difficulty I had had in briefing our Ambassador in the Gibraltar instance, I boggled at having to go through the whole process again for the new station. Happily, the thought occurred to me that we were operating more aircraft over the Bay of Biscay than the Germans were. I therefore telephoned the Chief Navigation Officer at Coastal Command and asked him whether, if I could provide him with a fan of beams from northwest Spain, he could honestly say that Coastal Command could make better use of it than the Germans themselves. He held an enquiry at the Command and two days later called back affirmatively, adding that the Command would very much appreciate the service.

  All that we now had to do was to photograph the station; from the separation between its aerials, and their direction of alignment, the necessary instructions could be worked out. The code name ‘Consol’ was given to this system, and Coastal Command used it with much success. So much so, in fact, that its use was continued for civil purposes after the war. It was beautifully simple, requiring only the necessary charts, a simple receiver and a stop-watch in the aircraft, not special receivers as were necessary for our own systems such as Gee. In fact, it competed successfully with these systems after the war, to Watson-Watt’s disappointment, and has spread throughout the world and is still in operation.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Pineapple

  OF ALL the attempts to emulate the Bruneval raid, the one that had the most lasting effect started with a telephone call from a young officer, Captain Hesketh Pritchard of the Special Operations Executive. He asked if he could come and discuss an operation which he had in mind. At our meeting he told me that he thought that my Unit was doing more than any other to win the war, and that he would like to help us. What he wanted to do was to steal a German night-fighter.

  When the difficulties of his original proposal became clear to him, he pleaded with me to give him a target, and I showed him a picture of a new radio navigational beam station that was probably intended to provide a navigational service for the German nightfighters, but about which we so far knew relatively little. It had been photographed by G. R. Crakenthorp, emulating Tony Hill; actually his aircraft was hit by gunfire while he was taking the photograph, but he then coolly proceeded to ‘stooge around’ over France for another ten minutes, reckoning that if the damage did not make him crash within that time it was probably not serious enough to stop him getting across the Channel with his photograph.

  The photograph, which was aimed as accurately as Tony Hill’s had been, was blurred by aircraft movement; but it was good enough for Hugh Smith to make an accurate sketch. Both photograph and sketch are shown in Plate 15, the former at the bottom left and the latter at bottom centre. The six sketches in the top and middle rows were made of the same object by different agents, and are of interest because they show the kind of material we usually had to deal with: a sketch tests an agent’s ability and technical competence far more than does a verbal description. One sketch, that at middle right, is good: its author is the subject of the latter part of this chapter.

  I told Hesketh Pritchard that if he could get inside the control hut, which was carried on the turntable along with the beam aerial it could be helpful. He reappeared triumphantly two or three days later saying ‘It’s on! From now on, I’m Pineapple!’ It appeared that Pineapple was the name to be given to the operation of getting into the new beam station, with the aid of the local Resistance, and Hesketh Pritchard was himself to be parachuted in to take part in the raid. Ever afterwards we referred to him as Hesketh-Pineapple.

  He explained that there would firsthave to be a ground reconnaissance to establish the details of guards and so forth, and we duly briefed him with instructions that he could transmit to the Resistance workers. Within a few days there arrived a report from one of these workers and, to my astonishment, it showed very high technical competence. It was clear that this was no ordinary member of the Resistance, but someone who knew a great deal about radio installations and physics generally. I asked further questions, a
nd within a few weeks we knew so much about the station, thanks to the ability of whoever it was who was making the observations, that I did not feel justified in asking anyone to risk his life with a physical attack.

  When I told Hesketh-Pineapple ‘The chap you’ve got on the ground is so good that he’s really made your raid unnecessary’ he was obviously relieved but said that it would put him in difficulty because he had worked up so much enthusiasm among the Free French, they might now be disappointed and think we had been rousing them for nothing. He said that he must report to his superior in S.O.E., who came and told me he was delighted their ground work had been so good, but it would help future relations with the Free French if I could arrange for a letter to be sent to him from the Air Staff for transmission to the Free French, thanking them for this splendid piece of reconnaissance, and carrying as many official stamps as possible. This I could easily do because of my official position on the Air Staff, and I signed the letter myself. Pineapple’s chief rang me up to say that this was exactly what he wanted: and that, I thought, was the end of the matter.

  One Sunday morning two or three weeks later I happened to be in my office when the telephone rang. It was Sir Claude Dansey, the Vice Chief of the Secret Service, who asked if I would come and talk to him. As others have told, Dansey had an unusual outlook. He struck me as a man who might spend a lifetime building up an Intelligence organization, and then be delighted if you proved to him that his most trusted agents were in fact in the pay of the enemy. When I went to his room, I found him almost incoherent with indignation about ‘Those buggers in S.O.E.’ I could not see how I was involved but he went on to say that S.O.E. had sent a memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff proposing that they should take over the Secret Intelligence Service, quoting in support of their claim a letter from the Air Staff saying that they had done the finest piece of Intelligence work since the war started. As the details came out, it became clear that this was my letter to Pineapple’s chief which Dansey was completely unaware that I had written.