The Bride Hall estate was owned by a timber magnate, Sir Gerald Lenanton, whose wife wrote historical novels under the name Carola Oman. He had already evacuated to the unlikely safety of the Bristol area together with some of his staff but returned to the handsome red-brick mansion in 1943 to share the accommodation with the few resident officers. Of the three gardeners and four other staff, one gardener together with a housemaid, the cook and the butler remained to look after the new guests.7 The barn walls were painted with black pitch beneath the deep red-tiled roofs and the walls were lined with tarred brown paper to keep out the draughts. One of the barns became the armoury for repairing and servicing weapons, another was used for the storage of ammunition, bombs, machine guns, etc., while a third eventually became the sleeping quarters for the other ranks, its heating being by two wood-burning stoves whose flues were prevented from setting fire to the massive old timbers by sheets of asbestos fixed all the way up the lofty walls. Sgt Elliott and another ‘three striper’, however, were blessed with accommodation in no. 2 of the nearby tithe cottages. The Section at this time employed four officers, a secretary and eight men on the armoury staff. It had what was probably a unique collection of foreign firearms of all calibres in addition to a large number of standard small arms. Two firing ranges were created: one in the orchard and the other behind the nearby woods. The officers dined and slept in the comfort of the gracious Hall, originally built in 1602 by a wealthy mariner as a wedding present for his daughter, while the other ranks ate well but in the servants’ hall. A hand-cranked petrol pump topped with a one-gallon capacity glass globe was installed outside the workshop to supply the steady flow of service vehicles. Second Lt Paton and Second Lt Richard Wattis (later to star in many comedy films and television series) swelled the officer numbers to six, while additional help was obtained by swearing in the London gunsmiths John Wilkes & Co. At the end of the year Capt Rowat became Officer in Charge.
The Arms Section became involved on the fringes of the development of the silenced version of the Sten gun in the autumn of 1942 but its problems were not resolved until the following year, the first consignment being sent out in June. Capt Rowat left the Section in August 1943 and Second Lt Kendal succeeded him as O/C, while on the secretarial front Miss Halcomb succeeded Miss Bentham.
Although now separate from The Frythe, it is worth recalling that this small unit did amazing work in procuring arms from anywhere they could. The ‘Pistol Drive’ appeals to holders of firearms certificates netted some 7,000 hand guns in July 1942, 3,000 in September 1943 and an undisclosed number of German automatic pistols early in 1945. An indication of the success of Station VI is evident from the realisation that they procured, serviced and supplied the Country Sections of SOE with 3–5,000 hand guns and ammunition each month. In all, over 100,000 pistols and revolvers of non-standard types were sent to the field. In the lead-up to D-Day, with the need to prepare for the arming of large numbers of Resistance fighters, the Section expanded further. Lt Ramsden joined in April and was replaced in July by Lt Sumpoter. The unused barns were converted into billets. Local pensioners still recall that on VE day the soldiers went down to the party in nearby Wheathamstead but on VJ night they decided to give the local villagers a firework display using any pyrotechnics they could lay their hands on. Unfortunately, one of these flares arced into the night sky to descend on a haystack, setting it alight. Eventually the fire brigade arrived but the results of the subsequent enquiry are not recorded.8
THE THATCHED BARN, STATION XV
The Camouflage Section started in a small way at The Frythe in January 1942, took over the Victoria and Albert Museum’s larger workshops at 56 Queen’s Gate in London the following month and in June spread to a building not far from Elstree film studios which must have been familiar to the Section’s head, Elder Wills. This was the Thatched Barn Road House (now replaced by the Elstree Moat House), a sprawling, two-storey, mock-Tudor hotel built in 1933 by a Mrs Merrick to serve motorists on the recently opened Barnet bypass. It was given the designation Station XV. With private motor transport drastically reduced in wartime, it provided a useful site, with public rooms being converted into workshops and bedrooms into accommodation for the staff.9 The building was attractive in its day and was frequented by film stars from the nearby studios. The Barn was purchased by the Queen’s Moat House chain in the mid-1970s and the last vestiges of the original building were demolished in the mid-1980s.
The Camouflage Section retained 56 Queen’s Gate (Station XVa) and took over the Demonstration Room in the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road which became Station XVb, and a house in nearby Trevor Square, off Knightsbridge, which housed another sub-section known as the Photographic and Make-up Section, which became Station XVc.
OUTSTATIONS
Besides the major ISRB (SOE) establishments described above, there were a number of outstations with particular facilities (see Appendix A). Thus the Engineering Section at Station IX had research and testing facilities at Staines and Queen Mary reservoirs, and a unit at Fishguard for the testing of underwater craft. Station XV had a number of outstations with special facilities for forging and the printing of code sheets. Important facilities were made available by the RAF such as the provision for testing supply dropping equipment at Henlow. Many of the production facilities for the Wireless Section were, in the later period, moved to several outstations in North London.
FOUR
ORGANISATION OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
At the outbreak of the war the ‘art and science of sabotage’ had, in its fundamentals, changed very little in centuries. Sabotage and murder by explosive and incendiary methods has a long history. Among many examples from the past one might quote the murder of Darnley in 1566 and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. In the nineteenth century, cartoons of a sinister-looking agent carrying a plum pudding-like bomb with a dangling fuse characterised the popular image of the revolutionary saboteur. For many centuries the only explosive available for these purposes was gunpowder or one of its modifications. With the development of mining a major body of expertise in the handling of gunpowder for both civilian and military purposes grew up. The situation began to change, however, around the middle of the nineteenth century with the introduction of ammonium nitrate and the invention of the family of nitro-explosives by Nobel and others. These new explosives had extensive civilian uses both in mining and quarrying. In the military sphere explosives for demolition and camouflet* operations were developed and instruction in the military use of explosives for demolition was included in the training of the Royal Engineers. Even before 1940 Section D and MI(R) were beginning to develop new devices which overcame some of the disadvantages of traditional methods of controlling explosions. When they merged in July 1940 they brought together two small groups that had begun to work towards meeting the objectives which had been set for them individually when they were created a couple of years previously. The early designs of time-delays and of pull-, pressure- and antidisturbance switches had been developed and by 1940 some were becoming part of Army equipment and were described in The Demolition Handbook Vol. 1. These developments are racily described by Macrae in Winston Churchill’s Toyshop.1 Much of the work had been done by Jefferis’s group MI(R)c, backed by Lindemann and Churchill, but Section D had its own unit working along similar lines. There was both collaboration and rivalry between the two groups, but Section D had the important advantage of having direct links with operations in the field – they had a clearly defined clientèle. Their paths, as noted earlier, diverged later in the war as MI(R)c became MD1 and was increasingly involved in large-scale military problems such as clearing minefields and beach obstacles in anticipation of the Allied invasion.
When SOE was formed in June 1940 it thus had at its disposal a number of basic devices, some of which were prototypes undergoing development and yet to reach the production stage. It was clear, however, to the higher echelons of SOE that, for the effective prosecution of the main aims of SOE, m
ore sophisticated equipment, designed specifically for the needs of irregular warfare, would be needed. The following pages outline the organisation that evolved in the pursuit of these objectives, and give a brief account of the scientists and engineers who were involved.
To these ends, the Research, Development and Supply Directorate was set up under Col F.T. Davies, (AD/Z), with the responsibility of ensuring that Resistance workers in the field were supplied with equipment and weapons appropriate to their diverse operational needs. The major objectives of SOE were to undermine the enemy’s war economy by disruption of his transport, communications, vital supplies and their production, and through a variety of other means to create a sense of uncertainty among the occupying forces, and to encourage the hopes and aspirations of Resistance groups as D-Day approached. Later in the war it was expected that these activities would assume paramilitary characteristics and in some theatres of war to be associated with guerrilla-type activities.
To achieve these objectives, it was necessary to develop a new range of offensive equipment to enable SOE to play a full part in the war effort. In 1940, as noted above, some of these needs had been foreseen, and some progress had been made in designing several basic devices. It was clear, however, that not only improvement in existing equipment but new ways of attacking the enemy would have to be invented.
It was first necessary to envisage the circumstances under which individual stores would be employed. This required new thinking since these would often differ quite fundamentally from those encountered in conventional warfare. SOE had little previous experience to build upon, although the pre-war studies of Holland and Gubbins provided some guidance. In many areas they had to start virtually with a blank sheet, and had to rely on the imagination and inventiveness of the research personnel to foresee the opportunities and problems associated with this newly developing technology of clandestine warfare. A new organisation was needed within the AD/Z Directorate to ascertain and formulate the operational requirements (ORs) appropriate to unconventional warfare; to determine whether these requirements could be met by existing stores; if not, to initiate research and development programmes to meet these needs. Any resulting stores had to be subjected to rigorous functional and user trials and to be produced to high standards of reliability. At the same time the organisation had to be flexible enough to be able, at short notice, to produce one-off solutions for coup-de-main operations. The fledgling organisation had to be bold and prepared to learn from its mistakes.
To head the science research organisation, Davies sought a scientist who would visualise SOE’s needs and gather round him a team of the best minds, skills and knowledge. The organisation had to have a degree of flexibility which would attract original and inventive types – rigidity is often the enemy of lateral thinking. Waiting in the wings was someone who had, back in 1940, some contact with Gubbins’s Auxiliary Units. This was Dr (later Professor) D.M. Newitt, who was appointed on 9 January 1941 to the newly created post of Director of Scientific Research, DSR, with responsibility for Stations VI, IX, XII, and XV. His duties were to act as chief adviser on all scientific matters, to initiate and plan research into all mechanical and chemical equipment and to participate in both short- and long-term planning where technical matters were involved.
Dudley Maurice Newitt (1894–1980) had begun his career as an Assistant Chemist at the Ardeer factory of Nobel Explosives. This was interrupted by the First World War when, as a junior officer in the Sikh Regiment, he saw service in the North-West Frontier of India, Mesopotamia and Palestine. He took part in the historic entries into Damascus and Jerusalem. In 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross for his part in the capture of Samaria. On demobilisation he entered the Royal College of Science (later Imperial College, London) to study chemistry. After graduation he embarked on research in chemical engineering and became a leader in the field of high-pressure technology. He was promoted to Reader in 1936 and to Professor in 1946 and was elected to the Royal Society in 1942. Subsequently, after the war he became the first Courtauld Professor of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College and was later President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. Newitt’s tenacity of purpose and resolution were major factors in his leadership of SOE’s technical development. His training in chemical engineering and his military experiences in the First World War meant that he was in a good position to make realistic assessments of proposed projects and to curb some of the more fantastic ideas that were propounded from time to time. He was outgoing, clubbable and his good sense and natural kindliness ‘tinged with a delicious sense of irony’ made him a notable leader. His slightly twisted yet disarmingly friendly smile usually meant that he was about to fire a challenging question to which he expected an equally incisive reply. There were those, it is said, who looked upon him as a typical absent-minded Professor. If that was how he appeared to some, then it was almost certainly a deliberate pose concealing his efficiency. The energy and drive he put into his job gave little support to this view.
On his appointment Newitt joined an embryonic organisation which, as a whole, attracted suspicion and lack of support from SIS, was looked upon as unethical by the Royal Air Force and (not without good reason) unqualified to venture into marine design by the Admiralty. Consequently, SOE was forced to work independently on a series of projects from scratch. It urgently needed specialised items of equipment to carry out its primary tasks but it had little expert knowledge on which to draw so had to set about learning, inventing and developing them itself. The nucleus of the research structure consisted of the small group of engineers and scientists of the Experimental Section at Aston House. Already at The Frythe was a Wireless Section working on radio communication equipment. Since its work was to become closely linked to that of Station IX, it is appropriate to include an account of it in this book (see Chapter 12).
The major areas in which research and development were to be directed included: chemical and physical sciences dealing in the widest sense with the application of special operational devices, explosives, incendiaries and fuses; the engineering of weapons, waterborne craft and vehicles; medical and clothing supplies; camouflage to disguise or conceal the presence of various devices; operational research to ensure that requirements were properly assessed, trials conducted and quality maintained; and means of getting supplies to the Resistance movements.
His group was also charged with maintaining technical links with missions abroad and with UK research resources in Government scientific circles, industrial research organisations and the laboratories of academia.
Newitt set up his HQ at 64 Baker Street with a small staff. He had to build up a team of first-rate scientists and technicians to meet the research and development needs of the rapidly expanding organisation. He looked for recruits beyond the business, banking, civil service and military establishments which had dominated SOE up to that time, eventually gathering some 500 people covering a wide range of skills and experience.
The division of responsibility between the research, development and supply activities of the AD/Z Directorate was loosely defined, partly because of the small number of people involved and overlapping interests. One of Newitt’s first tasks was to rationalise the situation by separating the Research and Development functions from the Production and Supply Section. The Experimental Section was therefore transferred in July 1941 from Station XII to Station IX. Here they would have greater freedom from the pressures of production. Station XII was now to concentrate on taking equipment from prototype to full production, while Station IX became the main source of research for SOE.
During 1941–42 the structure of the DSR evolved and for the rest of the war consisted of the following main sections:
• HQ Section at 64 Baker Street was in overall control of the R&D activities.
• Experimental Section at Station IX (shown on organisational charts as Physico-Chemical Section), which was concerned with a wide range of physical and chemical problems.
• E
ngineering Section, also at Station IX, with sub-sections dealing with weapons and water-borne craft.
• Camouflage Section, initially at Station IX but soon moved to Station XV, was responsible for development of a wide range of materials and methods of concealing sabotage and subversive equipment.
• Operational Research, working mostly from Station IX but also calling on the facilities and personnel of Station XII and HQ, ensured that operational requirements were properly assessed, trials conducted and quality monitored. It operated through the User Trials Section and later the Air Supply Research Section.
The primary sections of this research structure were broken down into sub-sections, sometimes of only three persons, one of whom was an expert in his field. Newitt knew well that he wouldn’t get the best from a rigid organisation so the one he drafted on paper was flexible and had, in reality, very blurred boundaries. There was a good deal of collaboration between different groups, while the flexibility and freedom from unnecessary bureaucratic constraints gave people the opportunity to come up with and develop their own ideas.
HEADQUARTERS SECTION
SOE Page 4