Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos

by Halsall, Christine

  We used to go to Villiers David’s house – Friar Park – where all the light switches and door handles were shaped like monk’s heads, so you pressed down the monk’s nose to turn on the light! He and his sister had bought the farm next door so there was butter and cream at meals which was such a treat.15

  It has often been noted that RAF Medmenham resembled more of an academic institution than a military establishment, with men and women recruited from widely diverse civilian occupations. The early, informal recruitment for the RAF of suitable, academically qualified colleagues at Wembley was successful and was formalised under Wing Commander Hamshaw Thomas at Medmenham. The WAAF selection system was also successful in picking out potential women PIs, and not only the obvious choices with qualifications and experience in photography, archaeology, art and geography. Historians and English graduates were also among those recruited, as were the women who had shown at a selection board that they looked at and examined a subject in depth, seeing more than the superficial view.

  Although the comprehensive collection of men and women working alongside each other at Medmenham were experts in the widest variety of specialist subjects, all had a common characteristic: none took things at their face value and all questioned whatever they saw on the photographs. Searching for clues under the stereoscope, examining something unusual and then following it up until the answer was found became second nature to them. From 1940, as soon as WAAF regulations allowed, women were employed on the same work as men and were recognised as being equally capable. They were given responsibility for decision making in all aspects of intelligence production at Medmenham.

  Notes

  1. Churchill, Sarah, Keep on Dancing, pp.62–3.

  2. Scott (née Furney), Hazel, interviewed for BBC Operation Crossbow, 2011.

  3. Daniel, Glyn, Some Small Harvest (Thames and Hudson, 1986), p.98.

  4. Stone, Geoffrey, letter, 2011 (Medmenham Collection).

  5. Scott, Hazel (née Fu rney), conversation with the author, 2010.

  6. Babington Smith, Constance, Evidence in Camera (Chatto & Windus, 1958). Extracts from Evidence in Camera are reprinted by permission of Peters Fraser & Dunlop (www.petersfraserdunlop.com) on behalf of the estate of Constance Babington Smith.

  7. Morgan (née Morrison), Suzie, interviewed for BBC Operation Crossbow, 2011.

  8. Collyer (née Murden), Myra, interviewed for BBC Operation Crossbow, 2011.

  9. Carter, Joan, IWM papers.

  10. Duncan, Jane, My Friend Monica, pp.259–60, 262.

  11. Powys-Lybbe, Ursula, Eye of Intelligence, p.147.

  12. Brachi (née Bohey), Joan, in conversation with the author, 2011.

  13. Rendall (née McKnight-Kauffer), Ann, interview with Constance Babington Smith, 1956/7, (Medmenham Collection).

  14. Scott, Hazel, Peace and War, p.53.

  15. Brachi (née Bohey), Joan, conversation.

  MILLIONS OF PHOTOGRAPHS

  Squadron Leader John Saffery DSO DFC flew PR Spitfires from RAF Benson in 1943–44 and commanded 541 Squadron. He married Margaret Adams, a WAAF PI who worked in Second Phase at RAF Medmenham. He wrote graphically about flying at high altitudes while on solo photographic missions:

  It is the climb through the tropopause into the stratosphere which is like crossing the bar from the shallows into deep water. The climb up has been a matter of constant change. The continually falling temperature, successive layers of cloud, varying winds, the appearance of trail, and the turbulence or vertical movements of the air are liable to be felt to a greater or lesser degree all the way up.

  There was always the fear of passing out with very little warning if anything went wrong with the oxygen system, and to guard against this I used to keep a fairly elaborate log because I reckoned that if I could write legibly I must be alright. Nevertheless until the arrival of pressure cabins we were a bit slow witted from lack of oxygen I think.

  The cold, the low pressure and the immobilising effect of the elaborate equipment and bulky clothing in the tiny cockpit had the effect of damping down and subduing all the senses except the sense of sight. One became just an eye, and what one saw was always wonderful.

  On a clear day one could see immense distances, whole countries at a time. From over the middle of Holland I have seen the coast from Ostend round beyond Emden, and from the neighbourhood of Hanover seen the smoke pluming up from burning Leipzig. I’ve seen the Baltic coast from above Berlin and from over Wiesbaden seen the Alps sticking up like rocky islands through the clouds. On such days, which are rare in Europe, it was more like looking at a map than a view.

  After 1942 the cabins were heated and a temperature of slightly above freezing was maintained so that we flew in battle dress with thick sweaters, long woollen stockings, double gloves and flying boots, but electrically heated clothing was not necessary. But the air temperature outside was 60 or 70 degrees below and if, as occasionally happened, the cabin heating failed, the cold was agonising. Everything in the cockpit became covered with frost and long icicles grew from the oxygen mask like Jack Frost’s beard. Most alarming of all, the entire windscreen and blister roof was liable to frost up so that one could not see out at all except where one rubbed the rime off with a finger to have a frenzied peep round through the clear patch before it froze over again. At such times one felt the air was full of Messerschmitts.1

  Only the PR pilots operated at such heights for long periods. In mid-June 1944, shortly after D-Day, John had to bale out of his Spitfire into the English Channel where he spent a day ‘bobbing about’ until he was picked up by a passing motor torpedo boat.

  The photographs that the PR pilots took were mostly ‘verticals’, taken directly above the target from cameras fitted through portholes in the floor of the aircraft. These could also be used in sequence to provide a run of stereo pairs for intelligence gathering or as smaller-scale photographs for map making. Cloud was the greatest handicap to obtaining good photographs. The most successful pilots were those who appreciated the need for meticulous flight planning and good meteorological briefing. Photographs could also be ‘obliques’ taken sideways from the aircraft or, less commonly, to the front or rear, and these provided a wider view of an area. Low-level obliques were used to take pictures of targets which would otherwise have been obscured by cloud or for which information could not be obtained by any other means. This was known as ‘dicing’ and the elements of surprise and speed were essential. It was therefore very dangerous and carried out by only the most experienced pilots, producing some of the outstanding photographs of the war.

  Great advances in camera and film technology took place during the Second World War, largely due to work at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. Longer lenses, designed for high-flying aircraft, provided better spatial definition and showed more ground detail. Improvements in film emulsions increased sensitivity and resolution, while better camera mountings in aircraft eliminated the effects of vibration. The end result of all these advances was a reduction in the effect of film grain and a clearer picture when viewed by PIs through a stereoscope.

  As soon as a PR aircraft returned to base, the photographic personnel took charge of the film for immediate processing, followed by First-Phase interpretation. Pamela Howie was a photographic processor at RAF Benson, dealing with the film from 1 PRU sorties.

  Pamela, aged 19, had received her call-up papers in the summer of 1942, so left her job as librarian in Boots the Chemist’s library in Kendal, and enrolled in the WAAF at Carlisle where she was rated medically A1, despite having had asthma for several years. She reported to RAF Bridgnorth in Shropshire for kitting out and quickly learnt a thing or two about communal living:

  At lunch on returning from the tea queue I found my knife and fork missing. Nobody had seen anything so armed with spoon and mug I went to the Corporal who said, ‘You only get one issue so you will have to steal them back again!’ At teatime I found a knife just lying on a table so snatched it!2

 
; When her group of WAAFs were despatched to Morecombe for basic training, she teamed up with a girl called Doris who had fainting fits but, like Pamela, had been rated medically A1. Their first parade was held on a very hot July day and Pamela had to keep rescuing Doris when she fainted, which brought on her own asthma. They were both brought before a medical board who discharged Doris as medically unfit but decided that Pamela could stay in the WAAF, although with a downgraded medical status of C3, which meant that she could not be posted abroad.

  Pamela liked the drilling but hated physical training, which she considered to be degrading as it was held in a big bus garage open for all to see, and the WAAFs had to strip down to shirt and knickers. She learnt how to salute:

  Longest way up, shortest way down. Right arm up and extended out to the side, then bent at the elbow and the top of the index and middle fingers to touch the right temple, fingers rigid, palm facing forwards, then curl the fingers forward and down, turn the whole wrist now like a fist down in a straight line to your side, to the count of up 2,3, down 2,3. We were told we were not saluting the individual but the King’s uniform.

  An aerial view of RAF Medmenham provides a good example of a vertical photograph.

  She worked as a clerk at three different RAF stations, continually putting in requests to be trained for a trade, and was at last posted on to a three-month photography course at RAF Farnborough. It was a comprehensive mix of theoretical lectures on light and optics, and practical work on the pinhole camera, types of lenses, light and chemical changes, followed by developing and filters. The WAAFs learnt how to load film into an aerial camera and practised installing and retrieving it from an aircraft:

  We were taught about processing, camera maintenance and how to load film in the dark. I passed the first photographic test with good marks of 50 out of 60.

  Later on they absorbed information on air pressure and electrical circuits. Other subjects were about night photography, mechanical faults and stereoscopic harmonisation, which ensured the correct overlapping of photographs to produce stereo pairs. They also learnt about all the chemicals used and how to title each negative to show when and where it was taken.

  Having passed their final exam, ACW1 Pamela Howie and her friend Nell were posted to RAF Benson, the very busy PR station close to Medmenham. There was the constant noise of reconnaissance aircraft, Spitfires and Mosquitoes, revving up and taking off. Pamela wrote:

  We were kept busy developing, printing and titling the films ready to go to the interpretation office for inspection. Recently a fantastic aerial shot of our airfield had been taken. I would have dearly loved a print to take home and show Mum, but I realised that had I been searched on one of the railway stations by M.Ps (military police), they may have thought I was a spy, it just was not worth the risk, pity though.

  Instead Pamela wrote and described RAF Benson to her mother:

  The main gate which leads out to Wallingford and Oxford is near the guard room and where the Alsatian dogs are kept. The other two normally unmanned gates are at either end of the camp, the first one after coming in the main gate leads to Mrs Crane’s café, back inside that gate and to the right is the sick bay, (trust me to know that), somewhere nearby are the officer’s quarters and a lone Spitfire aircraft on display, which when they decided to move it, a wheel ran over one of the aircraft hand’s toes. I happened to be nearby and heard his blood curdling screams. Nearby is the parade ground and further on the cookhouse, NAAFI and YMCA … Station Head Quarters, clothing store etc. Further over still are the hangars for the planes and the aircraft runway … on the further side of our billets the roadway continues to the other gate leading to our photographic section and the village, Henley and eventually Reading.

  The summer of 1943 was exceptionally hot:

  It was such a shame to be working most of our time in dark rooms, when it had been such a brilliant hot summer. Outside our section was a septic tank and that plus the chemical smells of hypo etc were sometimes overpowering. I’d noticed a rash appearing on my hands, so reported sick, and was told, ‘You have metol poisoning’. We’d been warned of this on the course, but nobody was over worried as they claimed that only one in a hundred got it, of course the odd one out just had to be me. I was given a special cream and gloves to wear at night, and my job now could not have anything to do with chemicals, so I was moved to the titling section with Grace.

  We all worked shifts, the worst one being 4 o’clock in the afternoon until 8 o’clock the next morning. Then we went for breakfast and often felt too tired to sleep. The other shift was easy by comparison. I actually preferred the night shift for if flying was cancelled due to bad weather we were allowed off early, and got a really good breakfast in the cookhouse, generally of bacon and egg. But we got crafty and said we were from MT (motor transport), as the cooks didn’t like us, they considered photographers snobs for some reason.

  Pamela describes how important accuracy was:

  Aerial films were very large and had to be wound by means of handles across a long bench. Our job was to put on each negative frame all the relevant data, but most important of all was to title the first piece of blank film ‘START’ and then when we came to the end we put ‘END’. The data included the number of the unit, the sortie number (the single operational flight of the aircraft), negative and serial number, date and subject.

  Our work was tiring and exacting and you could not afford to make a mistake as Grace did one day. To explain – when you were on the 4 pm to 8 am shift, by about 2.30 in the early hours you were working like an automaton. Later around 4.30 am you were wide awake again, but between those times you were at your most vulnerable. On this particular night Grace had put ‘END’ on both ends of this aerial film by mistake due to being so tired. It had been spotted once it reached the interpretation office, whose job it was to assess from our photographs what areas had to be bombed again and what damage had been done to targets already bombed. The punishment – poor Grace was put on a charge. I could have wept, she was my best friend.

  It was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 that convinced Pat Peat, a US citizen, to join the WAAF, and later on she worked in the Photographic Section at RAF Medmenham. Pat had graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in the summer of 1940, with a Merit Award of $500 and a determination to follow her younger sister Betty, who had already joined the WAAF. Their father was a Canadian veteran and their mother came from Northern Ireland and both were peace campaigners following the First World War. Pat and Betty never went to school, being taught instead by their parents as they travelled to lectures and meetings across America. In 1937 their father, Mr Harold Peat, who owned a leading lecture agency in New York City, was engaged as Winston Churchill’s agent for a planned lecture tour across America in the autumn of the following year. Subsequently, due to the political outlook in Europe in 1938, Churchill had to cancel this tour.3

  When President Roosevelt declared war on Germany and Japan in December 1941, a friend of the Peat family wanted Pat to join the US Women’s Army Corps to recruit volunteers, as she had presence and speaking experience. Not wanting any person to plan her life for her, Pat immediately went to the British Consulate in New York City and enrolled as volunteer 301 in the WAAF, and soon followed her sister to England. In 2009 she said their mother and father were ‘devastated’ that both daughters had decided to serve in the WAAF:

  I was born in Chicago Lying-In Hospital and I’m a US citizen. I didn’t go over to Britain on a passport – nobody even asked about them back then. There wasn’t any ferolderol – I just signed up. I went over to England on a Swedish tugboat with an American Army Medical Unit whom we seldom saw. We were in convoy to Liverpool and I think it took a week and a half.4

  Pat joined an all-female group of trainee photographers at the RAF School of Photography in Blackpool and considered that they received excellent tuition. Each day started with a march from their billets to the sea front, usually whistling the popular tun
e Pedro the Fisherman, where they drilled and Pat could see her favourite donkeys on the beach. They learnt how to install and quickly retrieve the cameras from aircraft, how to develop the film and carry out some initial examination then print the photographs. They were also taught how to process film in the field using two buckets, with developing fluid in one and water in the other, in the event of a conventional processing unit not being available. Once they had passed the course they were sent to a bomber airbase for practical experience. Pat remembers how young the pilots were – just 18 or 19:

  The planes were the size of a Boeing on the airfield I was sent to. To be alone on an airfield but ‘in charge’ of the processing and having to look for signs of Fire, Track or Combustion (FTC) on the photographs, which were the accuracy indicators of the bombing raid, was a responsible job. The FTC showed whether the pilot would be credited with the flight or not. Bernard Babington Smith came to explain why this initial analysis at the airfield was important to night photography. Oh yes, I learned one more thing at this bomber base and that was how to make the tea with milk. And later on I learned how to tell fortunes from the tea leaves!