SOE

by Fredric Boyce

  As well as having overall control of the research and development activities, HQ was also the route through which new ideas and projects were fed into the programme. It therefore had to maintain technical links with Country Sections and Overseas Missions and was involved in operational activities through a Technical Planning Officer (DSR/OP) who worked in association with SOE’s Technical Intelligence Section.

  In late 1943 the research and development work of SOE came under scrutiny following a reorganisation in its highest ranks. On 9 September 1943 Sir Charles Hambro stood down and Gubbins, newly promoted to Major General, became the head (CD) of SOE. Lt Col Sporborg became the Vice Chief. Within a few months Sporborg had carried out a review of the procedure for research and development in SOE. He decreed that the overall policy of research, priorities of work, and progress of development and production should be overseen by a permanent committee, the HQ Research and Production Committee. It was to be chaired by Col Barry and comprised a group of SOE ‘top brass’, including Davies and Newitt. At the first meeting on 4 December it was ruled that work at Station IX would henceforth be in accordance with the committee’s policy and priorities. To maintain some degree of flexibility over urgent demands, etc., the procedure was, however, not to apply to research, development and production in respect of ad hoc operations. Shortly after, another committee, the HQ Wireless Research and Production Committee, was created, again chaired by Col Barry.

  The files do not record the extent to which these Committees affected the work of the DSR Section since they were, to a large extent, concerned with setting priorities for production. However, in anticipation of the likely length of the war, some longer-term projects which were deemed unlikely to reach fruition before the end of hostilities were cancelled. Otherwise, these Committees had no great influence on the day-to-day running of the DSR Section other than stressing the urgency of the work to those who were in any case already committed to their jobs.

  Ideas for new projects would have come from any of several sources. Agents returning from the field often identified the need for a means of carrying out a particular operation; the Training Sections were similarly able to pinpoint deficiencies in existing equipment and suggest ways of overcoming them; Country Sections often expressed a wish to be able to tackle specific targets; and, last but not least, ideas flowed regularly from the scientists at Station IX, while Station XV produced a large number of camouflaging devices, some of them bizarre or impracticable. The general public and press from time to time also came up with what they envisaged as ‘war winners’. Their contributions had to be considered carefully and assessed in case they contained any practicable new ideas. One senior SOE member, Bickham Sweet-Escott, wrote that, by 1942, suggestions for both equipment and targets were pouring in from the field. Agents needed advice on how best to sabotage dock gates, telephone exchanges and power transformers. They wanted to know how much explosive was needed to destroy a Ju 52 and where best it should be placed. Answers to these pressing questions required research and experiment if the agent was to be successful and escape to fight on. Most of these requests were for methods of using standard explosive charges on particular targets. But where a technique had been developed for attacking a specific type of regular target it was only a short step to designing a device to carry this out more efficiently.

  Before starting any major work on a new project it was necessary to have a clearly stated Operational Requirement (OR), including a specification of the range of conditions under which the device would be used. At an early stage proposals were given preliminary consideration at 64 Baker Street before being passed to Station IX, where they formed the subject of discussion at one of the weekly meetings of senior staff chaired by Dr E.G. Cox. If the feasibility of meeting the OR was established then detailed design was put in hand. Development then usually involved a sequence of laboratory tests and design improvements leading to a prototype. After preliminary user trials the device would be passed to Station XII to produce a production prototype and to arrange for mass production. The sequence was monitored in its later stages by the Trials Committee whose role is discussed later.

  In assessing a new device a number of important considerations had to be kept in mind. A primary requirement was obviously that it should be technically sound, but it was equally important that it would perform under all likely conditions of use. Many operations had to be carried out at night, often in wet and cold weather and wearing gloves. The heightened nervous tension occasioned by the need to carry out the operation in haste and in secrecy placed extra emphasis on the ease of handling. Moreover, in many cases the agent would not have been fully trained in the use of all devices so that simplicity of operation under adverse conditions was essential. Furthermore, all devices had to incorporate adequate safety features to prevent premature activation which could expose agents to additional hazards over and above those inherent in their task. The greatest attention had to be paid to the avoidance of circumstances in which an agent, already at high risk from the nature of the operation, was let down by the shortcomings of the equipment. It was imperative that the extreme bravery of dedicated operators should not be compromised by technical failure or inadequate safety features.

  Although the forefathers of SOE – Holland, Grand and Langley – were military men, when the new organisation was formed its leaders were drawn largely from the City Establishment and their recruitment was mainly through personal acquaintances: when Newitt set up the DSR organisation he sought people with a scientific and technical background which meant turning to the universities and industry as his main source of manpower.

  One of the first scientists to join the HQ was Dr (later Colonel) B.K. (Bertie) Blount who had been an early recruit to SOE. Blount was born on 1 April 1907. The family had a military background, his father having been an artillery colonel who was awarded the DSO in the First World War. His mother was the daughter of a major general. He studied organic chemistry at Trinity College, Oxford, where he worked for Sir Robert Robinson on the colouring matter of a particular lichen which only grows on apple trees. He studied for a doctorate at Frankfurt University, and after three years as Dean of St Peter’s Hall (later St Peter’s College, Oxford) he joined Glaxo as Head of their Chemical Research Laboratory.

  Blount was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps in 1939 and soon was seconded to SOE. When Newitt was appointed DSR in 1941 Blount joined his HQ Section as DSR/B. He was in effect Newitt’s roving liaison officer and kept in touch with several Sections of SOE. His quiet charm and slightly eccentric manner gave him easy access to new surroundings. He took a realistic view of SOE’s activities. He regarded it as part of his job to ‘explain to over-enthusiastic officers that they would be better off using traditional methods of killing than the various gadgets that they asked scientists to devise’. This was perhaps a dig at some of the crazy ideas that emerged from Station XV. He was keen that equipment was assessed under realistic conditions and he involved himself among other things in the testing of the waterproof suit enabling parachutists to drop into water. In 1943 he had taken an interest in various user trials but he left it to the newly established Trials Committee to organise them on the ground.

  In 1943 Blount was parachuted into Greece to liaise with the various factions to assess the performance of SOE stores and to ascertain whether there were operational requirements which had not been properly appreciated in London. His report, which does not seem to have survived, made good travel reading but added little to knowledge already available from established agents on the spot. In much the same way in 1944 he was infiltrated into remote Southwest China. He was able to move toward the coast relatively easily and to report that the Japanese forces were thinly spread. Again he wrote an interesting travelogue but with little important military content. He obviously enjoyed this mission. He did, however, bring back the story (possibly apocryphal) of the agent in China who broke the stem of his favourite pipe. His interpreter offered to take it to the n
earest village to get the woodcarver to make a new one. After a few days he returned and proudly presented the new pipe. It had been faithfully reproduced: it was in two pieces with the broken ends carefully copied!

  Towards the end of the war Newitt and his group were asked to provide a scientific assessment, under the code name Operation Foxley, of the possible means by which Adolf Hitler might be assassinated, including the use of bacteria and poisons. Blount was sceptical. He commented that ‘the possibilities of poisons have been much over-rated by popular belief and popular fiction, both now and in the past’. This did not stop the press writing the headline for his Times obituary: ‘Scientist who devised a scheme to assassinate Hitler using anthrax’. After the war Blount served on the Allied Control Commission in Germany and was appointed Director of Scientific Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence. He subsequently held a number of high-profile public positions until he retired in 1966 and died, aged 92, in 1999.

  Later Newitt was joined at HQ by Lt Col J.W. Munn, RE, who had been with SOE from the beginning, having been Chief Instructor at the Arisaig Training School and later in charge of Massingham, the SOE North African organisation in Algiers. Munn took a particular interest in the user trials and took part in several.

  EXPERIMENTAL SECTION

  One of the earliest members of Station IX was Colin Meek (DX/1) who was in charge of the Explosives Sub-Section. He had been seconded to Section D early in 1939 from the Research Department at Woolwich Arsenal where he had been involved in the development of plastic explosives which were then just coming into use.

  Meek was an experienced explosives expert whose wide knowledge and good sense contributed greatly to the work of the Section. It is unlikely that he was at all concerned that he had not been given leadership of the Experimental Section and had to work with, and to some extent under, two ‘outsiders from academia’. The structure of the group was, in any case, very informal and any minor personal problems, if they existed, did not prevent them from forming an enthusiastic, hardworking and happy team.

  To strengthen the scientific basis of Station IX Newitt recruited Dr (later Professor and Sir Gordon) E.G. Cox with the symbol DSR/X in January 1942 to take charge of the laboratories at Station IX. Cox, born in 1906, was a First Class Honours graduate in Physics from the University of Bristol, whose interest in X-ray crystallography developed when he worked at the Royal Institution under Sir William Bragg, the ‘Father’ of X-ray crystallography. He moved to a lectureship in chemistry at the University of Birmingham where he elucidated the crystal structures of several inorganic and organic compounds. He became particularly interested in the crystal structures of explosives. One of the results of the X-ray analysis of a crystal is the so-called electron density map of the molecule which reflects the shape of the molecule. Cox was one of the pioneers of this technique. He was intrigued by the fact that in the recently developed explosive PETN, the four arms of the molecule were arranged in the form of a swastika. He commented that this perhaps symbolised the role of PETN in the fight against Nazism!

  Cox had joined the Territorial Army in 1936. Although mobilised at the outbreak of war, he was returned to the University by the end of November and to the University Training Corps. He led an Advisory Group of the Ministry of Supply where he was involved in the problems of explosive production. So his appointment to Station IX was particularly appropriate. Cox, known inevitably as ‘Pippin’, led the experimental group with tact, humour and good sense. He took a close and critical interest in the full range of problems facing the Station and not infrequently proposed highly original ideas for their solution. Later in the summer of 1944 he went, as a Lieutenant-Colonel, to France as a Technical Staff Officer where he was employed in a succession of liaison meetings with the Underground on V-2 rocket sites and counter sabotage activities. His interrogation of members of the Belgian Resistance Group G revealed valuable evidence on their highly successful sabotage work during the occupation.

  After the war, Cox was appointed to the Chair of Crystallography at the University of Leeds. He also continued his interest in explosives including the problem of the initiation of dust explosions by an electrical discharge. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1954, became Secretary of the Agricultural Research Council and was knighted in 1964. He died on 23 January 1996 at the age of 90.

  In the autumn of 1942 the scientific strength of Station IX was further increased by the appointment of Dr (later Maj) Douglas Everett who was born in 1916. He had a family military background since his father had been a regular soldier in the Middlesex Regiment and had served in France, Egypt and Northern Ireland and was recalled in 1940 to command a Company of the Pioneer Corps for the duration. Everett had been in the OTC at the University of Reading where some of his left-wing student contemporaries could not understand how he could reconcile being a Corporal in the OTC with his chairmanship of the Student Peace Society.

  After gaining a first class degree in Chemistry at Reading University he was a Ramsay Memorial Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, and studied for his DPhil in the Physical Chemistry Laboratories at Oxford as a member of a team under Professor C.N. Hinshelwood working for the Ministry of Supply on chemical defence with particular reference to respirators and active charcoals. He thus had links with the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down.2

  Everett’s route into SOE followed what had become a familiar pattern using one of the various ‘grapevines’. His supervisor at Oxford, Hinshelwood, was approached by Newitt asking whether he knew of someone suitable to ‘join him at the War Office’. He suggested Everett, who was called for interview by Newitt at 64 Baker Street in September 1942. At this stage he had little idea of what the job involved. The title Inter-Services Research Bureau was obscure. Over lunch Newitt gave little away and Everett was not told much either about the work he would be doing or about the organisation for which he would be working. Newitt felt strongly that the lessons of the failed Dieppe Raid a few weeks before should be learned and tackled scientifically – a policy which in other hands led to the development of Operational Research as a scientific discipline. Newitt implied that Everett might be required to observe operations in the field. A couple of weeks later, during which Everett would have been positively vetted by MI5, the two lunched again and this time Newitt, accompanied by Davies, outlined a little more clearly the true nature of ISRB and its role as a sabotage organisation. At this stage the initials SOE were not revealed. Everett was told that he would need to go on training courses3 to acquaint him with the conditions under which subversive operations had to be carried out and to familiarise himself with the range of equipment involved. He would be given the same training as an agent but would not be expected to partake in operations in the field. The objective was to enable him to appreciate, under nearly realistic conditions, the problems encountered by agents and to use this knowledge in assessing the design of new weapons and their employment. Accordingly, Everett was sent on a shortened paramilitary course at Arisaig in the Scottish Highlands. The course included instruction in the use of explosives, weapons and various booby trap devices. Also included was a short paranaval course at Mallaig, which curiously enough never appeared in the accounts of others who attended this course and received only passing reference in Rigden’s introduction to SOE Syllabus. This part included instruction in the use of Folboats (folding canvas canoes) in the attack on shipping in harbours. A night-time exercise in Mallaig harbour involved placing a limpet mine on the hull of the island steamer using the recently developed limpet placing rod. This was accomplished successfully and quietly. However, on inspection the following night it was found, when the ferry returned from its daily run, that the limpet had been washed away. Clearly there was a need for improved magnets. The exact purpose of the paranaval course was not at all clear. It lasted only a couple of days and involved only small boats. The course was based on a rather fine luxury yacht in the harbour and was run by two individuals who had, it was said, before the war ma
naged one of the high-class Piccadilly nightclubs (thought to be Quaglinos). Life on board was well supported by lobsters and malt whisky. It looked, from the point of view of the student, a very comfortable and easy war job! It is difficult to know how long it went on – there seem to be no references to it in existing SOE records.

  There followed the Beaulieu course on propaganda, surveillance, coding and briefing on the German Army and Security Forces. It included a couple of daytime exercises on following and avoiding being followed and on ‘casing’ and later breaking into one of the other houses in the area. The night-time SS-style interrogation was, he suspected, less dramatic than that to which real aspiring agents were subjected.

  Equipped with the knowledge and experience gained on these two courses, Everett was posted to Station IX at The Frythe on 18 November 1942, shortly before his twenty-sixth birthday, when he became Cox’s deputy and acquired the symbol DX/14. Later as D/BT he was put in charge of the User Trials Section and also was responsible for the Air Supply Research Section. This involved him in two overseas liaison visits, to the Middle East and the Far East, to assess the performance of equipment in those theatres.

  After the war Everett held Fellowships at Oxford, was a Professor of Chemistry at University College, Dundee (University of St Andrews), and later at Bristol. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1980 and retired in 1982.

  By the autumn of 1942 the Experimental Section at Station IX consisted of just over a dozen scientific staff together with technicians and secretaries. It was headed by Cox (DSR/X) with his deputy Everett (DX/14).

  EXPLOSIVES SUB-SECTION

  Meek was in charge of the Section and was concerned with the use of explosives for specific targets. This required detailed information on the target so that the charge could be designed to be placed at the most vulnerable part. In this he was in close contact with Lt Col G.T.T. Rheam, whose Training School (STS 17) at Brickendonbury near Hertford was particularly concerned with industrial sabotage. Meek and his group were responsible for the design and construction of the charges for Operation Gunnerside, the attack on the heavy water plant at Vemork in Norway.