by Tony Insall
§ He was awarded the DSO, DSC, CGM, DSM and bar, testimony to some of the remarkable achievements outlined here.
¶ The pilot subsequently justified his action by saying that he did not believe that any surface vessel could navigate in the heavy seas which were running, so he assumed that Hessa was a U-boat.
|| SO, or Special Operations department, was formed by the OSS to work with SOE.
** The story of this remarkable man is well described in many books. It is worth starting with the autobiographical account of his wartime work Report from No. 24 (Oslo: Barricade, 1999). Sønsteby describes (pp. 90–91) how he fell out with the officer in charge of his training course, which was the main cause of his problems.
†† GUNNERSIDE and the sinking of the Hydro, which prevented the Germans obtaining heavy water from Vemork, will be covered in Chapter 9, and SOE contributions to operations against Tirpitz will be included in Chapter 11.
‡‡ No archival trace of his messages has been found, but his statement is borne out by information on his SOE personal file.
§§ Sverre Midtskau (see Chapter 2) had been in touch with Manus and was also arrested when he visited Manus’s flat shortly after this incident, without knowing what had happened. The resistance assisted him to escape from Gestapo headquarters at Møllergata 19. He returned to Britain via Sweden in February 1942.
¶¶ When Mockler-Ferryman, AD/E responsible for north-west Europe, put forward these recommendations to Gubbins in July 1943, he wrote that he hoped that they could be dealt with quickly. ‘In the past there has been very considerable delay and in many cases men lost their lives in subsequent operations before the awards had come through.’ (TNA, HS 9/608/3.) This might otherwise have been the case for Gram, who was killed the following year in Oslo.
|||| In his unpublished history, Wilson wrote that he had recommended Deinboll for a DSO. However, the War Office downgraded it to an MC. When the papers were submitted to King George VI, he commented, ‘If this citation is correct, this officer deserves a higher award. Resubmit.’ So Deinboll received his DSO after all.
*** Aksel and its crew were lost on the return journey.
††† The equipment required by the Norwegians for mountain warfare was often unavailable or inadequate. In his report after GRANARD, Deinboll described a bad example of this with studied understatement. He wrote that the only decent ski boots to be found were size ten and upwards. One of his party, Pedersen, required size eight and so had to be content with a pair of old Norwegian ski boots. After they had been in use for a week they began to fall to pieces and after a fortnight, despite constant repairing, they were completely useless. Their soles had to be held on by four straps. ‘Ski running with such footwear has little to recommend it. Getting frostbite with 20C of frost is easy even if your toes are not sticking out of your boots as they were in Pedersen’s case.’ (TNA, HS 2/194.)
‡‡‡ The pilot’s behaviour was the subject of a written complaint, but this came too late to make any difference.
§§§ It is not clear which operation Wilson was referring to.
¶¶¶ The two Gestapo officers who were killed at Telavåg were Behrens and Bertram.
|||||| Although the group broke up, Sjøberg remained in the area and continued his work until a further group arrived in May 1943 to replace him and he returned to Britain. He went back to Norway with Falcon in January 1944 and was killed in June that year.
CHAPTER 8
THE SIS COAST-WATCHERS
DEVELOPMENT OF NAVAL COVERAGE
The following consists of extracts from reports on German intelligence operations in Scandinavia. They are chiefly of interest from a technical viewpoint. The information about the German post at Vardø was obtained from an agent in the post, and is of such a secret nature that the CSS* has forbidden its distribution ‘in toto’. If found, it will certainly be traced back to me.
HANDWRITTEN REPORT FROM KIM PHILBY TO THE NKVD (RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE), 1 AUGUST 1941, PASSING ON INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED FROM AN SIS ABWEHR AGENT BASED IN VARDØ IN NORTHERN NORWAY.
It has hitherto been thought that at the beginning of August 1941, Skylark B in Trondheim was the only active SIS station in Norway. While it provided some valuable information (including details about heavy water production at Vemork – see Chapter 9 – and Bismarck’s destroyer escort), it was not able to supply more than a small fraction of the naval intelligence which was urgently required by Naval Intelligence Division (NID). However, SIS did have another source of intelligence in Norway at this time, even if they chose not to circulate his reporting outside their own service. This was an Abwehr officer who, in August 1941, was based in the coastal port of Vardø, in the far north of Norway, not far from the Russian border. He remained in Norway throughout the war.
British and Norwegian archives provide few details about his work. The best information available comes, ironically enough, from NKVD archives in the form of reporting in August 1941 by Kim Philby, the SIS officer who was a Soviet spy.† Philby was at that time working in Section V, the counter-intelligence section of SIS, a position which gave him access to some of SIS’s most sensitive secrets – as these documents show. Since the most detailed of his reports described the location of SIS’s Abwehr agent, Philby, with understandable concern for his own safety, pointed out that Menzies had forbidden its circulation outside SIS. It would therefore make him vulnerable if the Russians were to use the material unwisely. The intelligence he sent to the NKVD described the extent of Abwehr activities against the Soviet Union – mostly through the use of fishing vessels, also the identities of cover firms which were used, communications schedules, cypher systems and the identities of Abwehr officers in Vardø, Tromsø and Oslo, as well as the names of Norwegians who were involved in these operations. Although the German invasion of Russia, Operation BARBAROSSA, had started barely seven weeks previously, these Abwehr operations were already well developed – they would of course have known well in advance of what was being planned and so had time to prepare.
A further Philby report provided the names of suspected Norwegian communists who were known to be active in the Kirkenes area near the Russian border, the identities of several more Abwehr officers, and also details of Norwegians working for the Germans. These included George Furre, the skipper of Urd II, who had sailed to Lerwick in November 1940 and lured three SOE agents back to Norway – and back to their deaths (see Chapter 5). Although Philby did not make its provenance clear in this report, some of his information almost certainly came from ISOS – Abwehr reports which had been decyphered by GC&CS. In view of the large number of Abwehr attempts to infiltrate Norwegian agents into Britain, several of whom managed to slip through the refugee screening process, counter-intelligence information from this Abwehr source would have been of considerable value. It usefully supplemented the GC&CS reporting. This evidence shows how Philby was in a position to cause damage to British and Norwegian interests by passing information to the Russians about German and presumably Anglo-Norwegian intelligence operations in northern Norway. But, even greater damage would have been caused by the fact that he was revealing that GC&CS had already broken Abwehr cyphers.
The only information concerning this agent in British archives is contained in a letter of May 1945 from SIS to John Masterman, chairman of the Twenty Committee which ran the successful series of double-agent operations against the Germans. The letter described the agent as ‘a reliable source, who has been working in Norway for the Abwehr since 1941’. SIS informed Masterman that he had provided information about the double agents Mutt and Jeff (see Chapter 5), commenting that since they had asked for a new wireless set – the most recent one which the Germans had – the Abwehr had concluded that the pair were under control and that the transmitters were being operated by the British. Their suspicion was strengthened by the fact that their transmissions sometimes lasted for as long as an hour. By the time the request for a new set was made, Mutt had been operating for over three years, so his career had been
a pretty successful one. The agent also provided details of Nikolay Hansen, who had been dropped by parachute on 30 September 1943 and given himself up, and of an agent codenamed Beetle, who had been operating in Iceland since 1942. Beetle had been delivered there by submarine, and provided intelligence about convoys as well as weather reports.‡ 1
The agent would certainly have provided intelligence about Abwehr operations against SIS stations and activities in Norway. There is no clear evidence in Norwegian archives that SIS shared this intelligence with the Norwegians at any stage during the war, though it is quite possible that they might have done so in a disguised form in circumstances which they judged to be particularly important.
Towards the end of the war, SIS Norwegian agents began to develop contacts with German officers who foresaw the coming German defeat and wanted to trade information in the hope of obtaining better treatment after hostilities ended. These included a senior Abwehr officer, Konrad Gallen, whose original name appears to have been Galuzka, which was Polish. He had served in Norway since the summer of 1944 and started to cooperate with the SIS station Gullfax, which was based outside Oslo, in the spring of 1945. Gullfax reported that through him they had a chance to get in touch with the appropriate German authorities to negotiate a possible capitulation to the Allies. Since Allied policy was to insist on unconditional German surrender and to discourage such initiatives, SIS replied simply that the suggestion had been passed on to the proper authorities.2 Gallen also offered the station a chance to move from the forest into his house and transmit from there, which he considered would be safer for them. Gullfax reported this to SIS in London, who were suspicious of the offer and instructed the station to remain in the woods.3
An example of Gullfax reporting from such a German source on 25 January 1945 is contained in the following extract, which gives something of the atmosphere in which the station was operating:
My head source reports that a German officer in the security police has told him that the German security police are in a state of emergency, ready to take action against a transmitter in the Oslo district.
The Germans know where the transmitter is and that the station is to have supplies dropped.
They also know and can break the station’s codes and have [had] the station under complete control for a long time.
Action will be taken when the stores are dropped.
Other details are not known and apparently cannot be obtained. I will do what I can and will await your instructions regarding what you wish I should try to bring to light.
Can these codes be broken?
That was an understandable question. The Germans were generally only able to break SIS and SOE cyphers after they had captured a station and gained possession of the codes. They could then analyse the traffic and recover previous messages. The station referred to was Corona. Poignantly, it was Johanna (the name of the new wireless set provided for Corona), which replied on 28 January:
It is reported from Victoria Terrasse§ that a code has been broken, and that BBC message and pinpoint for a proposed parachute drop are known. The Germans are lying in wait.
I propose the following: send all the relevant BBC messages for the Oslo area immediately.¶ But do not send any aircraft.
Inform all stations of the situation. Use emergency code and let us watch how the Germans react. Send urgent reply today.
There is nothing to show whether this warning was passed on by SIS to the four other stations which were operating in the Oslo area at that time. It only later became known that the Germans had indeed been able to read the cypher which Corona was using after they had surprised some of its members, who dropped a bag and fled. The bag contained transmission schedules and other information which gave the Germans what they needed. They subsequently also managed to locate the station by direction finding.4 For unknown reasons they did not interfere when stores were dropped on 21 February, but raided the site where it was operating on 18 March 1945, and both the wireless operator Arne Eikrem, and his lookout Karl August Nerdrum, resisted arrest and were killed in an exchange of fire.5
SIS radio operators were often protected by an armed guard in case of a German raid. © NHM
The early stations
Chapter 4 examined the importance of Norway as a suitable location for operations which recovered significant quantities of German cypher material and equipment. This greatly helped the breaking of Abwehr codes. Some of the material also helped to break other German cypher systems. The part which this intelligence played in winning the Battle of the Atlantic has been well described by Hinsley.6 It played an important role, too, in charting the movement of German naval units in Norwegian waters, after they began to be based there in force from 1942 onwards, as well as the movements of commercial shipping carrying cargoes of strategic minerals. But as Edward Thomas (who worked in GC&CS for a period in 1942) commented, valuable though this intelligence was, it was seldom complete and often late. The reporting of SIS coast-watching stations was a very important supplement to Ultra, and regularly provided the first intelligence about German naval movements to be received in London.7 Its value cannot be underestimated.
However, the early attempts to establish coverage were frustratingly slow. Although the director of naval intelligence, Godfrey, told the Chief of Naval Staff in early January 1942 that ‘NID is well served at key points on the Norwegian coast’, not everyone shared his view. Only three months later, in April, the newly appointed SIS deputy director (Navy), John Cordeaux, complained that SIS coverage in Scandinavia was very limited, with representation only in Oslo (Beta), Bergen (Theta), Trondheim (Lark and Lark II) and Bodø (Deneb, but it did not have two-way communications).8 In fact, the situation was rather better than that and closer to Godfrey’s description. Station Koppa was established in Ålesund the previous October, and had functioned effectively until it was betrayed in February 1942; Eric (north of Florø), manned by the redoubtable Dagfinn Ulriksen and Atle Svardal who performed so well that they were to meet King Haakon on their return (see Chapter 1), had been a prolific source of intelligence for six months between August 1941 and February 1942; Zeta (near Stord between Bergen and Stavanger) was also in action between November 1941 and July 1942, providing a small number of useful reports.
SIS hermit station Eric, manned by Dagfinn Ulriksen and Atle Svardal. It was located on Gåsøy (on the right in the middle distance in the shipping lane). © NHM
Nonetheless, the need for extensive coverage of the Norwegian coast had become strikingly obvious after Theta reported on 23 January 1942 that Tirpitz was lying in a fjord near to Trondheim and large elements of the main German fleet began to be based there. By May 1942, the Tirpitz and three heavy cruisers Hipper, Lützow and Admiral Scheer together with eight destroyers, four MTBs and twenty U-boats were located between Trondheim and Kirkenes.9 Their presence represented a very considerable threat to Atlantic and later Arctic convoys. SIS took steps to extend its coverage, recruiting and training more willing Norwegian volunteers, and by July 1942 NID commented that intelligence on Norway was much improved – ‘though more information on coast defences would be welcome and certain vital areas are not adequately covered’.|| 10 Theta also contributed to Ultra reporting about the passage northwards from Bergen of Prinz Eugen and other German warships in late February 1942, which enabled the British submarine Trident to damage her with a torpedo off Trondheim shortly afterwards. The station received praise from SIS: ‘Congratulations. You are sitting right in a wasp’s nest. Be careful and live long.’11 (This well-meaning advice was insufficient. The Germans arrested members of the group in June 1942, and the station was forced to close.) Moreover, in May 1942, four SIS stations reported on the movements of Prinz Eugen, sailing southwards from Trondheim to Kristiansand. They provided sufficient notice that the Admiralty was able to have her located by air reconnaissance and subjected to an air attack. Unfortunately, the attack was unsuccessful.12
The scale of the coverage required from
SIS agents, and the number of possible hiding places for German ships as well as boats operating from Shetland and supplying the resistance, were much larger than one might think. It gradually became apparent that German ships were adopting the technique of hiding in narrow fjords by day, positioning themselves as close as possible to the sides of steep fjords to avoid detection. It was not easy for the analysts in NID, as it might not be for the reader either, to grasp the complexities of Norwegian coastal geography or to appreciate the distances involved as they struggled to locate some of the place names mentioned in SIS agent reporting or to plan deployments. A baffled Lieutenant Commander W. Todd, responsible for Scandinavia, illustrated the difficulties in 1942:
Norway is God’s own jigsaw puzzle. No other coastline in the world is so deeply indented. Fjords, with inner branches like trees in winter, push in between the mountains for ninety miles or more. Islands are counted by the hundred on every chart. Yet every fjord, every point, bay and island must have a name. No language on earth could provide different names for so many places, and Norway has long since abandoned the attempt. Place names repeat themselves unblushingly. But there are other potential causes of confusion … For example, there is a Puddefjord, which was so called by those who lived on one side of the fjord, but it is called Damsgårdfjord by those who lived on the other side, as they did not like the name Puddefjord…** It is 2,100 miles from the Swedish border of Norway in the south to the Finnish frontier in the north, but following the coastline, the distance would be 16,400 miles.13
That is two-thirds of the circumference of the earth.
Training
The first SIS training school for Norwegian agents was established by Frank Foley at 5 St James’s Street in central London. It was later moved to another location at 14 Brompton Square. The initial training run by the British was quite rudimentary, concentrating on telegraphy, basic security measures and the use of codes. It was gradually developed further and Norwegian instructors started to work there during the summer of 1941, though SIS retained responsibility for the syllabus. However, the Norwegian students became disillusioned with the quality and breadth of the training – and also the standard of some of the equipment with which they were issued. There were stories of cameras that did not function properly, faulty weapons and equipment which had been wrapped in English newspapers.14 (A complaint which was also made by SOE agents, see Chapter 7.) Wireless sets, which were large, were provided in identical suitcases. Oluf Reed Olsen (stations Aquila and Makir) described how he once travelled on a train with a German SS officer, who became interested in the bag containing his radio, and could not stop staring at it.15 There were also incidents when agents were sent to Norway but found on arrival that they could not get in touch with London. They did not know whether they had been inadequately trained, their radio was faulty, or they had been issued with the wrong transmission schedule – there were times when each of those faults was identified. One such example happened in November 1941 when Eivind Viken was sent to Florø to establish station Pi, but could not make contact. He was brought back a few weeks later by Leif Larsen.