The core documents for the Bruneval raid are to be found in the National Archives at Kew and they are all listed in the endnotes. Additionally the Airborne Archive, part of the Airborne Assault Museum at Duxford, has a treasure trove of material relating to Bruneval, including unpublished memoirs, personal reports, documents, photographs and objects. I am grateful to Jon Baker and his supremely helpful staff. Their passion for and knowledge of airborne history make them ideal keepers of the Para flame. The Imperial War Museum has a wealth of material, ranging from the excellent interviews conducted by expert interviewers from the 1990s onwards, to the wonderful film and photographic records of the raid. I’m particularly grateful to Paul Sergeant and Jane Fish of the Film Archive for their help in tracking film material down. The Medmenham Collection Archives, at RAF Wyton; the RAF Museum at Hendon; the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge; the Institute of Historical Research in London; and the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham have also given me access to some excellent and valuable material. I am grateful to the archivists and librarians in all of these establishments for their enormous help with my research. They are the people who keep the wheels of historical research turning, and all historians know how much we owe to them.
The first book about Bruneval by George Millar was published in 1974. Millar, himself a war veteran with a fine record, was able to meet many of the participants of the raid, for which I am of course immensely envious. His interview with Flight Sergeant Charles Cox really adds to the record of his story. Just when I was completing this book the massive tome Raid de Bruneval et de La Poterie-Cap-d’Antifer by Alain Millet supported by Nicolas Bucourt came out in France. It is a remarkable labour marking several years of fascination with the Bruneval story. I am indebted to Millet for the material about aspects of the French side of the story.
It used to be said that there was nothing much to be seen at Bruneval and the place was not ‘worth a detour’ as the old Michelin guides used to say. However, in June 2012 a splendid monument and a truly informative set of interpretative plaques in both French and English were opened at the site. Although much of the location where events took place is private property and so cannot be visited, the village of Bruneval is an unusual and fascinating place. Now the monument will add splendidly to every visitor’s enjoyment and understanding of the events that took place there more than seventy years ago.
At Little, Brown I would like to thank Claudia Dyer and Iain Hunt for their professional and enthusiastic support of this project, and Linda Silverman for her work on the photographs. Many thanks also to Steve Gove for his thorough work on the manuscript. Behind them all, Tim Whiting has been from the start a great supporter and enthusiast for this book.
Anne has helped me and put up with me for the many months of obsession with Bruneval. My greatest thanks, as always, are to her.
Taylor Downing
February 2013
Notes
Guide to References
NA = National Archives, Kew
Airborne = Airborne Assault Archive, Duxford
Churchill = Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge
Medmenham = Medmenham Collection Archives, RAF Wyton
IWM = Imperial War Museum, London
IWM Sound = Sound Records Archive, Imperial War Museum, London
IWM Film = Film Archive, Imperial War Museum, London
RAF = RAF Museum, Hendon
BBC WAC = BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham
Chapter 1 – Radar
^1
Ronald Clark, The Rise of the Boffins, p. 37; Robert Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, pp. 110–12. In his account Watson-Watt says that when they picked up the signal of the aircraft nearby he cannot remember ‘showing any detectable signs of excitement or elation’, although this seems highly unlikely and he does refer to the fact that the phrase ‘Britain an Island Again’ later became a slogan for the radar research team; see p. 117. The receiver used in this experiment is now on display in the Science Museum; see: http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10306999&itemw=4&itemf=0002&itemstep=1&itemx=3&screenwidth=1157
^2
David Pritchard, The Radar War, pp. 14–22.
^3
Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 94.
^4
Robert Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World, p. 59.
^5
Baldwin’s only solution was a form of deterrence that would be more familiar to a later, nuclear age: ‘The only defence is offence, which means that you will have to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.’ Hansard, 10 November 1932.
^6
The Times, 8 August 1934; see also Taylor Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 155ff.
^7
A.P. Rowe, One Story of Radar, pp. 4–5.
^8
NA: AIR 20/145, Memo from Hugh Wimperis to the Secretary of State for Air, Lord Londonderry; Ronald Clark, Tizard, p. 112.
^9
J.A. Ratcliffe, ‘Robert Alexander Watson-Watt’, in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1975, pp. 549–68.
^10
E.G. Bowen, Radar Days, p. 1.
^11
NA: AIR 20/145; the memo is also reproduced in full by Watson-Watt in the Appendix of his Three Steps to Victory, pp. 470–4.
^12
Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 126 or Rowe, One Story of Radar, p. 10
^13
Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 126.
^14
Orford Ness is now run by the National Trust and is still known as ‘Suffolk’s secret coast’. The remains of some of the buildings and the base of the transmitter towers can be visited; see http://www.nationaltrust. org.uk/orfordness
^15
Bowen, Radar Days, pp. 8–9.
^16
Bowen, Radar Days, p. 19.
Chapter 2 – Bawdsey Manor
^1
Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World, p. 70; Clark, Tizard, p. 153.
^2
NA: AIR 10/5519, p. 19; Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 145. Different accounts of the September 1936 trials are to be found in Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 173, Bowen, Radar Days, p. 24–5 and Colin Dobinson, Building Radar, pp. 140–7.
^3
The full story of the construction of the Chain Home system with its many setbacks is told in Dobinson, Building Radar, pp. 153–225.
^4
Bowen, Radar Days, p. 27.
^5
Clark, Tizard, p. 151.
^6
David Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine, p. 40.
^7
Robert Hanbury Brown, Boffin, p. 22.
^8
Bowen, Radar Days, pp. 69–70.
Chapter 3 – Freya and Würzburg
^1
Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, pp. 184–5.
^2
Gema stood for Gesellschaft für Electroakustische und Mechanische Apparate (Company for Electro-Acoustical and Mechanical Apparatus).
^3
Pritchard, The Radar War, p. 39. The actual grant was for seventy thousand Reichsmarks. As the Reichsmark was technically a non-convertible currency at the time, it’s impossible to give an exact equivalent in pounds or dollars, but it was of the order of £10,000.
^4
Taylor Downing, ‘The Olympics on Film’ in History Today, Vol. 62, No. 8 (August 2012), p. 25.
^5
Pritchard, The Radar War, p. 49.
^6
Max Hastings, Bomber Command, pp. 22–35.
Chapter 4 – Airborne
^1
John Lucas, The Silken Canopy, pp. 13–66.
^2
NA: WO 32/4157.
^3
Lt.-Col. T.B.H. Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 3.
^4
Leni Riefenstahl’s film of Hitler in his Ju 52 arriving g
od-like through the clouds at Nuremberg for the 1934 Nazi Party rally opens her film Triumph of the Will.
^5
Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 4.
^6
Winston Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. II, pp. 38–9; Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 102ff.
^7
Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 21; Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 93–5.
^8
Raymond Foxall, The Guinea Pigs, p. 19.
^9
Foxall, The Guinea Pigs, p. 20.
^10
Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 23.
^11
Foxall, The Guinea Pigs, p. 26.
^12
Foxall, The Guinea Pigs, p. 27.
^13
Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 32.
Chapter 5 – Early Warning
^1
Dobinson, Building Radar, p. 227.
^2
This phrase was used in a speech Churchill made to the workers at Bawdsey Manor when he visited the site on 20 June, and was remembered by Sir Edward Fennessy in Colin Latham and Anne Stobbs, Radar, p. 216.
^3
Bowen, Radar Days, p. 93.
^4
Dobinson, Building Radar, p. 283.
^5
Dobinson, Building Radar, p. 284.
^6
Leo McKinstry, Spitfire, p. 143.
^7
Latham and Stobbs, Radar, pp. 3–8.
^8
Bernard Lovell, Astronomer by Chance, p. 54.
^9
Alan Hodgkin was later awarded a Nobel Prize in physiology and became President of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. For Lovell’s later career see the Epilogue.
^10
Lovell, Astronomer by Chance, p. 61.
^11
Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 281.
^12
For accounts of the Tizard mission see Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 170–2 and Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World, pp. 27–37
^13
James Phinney Baxter, Scientists Against Time, p. 142.
^14
Lord Birkenhead, The Prof in Two Worlds, p. 211.
^15
Dr J. Rennie Whitehead quoted in Colin Latham and Anne Stobbs, Pioneers of Radar, p. 61.
^16
Lovell, Astronomer by Chance, p. 5.
Chapter 6 – The First Raids
^1
Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour, p. 667; Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 185ff.
^2
Martin Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, p. 370.
^3
Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, p. 559.
^4
Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. II, pp. 721–2.
^5
Philip Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 157.
^6
Otway, Airborne Forces, p. 26.
^7
Foxall, The Guinea Pigs, passim.
^8
Antony Beevor, Crete, p. 230.
^9
Gilbert, The Churchill War Papers, Vol. III, p. 722.
^10
IWM Sound: 17182, John Timothy interviewed 18 December 1996; Harvey Grenville and John Timothy, Tim’s Tale, p. 4.
^11
John Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 30.
^12
IWM Sound: 29606, Tom Hill interviewed by Windfall Films in 2001.
^13
IWM Sound: 18780, Macleod Forsyth interviewed 24 April 1999.
^14
Richard Mead, General ‘Boy’, p. 68.
Chapter 7 – Scientific Intelligence
^1
R.V. Jones, Most Secret War, pp. 68–70.
^2
Jones devoted some time in the post-war years to trying to identify the author of the Oslo Report. When he finally identified the scientist he was reluctant to name him. See Jones, Most Secret War, p. 71; R.V. Jones, Reflections on Intelligence.
^3
Jones, Most Secret War, p. 42.
^4
Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. II, p. 340.
^5
Jones, Most Secret War, pp. 100ff.
^6
Churchill: R.V. Jones Papers/NCUACS 95.8.00/B24/Report No. 13, 10 January 1942, p. 3.
^7
Sunday Times, 29 June 1941.
^8
Taylor Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 131–58.
^9
The key reports were dated 17 July 1940, 14 August 1940 and 10 January 1942. They are all held in Churchill: R.V. Jones Papers.
Chapter 8 – Photo Intelligence
^1
Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 82ff.
^2
However, the WAAF officers still did not receive equal pay with their RAF colleagues; that only came many decades later. During the war a female photo interpreter was paid about two-thirds the rate of a male interpreter. See Christine Halsall, Women of Intelligence, p. 22.
^3
Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 326ff and passim.
^4
Medmenham: DFG 5794, CBS Papers, interview with Claude Wavell, 24 May 1956; Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 258–9.
^5
Jones, Most Secret War, p. 236.
Chapter 9 – Combined Operations
^1
Churchill, The Second World War, Vol. III, pp. 539–40.
^2
Quoted by Mountbatten in John Terraine, The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten, p. 85.
^3
Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 157.
^4
M.R.D. Foot, The SOE in France, pp. 182–5.
^5
Solly Zuckerman, From Apes to Warlords, p. 153.
^6
Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 164.
^7
Mead, General ‘Boy’, p. 73.
^8
See Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 87ff.
^9
NA: CAB 79/17/23 and CAB 79/17/26 contain the rather anodyne minutes of the two COS meetings; correspondence about the raid from the Secretary to the chiefs between meetings is contained in AIR 8/867.
^10
Martin Gilbert, Road to Victory, p. 78.
^11
Gilbert, Road to Victory, p. 67.
Chapter 10 – Underground Intelligence
^1
Gilbert Renault, The Silent Company, p. 5.
^2
Renault, The Silent Company, pp. 38–9 and passim for the quotes that follow.
^3
This Département is now known as Seine-Maritime.
^4
Guide Rouge de Michelin, 1939.
^5
This account and what follows is based upon Roger Dumont’s account of his visit to Bruneval, recounted in Gilbert Renault, Bruneval: Opération coup de croc.
Chapter 11 – Training
^1
Frost, A Drop Too Many, pp. 33–6.
^2
Frost, A Drop Too Many, p. 38.
^3
IWM Sound: 18780.
^4
The designers were Major R.V. Shepherd and Harold Turpin. The name of the gun is an acronym made up of the initials of the surnames of the two designers, ST, followed by EN for Enfield.
^5
The most celebrated stoppage of a Sten gun was in May 1942, when a Slovak soldier carrying out a British-equipped plot to assassinate SS deputy head Reinhard Heydrich pulled the trigger of his Sten at point blank range but the gun failed to fire. Another soldier threw a grenade which mortally wounded Heydrich.
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