22. Charles van der Kieboom, one of the hapless invasion spies captured in Kent on 3 September 1940
23. Kieboom’s wireless set revealed in the Picture Post for 28 December 1940. Three weeks earlier, the unfortunate Eurasian spy had been hanged inexpertly at Pentonville
24. The Blitz on London eventually forced Snow to relocate from his second MI5 safehouse at 14 Marlborough Road in Richmond
25. Wulf Schmidt (aka Tate) and his suitcase transmitter. Codenamed Leonhardt by the Abwehr, and a favourite of Ritter, in 1941 he was awarded an unmerited Iron Cross
26. Spanish (not very) secret agent Piernavieja del Pozo, pictured in the Daily Express on 7 November 1940
27. The body of Jan Willem Ter Braak, as discovered in a Cambridge air raid shelter on April Fools’ Day 1941
28. Rudolf Hess with Messerschmitt 110 twin-engined fighter at Augsburg. On 10 May 1941 the Deputy Führer arrived in Scotland hoping to broker peace ahead of Operation Barbarossa, the German assault on Russia. Six weeks earlier Owens and Dicketts had returned from Lisbon with the very same mission
29. Karel Richter (aka Roboter) retrieves his parachute and equipment from a field near London Colney in May 1941. The officers on the left of the picture are Tin-Eye Stephens and Edward Hinchley-Cooke
1. Agent Snow in a contemporary photograph held on file by the Security Service, MI5. ‘Typical Welsh underfed “Cardiff” type’, according to hostile watchers from the Special Branch
2. Arthur Owens’ passport photograph from 1948. By then Hitler’s former chief spy in England was living in Ireland as Arthur White
3. Lily Bade and her daughter Jean, a portrait taken not long after Owens was arrested in April 1941
4. Owens (left) pictured with one of his several families, and beloved Jaguar Roadster
5. Pullman Court, the modernist development on Streatham Hill completed in 1936
6. Thomas ‘Tar’ Robertson, Snow’s long suffering case officer at MI5. Early mistakes made with Owens would ensure that the double-cross system functioned effectively after 1941
7. Edward Hinchley-Cooke, Snow’s first handler at MI5 in 1937, and later an interrogator at Camp 020
8. Snow’s first German transmitter, delivered to Victoria station in January 1939. Some in the Abwehr referred to these early sets as klamotten (‘junk’)
9. Maxwell Knight, the MI5 counter-subversion specialist who brought agents G.W. and Biscuit to the Snow case during the Phoney War period (West)
10. John Masterman, chairman of the Twenty Committee. An Oxford history don in peacetime, Masterman was also a first class cricketer
11. Nikolaus Ritter, Owens’ Abwehr case officer from 1937 onwards, known to MI5 only as ‘Doktor Rantzau’ when this candidate portrait was added to the Snow file
12. Hilmar Dierks, the Abwehr veteran who recruited Owens as a German spy as early as 1936. Here he inspects wrecked shipping at Dunkirk
13. A sketch map of RAF Odiham prepared by Owens circa 1938. His betrayal of radar to Germany was far more damaging
14. Abwehr transcripts of signals buzzed by Owens between 28 August and 3 September 1939, none of which were controlled by MI5
15. Gwilym Williams (aka G.W.), the former Swansea policeman recruited as Snow’s first MI5 sidekick in October 1939
16. Abwehr reports on two of Snow’s crucial betrayals of radar, made during treffs in Rotterdam on 18 September 1939 and Antwerp on 5 April 1940. MI5 were unable to monitor his personal meetings with Ritter
17. In May 1940 Owens set out to meet Ritter on a Grimsby steam trawler, the SS Barbados. Snow’s MI5 file contains this image of a very similar vessel
18. Ritter flew out to the abortive North Sea rendezvous in a large Dornier 18 flying boat, which boasted a range of 2000 miles and an endurance of 12 hours
19. Walter Dicketts (aka Celery) in a pre-war mugshot from the Police Gazette
20. The Chain Home radar station at Poling near Arundel, typical of those positioned on the south coast of England
21. Abwehr transcripts of three controlled signals buzzed by Snow on 13 and 14 August 1940, two of which seek to deter invasion, and one providing ID serials for incoming German spies
22. Charles van der Kieboom, one of the hapless invasion spies captured in Kent on 3 September 1940
23. Kieboom’s wireless set revealed in the Picture Post for 28 December 1940. Three weeks earlier, the unfortunate Eurasian spy had been hanged inexpertly at Pentonville
24. The Blitz on London eventually forced Snow to relocate from his second MI5 safehouse at 14 Marlborough Road in Richmond
25. Wulf Schmidt (aka Tate) and his suitcase transmitter. Codenamed Leonhardt by the Abwehr, and a favourite of Ritter, in 1941 he was awarded an unmerited Iron Cross
26. Spanish (not very) secret agent Piernavieja del Pozo, pictured in the Daily Express on 7 November 1940
27. The body of Jan Willem Ter Braak, as discovered in a Cambridge air raid shelter on April Fools’ Day 1941
28. Rudolf Hess with Messerschmitt 110 twin-engined fighter at Augsburg. On 10 May 1941 the Deputy Führer arrived in Scotland hoping to broker peace ahead of Operation Barbarossa, the German assault on Russia. Six weeks earlier Owens and Dicketts had returned from Lisbon with the very same mission
29. Karel Richter (aka Roboter) retrieves his parachute and equipment from a field near London Colney in May 1941. The officers on the left of the picture are Tin-Eye Stephens and Edward Hinchley-Cooke
Hitler's Spy Page 31