by Barbara Bond
The IMW series was originally proposed in 1891 as a new world series by the German geographer, Albrecht Penck, drawing together all the mapping of colonial exploration made by individual nation states during the nineteenth century into a collaborative international series to face the challenges of the new century and for the good of all humanity. The series was significantly extended in its coverage during World War I, largely through the combined efforts of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) and the War Office. By the end of that war, some ninety IMW sheets had been produced by the cartographers of the RGS, providing coverage of the whole of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. It was this series which provided the source of this escape and evasion series and which was also apparently deemed reliable enough for operational use during World War II.
[SERIES 44]
In terms of its specification [Series 44] was identical to [Series 43]. Similarly, this escape and evasion series had no title or individual sheet names. All sheets had the prefix 44, believed to refer to 1944, their year of production. The escape and evasion series has been identified as [Series 44]. A detailed list of the sheets, which are all small-scale (1:1,000,000) and of the Far Eastern theatre of war, appears in Appendix 6. It is the only series of escape and evasion maps to provide coverage outside the European theatre of war and adjacent areas in Africa and the Middle East. Indeed, it is likely that the series was produced as an operational rather than an escape and evasion series. There is certainly evidence in the correspondence files of the time which seems to point to this being the intention. In a letter to the Director of Military Survey, Lieutenant Colonel W. D. C. Wiggins dated November 1944, the Survey Division of Headquarters Strategic Allied Command (SAC) South East Asia (SEA) set out preliminary enquiries prior to making a formal request. They wanted reassurance that if the SAC requested silk maps for use by assault troops operating in jungle and mangrove conditions, they could be provided in sufficient numbers. Wiggins replied on 15 November 1944 indicating that they would be better served by using US wet-strength paper or rag lithographic (RL) paper sprayed with cellulose varnish since these would be ‘durable, waterproof and oilproof’.
Adjacent sheets diagram for sheet 44G.
Part of Java around Batavia (now Jakarta) taken from sheet 44H.
Summary of [Series 44]
◊18 sheets identified
◊9 set combinations produced
◊Coverage: South East Asia from Burma eastwards to China, Korea, Japan
◊Scale: 1:1,000,000
◊Print dates identified: 13 March 1944 to 4 October 1945
◊Printed on: man-made fibre (MMF)
◊Multi-colour printing
◊Copies printed: over 185,000
For full details of the maps, see Appendix 6.
The series comprised eighteen basic sheets, produced in nine set combinations providing coverage of most of Indonesia, the Malay peninsula, Thailand, Burma, French Indo-China, and the south and east central provinces of China. Again, the sheets were all printed on man-made fibre (MMF): none appeared to have been printed on silk. The sheets were all irregular in size and coverage, and are known to have been produced by panelling together sections of the IMW sheets. Diagrams showing the panelling of the IMW sheets to construct sheets 44N and 44O in this series appear in the files. Each sheet comprised sections of nine IMW sheets, which must have caused considerable production challenges. Copies of all sheets still survive.
[SERIES FGS]
This was the smallest group of escape and evasion maps. Five sheets have been identified in this series, produced as nine different combinations or single-sided. They are listed in Appendix 7 and are all small-scale, either 1:1,000,000 or 1:1,250,000 scale, covering the area of northern Europe and Scandinavia from Denmark and northern Germany to the northern extent of the Scandinavian archipelago, and eastward to the Finnish/Russian border. The sheets were of irregular shape and disposition, and again appear to have been produced by panelling from the IMW sheets since they were identical in specification to [Series 43] and [Series 44] above. The significance of FGS in the sheet numbers has not been identified, unless it was Finland, Germany, Scandinavia. Copies of all sheets still survive.
Summary of [Series FGS]
◊5 sheets identified
◊Double-sided combinations produced: 4 identified
◊Coverage: Scandinavia, adjacent USSR, north coast of Germany
◊Scale: 1:1,000,000 and 1:1,250,000
◊Print dates identified: 16 November 1942 to 21 April 1944
◊Printed on: paper, fabric, rayon
◊Multi-colour printing
◊Copies printed: 105,150
For full details of the maps, see Appendix 7.
The irregular shapes and disposition found across [Series FGS] is clearly illustrated here with sheet D.
MISCELLANEOUS MAPS
The penultimate group was a collection of miscellaneous maps produced by MI9 apparently as briefing or reference maps. They were all small-scale and often based on existing maps produced for briefing and reference purposes by the Assistant Directorate of Intelligence (Logistics) since some of them carried the ADI(L) map reference. They are listed in Appendix 8. Some of the maps carry similar sheet numbers to those described in the Bartholomew series above, for example 9J3 in this series and J3 in the Bartholomew series, yet another example of the confusion in MI9’s cartographic procedures.
Miscellaneous sheet Norway. The legend indicates that the map shows (in red) east and west zones garrisoned by German troops and where travelling without a permit is forbidden.
Summary of miscellaneous maps
◊16 sheets identified
◊Double-sided combinations produced: 7 identified
◊Coverage: Europe
◊Scale: various
◊Print dates identified: 14 January 1942 to 15 December 1943
◊Printed on: tissue, Mulberry Leaf Substitute (MLS), silk, fabric, bank paper
◊Copies printed: 20,050
For full details of the maps, see Appendix 8.
MI9 BULLETIN MAPS
A small group of maps was produced for inclusion in the MI9 Bulletin: these are shown in Appendix 9. In some cases evidence has been found that the maps were also produced on fabric for escape and evasion purposes. In other cases no copies on fabric have been identified. In at least one case, a map carries the same sheet number as an item in the Bartholomew series, namely A2, but is clearly a quite different map. This appears to be a further example of inconsistency in MI9’s identification of their maps.
Summary of maps produced for the Bulletin
◊8 sheets identified
◊Coverage: Schaffhausen Salient, Baltic ports, Norway
◊Scale: 1:20,000 to 1:2,000,000
◊Printed on: paper
For full details of the maps, see Appendix 9.
A surviving copy of the MI9 Bulletin. Its overall significance is discussed on page 86 and various maps from it are reproduced in Chapter 7.
THE PRODUCTION OF THE MAPS
The MI9 War Diaries indicate that production was initially managed on MI9’s behalf by the Ministry of Supply working closely with commercial companies. The company which played a significant part in the production was John Waddington Ltd, Wakefield Road, Leeds, Yorkshire. Certainly, the remaining post-war stock of the maps, when located in a D.Survey map depot over thirty years later, was found to be interleaved with printed card from Waddington games. While the published history of the company made only passing mention of the important, covert, war-time role they played, the correspondence files of the time illustrate the almost daily contact which took place initially between Victor H. Watson and subsequently continued with his son, Norman V. Watson, the Managing Director, and E. D. Alston of Section CT6(c) in the Ministry of Supply located in Room 307 at 4 South Parade, Leeds. Alston was the acknowledged intermediary with the War Office section responsible for the requirement, i.e. MI9. There was certainly some direct, but very
limited, contact between Waddington and MI9, the large proportion of the contact being with Alston as the intermediary. Although recognizing the security aspect of this separation and the need to keep the programme and its purpose a tightly controlled secret, there is no doubt that the lack of direct contact, compounded by the lack of cartographic awareness by all the parties involved, created its own additional, and arguably unnecessary, challenges.
Victor Watson photographed in his office in 1938.
Waddington was apparently chosen because the company had already proved its ability to print on silk. The company was founded in Leeds in 1905. It initially specialized in theatrical printing and established a printing outlier in London. Later it diversified into general printing, playing card manufacture, board games and packaging products. Their expertise led to them being invited to produce the programmes for the Royal Gala (later Command) performance on silk for members of the Royal Family during the 1930s.
Christopher Bowes, a former Finance Director of the company, when depositing company archives with the British Library Map Library in 1999, posed the question about the company’s wartime involvement with MI9: ‘Why Waddingtons?’ He offered the commentary that initially the company had not been ‘very good’ at printing the maps on silk and they had had to develop new techniques, adding that it might have been preferable for the work to have gone to commercial map publishers such as Bartholomew, Philips or even the Ordnance Survey who he suspected would have been better placed to do the experimenting. The point was well made. There is considerable difference between the printing in which Waddington was involved, i.e. board games, playing cards, posters, programmes, etc., and that of printing maps, even if they were afforded access to the original reproduction material for the maps. The challenge would have been exacerbated by the need to print the maps on silk. Bowes conjectured that there was some ‘hidden politics’ involved. He may have been right, but the character and approach of Hutton should also be considered. He was a man left very much to his own devices and not used to taking advice or guidance from anyone. There is no doubt that Hutton was convinced, wrongly, that his idea of maps on silk was original and unique. He was certainly single-minded in his approach, cartographically ignorant and sure that, because he knew and understood the objective of the exercise, he was correct in the approach he adopted.
The first recorded orders for the printing of the maps by Waddington are dated 6 January 1942. The following month the company purchased four sewing machines in order to machine-sew the edges of the silk maps. However, Hutton produced a booklet on 14 February 1942 in which he stated that, by that date, 209,000 maps had been distributed to units of all three Services, comprising fifty-six different maps on single-sided and double-sided silk or paper. Bowes regarded this as a rather odd statistic which could only be explained if, prior to that time, either other companies were involved in the printing or orders had been placed verbally with Waddington. There is, however, ample evidence that MI9, through Alston in the Ministry of Supply, was in regular contact with the company certainly from May 1941, and very possibly prior to that, and that considerable experimentation was taking place. On 12 May 1941 Alston wrote to the company commenting that the inks being used were apparently too old and ‘did not work’. On 29 May he wrote again asking for the silk ‘to be mounted’ for printing. Any fabric on which an image was to be printed needed to be held taut during the printing process to prevent movement and the possibility of a blurred image. Certainly the usual method of printing on silk, and the one used by the silk printers of Macclesfield, which was a long-standing centre of silk-manufacturing in Britain, was to stretch the silk across a wooden frame.
Waddington’s Wakefield Road factory in Leeds, which was demolished in 1992.
By September 1941 there is evidence that Waddington was involved in secreting maps inside board games during the manufacturing process (see Chapter 4) and there is no doubt that the company was involved in printing the maps as well as hiding them inside board games in preparation for despatch to the prisoner of war camps. There are many examples in the company’s files of Watson quoting map production costs to Alston and indicating that, for a range of reasons, the costs involved were up to 75 per cent above their usual production costs. On 6 January 1942, for example, he quoted for the cost of the:
completed reproduction of Double Eagle, progressing with Emerald, costs for necessary photographic work, in preparing original, cutting material to size, preparing for lithographing, hemming on all four edges, backing sheets for mounting the fabric.
The Kodak company was involved in the production of the printing plates, although no detail survives. There are numerous items of correspondence detailing the number of copies required and the titles or sheet numbers of the items but, at no stage are they described as maps: they are rather referred to as posters or pictures. However, in all cases the sheet numbers and titles can be identified as items in the MI9 escape and evasion map production programme. A comprehensive three-page list of sheets in Series GSGS 3982 was produced around mid-February 1942. A list of nine maps produced on 26 February 1942 can be identified as Bartholomew-based maps, including the Caspian Sea (sheets T2/T4) and Kenya (sheet Q). Apparently the maps were often despatched by rail to London Kings Cross Station addressed to Major C. C. Hutton and marked ‘to be called for’.
Henry Town of Allied Paper Merchants, located at 81 Albion Street in Leeds, was involved in experiments trying to increase the strength of the paper being used without increasing its thickness. At the same time the Ministry of Supply asked Waddington to carry out trials on Bemberg yarn, a man-made replacement fabric for silk and often referred to as Bemberg silk. It is also clear that academics were involved in various trials, Professor Briscoe of Imperial College, London, being mentioned by Alston in the Ministry of Supply in a letter he wrote to Watson on 7 April 1943, commenting on the ‘Collodio–Albumen process’ (used in preparing printing plates). It is also likely that academics at the nearby University of Leeds, which had a highly renowned textiles faculty, were consulted. Experiments were carried out, authorized by the Ministry of Supply, in printing methods and also into the use of different printing inks, the latter involving chemists from ICI visiting the Waddington factory in Leeds in June 1942.
SOURCING OF SILK AND PAPER
The sourcing of silk was a major issue for the Ministry of Supply, their priority always being for parachute manufacture rather than map production, and it is clear that there was a continuing search for a suitable fabric to replace silk. Supplies from the Far East (especially Japan), not unexpectedly, dried up and they had to turn to their contacts in the English silk industry based in Macclesfield for help in securing alternative sources. The leading Macclesfield silk manufacturing companies had had the presence of mind to stockpile raw silk from Japan prior to the outbreak of hostilities in the Far East at the end of 1941 but this supply was soon under considerable pressure from the Ministry of Supply. Nylon had only just been developed (in the USA) and was not yet available in the UK, at least not in the quantities required. All the standard supply sources for silk, China, Japan, Italy and France, were in enemy hands. It was necessary to identify alternative sources as a matter of urgency. That task fell to Peter William Gaddum. Born in 1902, he worked for the family silk firm of H. T. Gaddum from 1923, and, aged 36 at the outbreak of war, he was already serving in the Army. He was allowed to leave the Army and became Chief Assistant in the Ministry of Supply, responsible for the supply and control of silk and rayon. He proceeded to source silk from the Near and Middle East and made his first purchase in Cairo in December 1941. From there he travelled to Beirut in Lebanon, where he remained based until January 1944. Silk cocoons were available in Turkey, Iran and Lebanon, and much of the reeling of the silk took place in Lebanon. In the two years he remained in the Middle East, Gaddum travelled widely to ensure a secure supply of the silk needed at home for the war effort, always ensuring that he obtained the highest possible grade of silk. During
the period, he visited Baghdad, Tehran, Cairo, Karachi, Delhi, Calcutta and Mysore. Eric Whiston, the son of another famous Macclesfield silk manufacturing family, was sent out to Lebanon to assist Gaddum, who eventually returned home in December 1944. Whiston moved to Rome in December 1944 and was based with the Allied Command.
While there is no evidence that any of the escape and evasion maps were actually printed in Macclesfield, Macclesfield silk manufacturers were involved in the finishing of the maps, i.e. hemming and folding. In addition to the continuing search for silk, it is clear that MI9 and its agent, the Ministry of Supply, was always looking for acceptable silk substitutes, since the priority for dwindling silk supplies was always parachute production. Once the USA had joined the Allies, the Ministry certainly made good use of recent US technical advances in the manufacture of rayon, a man-made substitute for silk first manufactured in the UK in 1905. Mulberry leaf pulp, which could be manufactured into an extremely thin and near-noiseless paper, variously referred to in the records as ‘ML’ (Mulberry Leaf) or more usually as ‘tissue’ or simply ‘paper’, was also used. The pulp had been discovered by the Royal Navy on a Japanese ship immediately prior to Japan entering the war. It proved to be a timely and valuable cargo which the ship’s Captain was persuaded to give up.