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

by Halsall, Christine

  On the evening of 5th June, I was relaxing with friends at the Compleat Angler Hotel in nearby Marlow. We were having a drink on the lawn. As we stood there, a strange whooshing, rumbling noise began. A huge bomber plane was above us, towing a glider. It was flying very low – so low that we could see the pilot.

  There was a strong smell of petrol as the sky began to fill with planes and gliders, all heading for the South Coast and then for Normandy. Security was tight at Medmenham and none of us knew what was going to happen. But on June 5th we knew that D-Day was upon us and that the invasion was about to begin. All those days and nights we had spent poring over the photographs – this is what it had all been for. Every beach, every port and every cliff on the Normandy coast had been plotted and modelled by us and here it was at last!

  It was the invasion that I like to think was the beginning of the end of the war. I shall never, ever, forget that evening.9

  As plans and preparations for D-Day advanced and the bombing offensive continued against enemy industries, a new threat to the Allies emerged. It was a threat so grave that it could have caused the postponement of the Normandy invasion and possibly an evacuation of London. The German V-weapons (Vergeltungswaffen, meaning vengeance weapons) were missiles of previously unknown design, fired indiscriminately on the civilian population of southern England, and London in particular. In the early hours of 13 June 1944, just six days after Allied forces successfully invaded Normandy, the first V-weapon fell at Swanscombe in north-west Kent; people living nearby were puzzled that they heard a bomb explode yet did not hear the sound of a plane.

  Since 1930 German scientists had developed totally new weapons, including a pilotless jet-propelled aircraft and a long-range ballistic missile. In 1935, an experimental testing base was set up near a small fishing village called Peenemunde, on the Baltic Sea island of Usedom. It was a quiet place with sand dunes and dense forests that concealed the workshops built alongside launch stands for experimental rocket tests, a runway to test fly new aircraft and a factory that produced liquid oxygen to fuel the rockets.

  Air photograph of the experimental ballistic missile site at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast of Germany.

  The V-weapons story could have come from the pages of a spy thriller in a race against time, except that these were real events happening to London, whose population became the first in the world to be attacked by weapons of mass destruction. Hitler referred to ‘secret weapons’ in a speech made in 1939 when war was declared, and a few months later an anonymous package, left at the British Embassy in Oslo, warned of German long-range weapon developments at Peenemunde. Little interest was taken, however, and the whole thing was put down to an enemy hoax and filed away. In May 1942, Peenemunde was photographed from the air for the first time by a PR pilot who, on his way to another target, by chance noticed some heavy construction work on the beach and took a short run of film. These photographs were regarded as ‘interesting’ at Medmenham, but the poor quality and small scale meant that they did not take priority over more urgent targets and were sent to the library. Unbeknown to the Allies, by the end of 1942 the first successful launches of a V-2 rocket and a V-1 flying bomb had taken place at Peenemunde.

  Early in 1943, more hints of rocket weapon research on the Baltic coast came from a Swedish traveller and the Polish underground. Then a recorded conversation between two German generals being held as prisoners of war at a British interrogation centre mentioned rockets; the generals expressed surprise that none had yet fallen on England. This did raise alarm bells in intelligence circles and the Army Section at Medmenham was instructed to look for any rails or scaffolding that might be linked to an enemy long-range projector capable of firing from the French coast. More PR flights were made and the PIs worked on trying to make sense of the large embankments and circular earthworks at Peenemunde seen under their stereoscopes, but nothing resembled a projector. Their report did, however, lead to an investigation into the rocket weapon threat being set up under the leadership of Mr Duncan Sandys from the Ministry of Supply and Winston Churchill’s son-in-law.

  An intensive photographic search by ‘B2’, code-named Crossbow, began in April 1943 for potential launching areas on the French coast, with no one really certain what they were looking for. Meanwhile four members of the Industry Section at Medmenham were assigned to search for clues of what the experiments at Peenemunde were producing. Models were ordered that Mary Harrison enjoyed working on as they were a larger scale than those for D-Day. She remembered that the air photographs the modellers worked from were taken from such a low altitude that she could see the faces of the soldiers running from the plane. In June the first rocket lying horizontally on a trailer was photographed there and the following month air photography confirmed the construction of several massive concrete structures inland from Calais and Cherbourg. All indications were that these so-called ‘heavy’ sites were associated with rockets and linked to Peenemunde. On 17 August 1943 a massive bombing raid was mounted on Peenemunde and against the ‘heavy sites’ in France. Effective as these attacks were at disabling the launching sites, they only delayed the rocket development work, which the Germans moved to Poland.

  It soon became apparent that there was another quite different secret weapon, when the Danish Resistance smuggled to London a sketch of a small pilotless aircraft that had crashed on the Baltic island of Bornholm. The French Resistance then reported on ‘catapults able to launch bombs’ and ‘up to 400 launch sites expected to be operational by November’. Intelligence pointed to flying bombs being the immediate threat rather than rockets, and reports of unidentified constructions at many points in north-east France triggered another intensive programme of air photography. In October 1943, an agent from a French espionage network provided full details of a site at Bois Carre that included a large ramp pointing towards London. This was a standard flying bomb launch site, and as the missile storage buildings looked like a ski lying on its side, they became known as ‘ski type’.

  However, no flying bomb had yet been seen. Using what knowledge they had, the PIs deduced that they had a wingspan of less than 20ft and that the enemy must be close to launching them from sites in France. The Aircraft Section was instructed to search for a very small aeroplane at Peenemunde and on a re-examination of June photography they spotted something behind a hangar but of very poor definition. On 28 November 1943, a Mosquito took off to photograph Berlin but cloud forced the pilot to cover Peenemunde instead. An examination of these photographs by Constance Babington Smith and her team revealed a launch ramp with a tiny cruciform object sitting on it, found to have a wingspan of 19ft. The V-1 flying bomb had been identified, and the launch ramp they found later at the nearby settlement of Zinnowitz was similar to the ones found in France. Here at last was the link between Peenemunde on the northern coast of Germany and the ski sites, hundreds of miles away, in northern France.

  The model of the Peenemunde site constructed at RAF Medmenham from information shown on air photography.

  The V-1 firing line plot prepared by RAF Medmenham, showing the concentration of Doodlebugs aimed at London and southern England.

  Identifying this one small, elusive object in a mass of photography had taken many hours of patient searching and concentration on the part of Constance Babington Smith and her PIs, keeping an enquiring mind even when they might seem to be engaged in a fruitless task. The usual portrayal of randomly picking up a photograph and immediately ‘seeing’ the relevant object is totally false. The reality was stacks of photo boxes with stereoscopes, magnifying and measuring devices to hand for the PI to pursue a painstaking search. In the V-weapons search PIs were hindered by government scientists who refused to believe that the enemy was capable of producing such weapons, and officials who withheld relevant knowledge from them in the mistaken belief that their search would be more diligent if they had no information on what they were looking for.

  Once the flying bomb had been found, it was possible to deduce the
fuelling and propulsion of the jet engine, which ran for a pre-set length of time before cutting out and falling to earth to explode. Then the race was on to identify all the ski sites in northern France with which they were linked. It was led by ‘B2’ sub-section and assisted by any PI who could possibly be spared from other duties – amongst the many WAAFs involved were Mollie Thompson and Kitty Sancto. They found ninety-six sites in all, which by early 1944 were largely rendered inoperable by intensive low-level tactical bombing raids. The V-1 programme was seriously disrupted and the planned firing numbers were not achieved. However, the enemy switched to simpler firing sites, which could be quickly set up, used and moved, and hid them in woods and farm buildings. Although this transitory way of operating made them harder to spot, the PIs found giveaway clues to potential firing sites, which were then targeted.

  The V-1s were quickly nicknamed ‘Doodlebugs’ by people living in the approaches to London, who became all too familiar with the ‘putt-putt’ sound of their approach, knowing that when the noise stopped they had 5 seconds to seek shelter before the bomb exploded. A three-stage defensive ring was put in place around London with anti-aircraft guns forming the first line of defence against incoming Doodlebugs on the south coast. Behind them, in the skies above southern England, Spitfire and Tempest fighter pilots flew alongside the Doodlebugs with great exactitude and, with the wing of their aircraft, tipped them off course. Lastly, barrage balloons encircled London. The Communications Section at Medmenham provided another solution by detailing the transport routes of V-1s, from their underground factory in the Hartz mountains of Germany to northern France, so the weapons could be destroyed in transit.

  WAAF Norah Littlejohn identifies the location of a V-1 launch site on an air photograph.

  Although 4,216 Doodlebugs were destroyed on their journey over south-east England, 2,419 evaded gunners, fighters and balloons to crash on London, and at one point the government considered the complete evacuation of the capital. However, it could have been so much worse without the timely identification and destruction of the projected V-1 launch and storage sites. Instead of the reported 9,251 that did fall, southern England and London could have been facing the planned target of 2,000 V-1 firings every 24 hours.

  Pamela Howie, the photographic processor at RAF Benson, saw at first hand what life was like in those parts of London where the Doodlebugs fell regularly:

  Fred met me at the NAAFI wagon for a cup of char and a wad, (tea and a bun). I could see he was worried about his mother since the arrival of the doodle bugs (flying bombs) in London. He was arranging to go home for the weekend and asked would I go with him. I put in for a pass and soon we were on our way.

  We were not however prepared for what we saw when we came up from the London Underground station at Forest Gate. It was an appalling sight, it was like the devastation I saw constantly on the aerial films we worked on, but at close hand it was unbelievable. I began to think maybe it was not such a good idea to have come here. I could see that it had shaken Fred, naturally, because his mother and sister were among all this. I only prayed that they were still there.

  As we turned the corner I heard him sigh with relief as he pointed out his mother’s house, on one side of the road. Out of a dozen or so houses two stood intact, of the others, some were completely demolished, others partially so. The rest were rubble, there was a pall of dust hanging in the air and we wasted no more time looking around, it was more than depressing.

  Fred’s Mum was a frail little lady, but what she lacked in size she certainly made up for in guts to stay among all this, and yet I suppose she had nowhere else to go. She greeted me warmly and made me welcome. Fred busied himself immediately. I could see he was the apple of her eye – he was certainly an attentive son. He explained that as there were only two bedrooms he would be sleeping at his sisters three doors away, which by a miracle was also still standing.

  I went to bed and was awakened by an ominous droning sound, one I had not heard before – it was not the noise a plane made. I was aware of Fred’s Mum by my bed quietly saying, ‘Come on dear, we will go down and I will brew a cup of tea’. Before the kettle had even boiled the noise abruptly stopped. This we had heard was the time to worry, once the engine cut out and it sounded to be just overhead. I could see the consternation on her face as we both sat perfectly still awaiting the inevitable.

  Then there was an almighty explosion and the whole house shook, me included. I enquired in a trembling voice, ‘How often do you have to put up with this?’ She replied, ‘At least once every night dear, and sometimes more.’ I took my hat off to her, we didn’t know we were born in some parts of the country.

  The next day we did our best to cheer her up, or was it the other way around? Personally I was not sorry we were not staying another night.10

  The area around Medmenham was relatively unaffected, although Mary Harrison recorded on 21 June 1944: ‘First taste of a Doodlebug on night shift. Never felt so scared in my life.’ A fortnight later: ‘Flying bomb in Henley while in cinema.’ And two days later: ‘Doodlebug dropped near High Wycombe.’ On 22 July: ‘Terrible evening – a flying bomb dropped on Bovingdon Green (between Marlow and Medmenham) and one or two more too near to be pleasant.’11

  The last Doodlebug fell on 8 September 1944 and the first V-2 ballistic rocket arrived on the same day. The only launching site needed for a V-2 was a patch of hard standing and there were thus no recognisable sites for PIs to search for. Taking just 5 minutes from launch to impact, the missiles travelled too high and too fast to be tracked down and, as they were silent, civilians had no chance to seek shelter. All the PIs could do was identify the transportation routes for the rockets and their fuel supply, which were then targeted for bombing attacks, while the invasion forces advanced across the Low Countries and Germany, and eventually overran them. In all 1,190 rockets reached England and more were fired on Liege and Antwerp. The last V-2 rocket fell on Kent on 27 March 1945.

  A V-2 missile firing in 1944.

  General Eisenhower, supreme commander of the invasion, later commented:

  It seemed likely that, if the enemy had succeeded in perfecting and using these new weapons six months earlier than he did, our invasion of Europe would have proved exceedingly difficult, perhaps impossible. I feel sure that if he had succeeded in using these weapons over a six month period, and particularly if he had made the Portsmouth – Southampton area one of his principal targets, Overlord (the Normandy Landings) might have been written off.12

  Two years after joining the D-Day planning team in 1942, on another summer’s day in London, Ursula Powys-Lybbe had first-hand experience of a Doodlebug:

  I had no sensation of noise, which seemed most peculiar as the flying bomb had driven itself into the roof immediately above us and exploded – all I was aware of was a swaying movement around me, dust rising everywhere, and a feeling of utter desolation and disorientation as many of the dividing walls had collapsed. I turned round to see what had happened to my friends and was horrified to be faced with a pile of rubble blocking the passage between us from floor to ceiling. Five of our personnel had been killed and several injured, as I learnt later. I was too stunned to move, and too stunned to answer the many questions plied to me by a group of air raid wardens and ambulance men who had materialised from a staircase which I never knew existed until the door had been blown off. One of the rescuers handed me an American officer’s raincoat, and pushing me towards the staircase, said kindly, ‘You’re not needed here, love, get on your way home,’ and I found myself walking towards Berkeley Square with the rain still pouring down.

  Suddenly I was stopped by a young Naval officer, RNVR, brandishing a piece of sodden paper. It had TOP SECRET written all over it and he asked me, ‘Does this belong to you by any chance? It came floating down from somewhere.’ I replied with something unintelligible and he looked at me closely. ‘You look as if you need salvaging, come with me,’ and taking my arm led me towards Charles Street. We came
to the American Officers’ Club of which he was a member, and where I had once disgraced myself by mistaking peanut butter for mustard.

  My new friend addressed himself to a very elegant receptionist who was eyeing me with obvious disapproval. ‘Is there anywhere for this officer (meaning me) to clean herself up?’ he asked. My uniform was concealed under the raincoat filthy with plaster and brickdust, my hair also filthy, with streaks of the stuff all over my face and hands – I was a mess.

  A perspective view of the entrance to the V-2 launch site at Wizernes, in north-east France, drawn in early 1944. It was prepared by the Wild Section, entirely from air photographs, and was subsequently proved to be accurate in all respects.

  The V-2 site at Wizernes was built in a quarry. To obtain this daring low-level oblique, the PR pilot flew down into the quarry, pulling steeply away once the photograph had been taken. The site was extensively bombed in 1944 and rendered inoperable.

  Damage caused by a V-2 falling in Hornsey, North London.

  The elegant receptionist now stared at me with obvious distaste, and being English, behaved as if she were totally unaware of the mayhem that had been created just down the street. ‘Are you a member?’ she enquired loftily.13