Next morning a phone call came through to say that, alas, the device had operated and that the Thermite charge had burnt a hole in the floor of Rothschild’s office! No details were ever revealed as to how the attempted opening had failed. It was no doubt considered unwise to invoke his wrath by advertising his failure. There is no record of more than a few of these devices ever having been made or used in the field.
Summing up the work of the Incendiaries (or Fire Raising) Sub-Section in his immediate postwar appraisal of the Research and Development Section of SOE, Newitt said it had been devoted largely to establishing the fundamental theory of combustion as applied to various categories of targets and to developing time-delay matches (sic). Papers had been written on the theory of fire-raising in warehouses and similar structures, oil tanks, wooden ships and chemical plants. They give an indication of the wide-ranging ideas emanating from the establishment.
SIX
PHYSICO-CHEMICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL SECTIONS
Chapter 5 dealt with materials needed for major sabotage operations – explosives and incendiaries, together with the ancillary components needed for their use. In this chapter attention is mainly devoted to less violent clandestine activities designed to erode the enemy’s war effort by disrupting his transport and communications, destroying vital supplies and immobilising sources of production of key stores. Their impact ranged from nuisance value, with its associated psychological effects, to large-scale disruption of services and infrastructure. Also included is an account of the more subtle work of the Physiological Section.
SABOTAGE OF RAIL TRANSPORT
Much emphasis was placed on the need to interfere with rail transport and the various ways of doing this by direct explosive attack are dealt with in the previous chapter. Up to December 1942 there was a veto on the use of explosives in SOE operations in the Vichy zone of France. There were, however, other, more ingenious ways of achieving the same results. Thus, steam locomotives could be put out of action by the addition to the boiler water feed tank of the foaming agent Vulcastab, while the addition of ‘explosive coal’ or ‘explosive rats’ (provided by Station XV) to coal tenders not only had a direct effect but also created an unwillingness on the part of engine drivers to operate their trains. There is evidence that the introduction of these devices caused a good deal of consternation and at least had a significant effect on morale.
A technique for which considerable success was claimed involved the contamination of the axle boxes of freight wagons with an abrasive grease containing carborundum powder, leading to the seizure of the bearings. This was one of the first materials to be distributed by SOE in 1941. It was produced and supplied as a dry abrasive powder which could be used in this form or mixed with lubricating oil and was packaged by Camouflage Section to suit the local circumstances.
Evidence for the effectiveness of this treatment was based on somewhat scattered reports from the field which one suspects were often exaggerated. Similar claims were made from time to time that a wide range of additives including fuming nitric acid, sulphuric acid, sand and strong alkali were also effective. It is known that, even in normal peacetime use, ‘hot boxes’, the overheating and seizure of axles in their bearings, was not unusual, especially with poorly maintained rolling stock. It would have been easy (and tempting!) for agents to attribute such occurrences to their own subversive action. Foot has commented that ‘this is the sort of story which resisters like to tell one another to keep their spirits up’, or for that matter to report to their Country Sections in London.
It was clearly important for planning purposes to have credible information on the effectiveness of the various proposed treatments, and in January 1943 Station IX was commissioned to carry out experiments to ascertain which, if any, were reliable methods of sabotage. To this end the testing facilities at the Great Western Railway workshops at Swindon were commandeered and experiments were made on a number of continental goods wagons which had been trapped in the UK on the outbreak of war. The bearings on most continental wagons were the plain white metal type lubricated by pad and wick. The exact design depended on the country of origin but according to Tony Brooks, whose ‘Pimento’ circuit operated widely in the south of France, few could be doctored without removing the cover, whether bolted or loose. It was sometimes possible, using a specially modified grease gun with a flatnosed pipe attachment, to get the abrasive on to the pad. The details of the trucks used in the experiments cannot be remembered, but at the time they were thought to be a representative sample of those most likely to be encountered. Their axle boxes were treated with a range of contaminants chosen from those which agents claimed to be the most effective. They were then run continuously at 50 mph on test beds for four weeks in February– March 1943. To the dismay and surprise of Station IX (and in particular of Sgt Campbell, who had sat watching the tests day after day waiting for something to happen) not one of the several dozen bearings under test showed any sign of serious overheating after over 5,000 miles. Unfortunately, the report of these trials has not been found, so the details of the tests cannot be checked. Despite the negative results of these trials, it was felt that they were not conclusive and that abrasive powder and grease should continue to be included in the Catalogue of Special Devices and issued to the field.1
There is, however, one well-authenticated example of the vital role played by abrasive powder in the weeks following D-Day. The crack 2nd SS Panzer Division (Das Reich) was stationed near Montauban in Southern France. When the nature of the invasion became clear, Das Reich was ordered to proceed to the Normandy front. Actions by SOE so delayed its progress that it did not arrive until D+17. The initial delay was brought about by the sabotage of the axle boxes of the tank rail transporter wagons by members of Brooks’s ‘Pimento’ circuit using abrasive powder. Several accounts of this action have been published but, viewed from a technical angle, they are somewhat ambiguous.
According to Foot, ‘when the Division sent for its transporter cars every one of them seized up after loading at Montauban’. This seemed to imply that the abrasive grease had acted while the wagons were at rest and the bearings only seized up when they were moved; while Wilkinson and Astley refer to the ‘legendary exploits of two French schoolgirls who sabotaged the axle boxes of the transporter cars and delayed the departure of Das Reich’. This again seems to imply that the seizures occurred before the Division moved off. To clarify the story we are most grateful to Tony Brooks who has provided us with what must be the definitive account of this successful sabotage operation.2
The tanks and their transporters were dispersed in villages around the Tarn and Garonne. Their distribution ‘all over the place’ was established by members of Brooks’s team including two girls whose reconnaissance located the wagons. The wheels of these special transporter flats – ‘magnificent wagons’ as Brooks describes them – ran in Timken roller bearings. The technique adopted was to drain the oil by removing the drain plug and put in dry abrasive powder via the oil filler hole so that the powder got directly onto the rollers or, in some designs of bearing, onto the lubricating pad. One bearing per wagon was treated. When the order to move was given the transporter wagons were assembled with the tanks at Montauban and moved North. After 50– 100 km the axle boxes overheated and seized, bringing the train of tanks to a halt. The SS abandoned their transporters and, as described in various accounts, unloaded the tanks and proceeded by road, harassed on their way by successive SOE and Resistance bands.
The effectiveness of abrasive powder in this instance was proved dramatically. It remains to be asked why the Swindon experiments failed to yield positive confirmation of the effectiveness of abrasive powder. Since the report on these trials is no longer available reliance has to be placed on memories. The bearings installed on the freight wagons were almost certainly white metal but it is not known whether they were loaded with ballast. The effect of axle loading was not, it is thought, included in the variables studied; nor can it be remembered w
hether the oil was completely removed from the boxes. It is probable that the urgency of the test programme did not allow time for a more detailed investigation. An alternative form of abrasive produced by Station IX was as Carborundum Pastilles, but a description and mode of application of them has not been found either. Despite the undoubted success of the use of abrasive powder against Das Reich, there must be some lingering doubt about its general applicability. As Tony Brooks comments, ‘We had a few reports of hot axles, but nowhere near the number of boxes attacked. Perhaps its main contribution was its value as a way of keeping chaps busy and it was good for morale.’
SABOTAGE OF U-BOATS
With the Battle of the Atlantic intensifying, the war against the U-boats escalated during 1942. It is not surprising that SOE was asked urgently to address the subject of countering this menace. SOE considered what contributions it could make and a number of projects were developed leading to a technical assessment prepared by Station IX, which was the subject of a report of 26 July 1943. This report has not been found although it is referred to in Laboratory Contributions No. 58 in the Technical Review. Direct explosive attack by saboteurs was made almost impossible by the very strict security measures around U-boat pens: as far as is known no successful operations of this kind were carried out. Attention was therefore directed at the U-boat crews. As early as 1941 SOE had introduced Mucuna, an itching powder which, as discussed later, was used successfully to contaminate their underclothing.
Another aspect of the war against the U-boats concerned the possibility of demoralising the crews by persistently interfering with their normal food supplies. DSR was requested to recommend an adulterant for wine and olive oil to make them unpalatable but not poisonous. At the end of March 1943 DSR replied that wine would be turned sour by exposure to air and the addition of vinegar would spoil it but, as shown later, Haas was working on more effective measures. In 1941 he had been experimenting on the contamination of sardines. His report for DSR was resurrected in 1943 as part of the war against the U-boats. Just how much of this research was put to use in the field is not known.3
The most vulnerable equipment of a U-boat was its bank of accumulators, which provided its propulsive and secondary power when submerged. Identification of the locations of works manufacturing accumulators showed that this important industry was well scattered: there was no one area which was at risk from air attack. A study of ways of sabotaging accumulators led to the development of the ‘Platinum Pill’. It was envisaged that these might be smuggled aboard and dropped into the accumulators, or added to them during transport from the factory. Before these pills had been fully developed pamphlet CM20 describing them was circulated to Country Sections without proper authorisation and Newitt was incensed that knowledge of this product had been leaked. But it was well known that accumulators are sensitive to the presence of impurities, and that platinum in the form of platinum chloride was particularly deleterious. The action of a soluble platinum compound is to deposit, during the charging/discharging cycle, finely divided platinum black on one or both of the electrodes, thus poisoning the electrode reaction and ruining the battery. As little as one part platinum in ten million increases the local action at the negative plates by 50 per cent. Anything over one part in two million discharges negative plates by 60 per cent or more in a few hours.
By the end of December 1942 DSR wrote that SOE had available tablets of platinum salts each sufficient to deal with about ten litres of battery acid, which was a fairly large cell. It was recommended that the pills be introduced into the distilled water or acid either in the factories or as it was supplied to the submarine bases. By June a new type of pill had been produced in two forms: camouflaged and non-camouflaged. Each pill would deal with 50 litres of acid, the camouflaged type taking 20 minutes to dissolve, the other only four minutes. They were given the name ‘Volcase’ Platinum (Submarine) Pills.4 There is a record of these pills being introduced into the batteries of a U-boat at La Pallice and Lord Selborne’s quarterly report to Churchill in October 1943 states that submarine batteries at Bordeaux had been dosed with ‘pills’.5
It was anticipated that agents might want to make their own platinum pills. A project at Station IX investigated ways in which they could be made from items of platinum jewellery donated generously by the public using chemicals which might be stolen from chemical factories or laboratories.
There may have been other examples of U-boat sabotage but evidence is scarce. The same quarterly report to Churchill recorded that ‘home made’ pellets, whose nature is not known, had been introduced into the engines of two submarines, causing one to return ‘on the accumulators’ after five hours’ sailing. The fate of the second U-boat is unknown. These appear to be examples of an unexplained method of sabotage, as in these cases the foreign material was introduced into the engines rather than the batteries. Had the batteries been doctored, the stricken U-boat would not have been able to return to port on its accumulators. Station IX had, in fact, been working on the sabotage of diesel engines: at least one compound which might have been procurable from a chemical factory was shown to be effective.6 In this connection, and as an example of the petty problems which faced Station IX from time to time, when a decision was taken to investigate the sabotage of diesel engines it proved exceedingly difficult to acquire an engine on which to experiment. The London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) was unable to provide an old omnibus engine, nor were approaches to other users any more successful. In the end, undercover visits to various North London scrapyards led to the acquisition of a suitable engine for a few pounds in cash.
Since the chances were slight of getting explosive or incendiary material into a U-boat to damage its electrical and electronic equipment, the alternative was to ensure that supplies of such essential components were curtailed by bombing or sabotaging the factories producing them. This required detailed information on the sources of the various items. The possibility of obtaining this technical information arose from the following circumstances. On 27 August 1941, U570 surfaced in the North Atlantic unaware that in its periscope’s blind spot was a patrolling Hudson aircraft of Coastal Command. After several attacks the U-boat crew appeared on deck showing a white flag (the Captain’s dress shirt) and surrendered.7 They were taken off by the Royal Navy, who towed the U-boat to Iceland for repairs before moving it to the Holy Loch at Dunoon where it was recommissioned as HMS Graph on 29 September 1941. This was the first, and perhaps the only, U-boat captured intact and virtually undamaged. Not only did HMS Graph provide valuable information on the technical advances made by the Germans in submarine design, but it enabled SOE to carry out a technical survey of its equipment and to identify its origins. This was carried out by Everett on 14– 15 April 1943, his report being incorporated in Station IX’s overall assessment of ways of sabotaging U-boats. One interesting fact emerged – a considerable proportion of the sophisticated equipment bore the names and locations of companies such as Braun-Boveri in neutral Switzerland and Sweden. Whether the items were actually manufactured there is not clear, but curtailing their production by bombing was not an option. It is not known what use was made of this technical intelligence in planning the bombing programmes on German industries.
ATTACKS ON ENEMY MORALE
One of SOE’s objectives, as part of the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW), was to undermine the morale of the enemy, and in particular his armed forces. It is well known that important factors in maintaining morale are physical comfort and adequate nutrition. Ways were sought of making life as unpleasant as possible for certain selected groups. Among these were the crews of U-boats. One of the most effective ways of inflicting persistent discomfort on enemy troops was by the use of Itching Powder (the barbed seeds of the Mucuna plant) and this was one of the first stores to be supplied to agents. It was intended to be dispensed from a talcum powder tin (ex-Station XV) into the clothing of German troops at laundries or clothing factories. In November 1941 the first small consignment w
as sent to collaborators in Switzerland for use on the clothing and bedding of German troops. Supplies were sent periodically to SOE’s representatives in neutral countries and a report of June 1942 states that the powder had been introduced into the clothes of German ships’ crews. Another report, referred to earlier, records that it was placed in a consignment of shirts for U-boat crews at Troyes and that at least one U-boat had to return to port because the crew thought they were suffering from severe dermatitis. Lord Selborne’s quarterly report to Churchill in July 1943 stated that 7,000 German uniforms had been sprinkled with the chemical. Three months later he claimed that 25,000 U-boat uniforms had been ‘treated with itching powder which torments the tender parts of the human anatomy’.8
It was not only underclothing and uniforms which were contaminated with this irritant. Norwegian resistance workers experimented with putting it into condoms destined to be used by the occupying German forces. After treatment, re-rolling and re-packing they were sent for distribution mainly in the Trondheim area. No reports on the effectiveness of this piece of sabotage were received until after the capitulation of the German forces when it was revealed that considerable success had been achieved. Hospitals had been frequently called upon to treat the painful irritation. As an added bonus, the condoms had been sold at a good profit to local ‘houses of assignation’.9 What may be seen at first sight as a juvenile prank could, under the right circumstances, become a serious weapon in the Allies’ armoury.
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