Secret Alliances
Page 27
Snefjellå was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal for his work. He was the only Norwegian in SIS to receive this medal, though it was also given to Leif Larsen in SOE. After the war, he was also awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC).34
Upsilon
While Tirpitz was based in Trondheimfjord, the Fleet Air Arm attacked it unsuccessfully when it emerged to try to intercept two Atlantic convoys, one sailing to and one returning from Murmansk. The RAF also attacked Tirpitz in Trondheim without success on three occasions in March and April, losing twelve aircraft. When elements of the German fleet moved further north to Narvik and Bogenfjord, and Tirpitz then moved to Altafjord in June, it became essential for SIS to develop its reporting capacity in the north of Norway.
A resistance photograph of the Tirpitz, damaged by the RAF and on its last journey from the Altafjord to Tromsø, where it was sunk in November 1944. © NHM
Torstein Raaby (Ida) and Einar Johansen (Venus) training in south London woods in the summer of 1943. The equipment (an Onan unit) supplied power for a radio transmitter. © NHM
An initial attempt to set up Delta in Bodø in November 1941 had failed because it proved impossible to establish a communications link. (This may have been because the wireless operator used too low a frequency, but atmospheric conditions in the far north frequently interfered with transmissions and telegraphic traffic was often delayed.) The first successful steps were taken when Einar Johansen was landed on Kvaløya west of Tromsø in April 1942. Johansen was among the most active of SIS Norwegian agents. He had started work as a wireless operator with Skylark B in Trondheim and either set up or assisted with the running of a further six stations, all of them in the north of Norway: Upsilon, Libra, Venus, Mu, Denebola and Gudrun. The first, Upsilon, made contact with London on 8 May 1942. It survived a series of disruptions, and was several times obliged to close and move to a new site. The effects of the ill-fated SOE Operation MARTIN, which led to the arrest and death of Kaare Moursund and Thor Knudsen, have already been described in Chapter 7. The following year Upsilon II was raided by the Germans in February 1944. Its successor was moved to the hospital in Tromsø and eventually installed in the attic above the mortuary. Chapter 11 highlights how the wireless operator Egil Lindberg sent reports from there about the sinking of Tirpitz while the bodies of dead German sailors were being carried in below. In its various different incarnations, Upsilon operated almost continuously from May 1942 until the end of the war. Johansen was evacuated back to Britain in January 1943, when it was found that he was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis in both lungs as a result of the privations he had endured.35 He recovered and later returned to Norway to continue his work.
Aquila
A progress report of September 1943 provides a flavour of the initiative and spirit with which one particular station coped with an unexpected German attempt to capture it. Aquila had been operating in the south of Norway in the Kristiansand area, and Welsh wrote,
We are again in contact with this station which has had a most exciting time. It appears that while our stores were successfully dropped on 22 August, on the morning of the 23rd the landing ground and reception committee were surrounded by Germans and the men had to shoot their way out, leaving their stores and equipment behind.
Two days later, the leader of the station returned and stole the wireless gear from beneath the noses of the Germans. Again two days later, he returned to see what else he could pick up and, in his own words, ‘regretted that he had to make use of his weapon’.
On getting in touch with him again, we instructed him to proceed immediately to Sweden to return to this country. However, on his way out, he found that he could set up a station in Oslo, believing that he was in a position to tap sources of information with which we were not in contact.
Permission was given to him to do this, and I am pleased to inform you that he has re-established a really magnificent station whose reports are not only prolific, but of great value. He has also re-established his meteorological station and sends in weather reports every morning.36
The head agent was Oluf Reed Olsen. The site of Aquila, where the equipment was also stored, was under an overhanging ledge on a steep slope and so well hidden that despite an extensive search of the area, the several hundred searching Germans had not yet been able to find it. The best source of information Reed Olsen established in Oslo was the secretary to the Minister of Justice, who was able to provide intelligence on German future intentions in Norway. He subsequently spent six months running the Makir station near Kristiansand, providing information on shipping and U-boat movements, as well as weather reports.
Oluf Reed Olsen operating the SIS station Makir. © NHM
Another attempt to land agents in the far north
Chapter 2 described the unsuccessful attempt in August 1942 to send agents to the far north of Norway to establish a coast-watching service based in Kirkenes, station Argo. The Russians did not honour the agreement, and equipped Thor Sentzen and Hans Michael Skjervø with their own radio crystals, which proved fatally compromising for them after they were captured, and they were later shot. Moreover, they appeared to be about to intern the escorting SIS officer John Turner and not permit him to travel back with the Catalina which had brought the agents. Turner arranged with the RAF crew (who had permission to leave) to take advantage of confusion caused by a German bombing raid, evade the Russians and slip on board the Catalina just as it was on the point of departure. They took him home.37 But, notwithstanding this setback, the need for agent coverage of the German naval anchorage in the Altafjord became so acute that in May 1943 SIS decided to try again. At this time, they were still unaware of the fate of the Argo agents. The operation was codenamed ANTARES.38 Menzies wrote to Rear-Admiral Rushbrooke, Godfrey’s successor as DNI, outlining their plan. SIS first considered sending a Halifax to Murmansk, dropping the agents on the way, but this was ruled out because of the weight involved. An alternative, using a Catalina (carrying agents and stores) and a Halifax flying to Murmansk and then dropping the agents later, was also considered. The Air Ministry was reluctant to take the risk which it calculated only had a 5 per cent chance of success, and was only prepared to do so if the Chiefs of Staff so instructed them. They did not.39 Nagell therefore wrote to a Russian liaison contact to ask whether the Russian Navy would be willing to make available a submarine or patrol boat to deliver the agents.40 This was also unsuccessful. The agents were eventually transported by a Norwegian submarine, Ula, which in September 1943 delivered several others as well – some of whom would establish the Venus station near Tromsø. The group also included Torstein Raaby, who travelled on to Alta and established station Ida close to Kåfjord, where Tirpitz was based.
Finally, it is worth considering the example of an SIS agent who was never formally trained, but who nevertheless provided a remarkable service. When the Crux station was evacuated from Mo i Rana, south of Bodø, in June 1944, a fallback arrangement was made with the farmer on whose land the station had been hidden. It was agreed with him that in the event of necessity, he would receive a message over the BBC, and he would then try to get in touch. The SIS progress report for October 1944 describes what happened:
Owing to recent activities in North Norway, it was considered necessary to try to resuscitate the station, and much to our surprise an immediate message was received. We are greatly indebted to this 60 year old fisherman (Klaus Lines) who not only during the lives of the various Crux stations taught himself morse and code, but remembered both these and wireless procedures so well after a lapse of nearly six months that contact was achieved when it became necessary again to call on his services.41
Lines continued to provide reporting on shipping movements until the end of the war.
German attempts to infiltrate SIS operations
The Germans never succeeded in replicating in Norway the Englandspiel. This was the operation in the Netherlands where for two years they captured almost all the agents se
nt by SOE and played radio games with SOE headquarters. They did arrest several SIS Norwegian wireless operators and forced them to send messages back to London. However, SIS was generally able to recognise the signs of this quite quickly, not least because it was difficult for the Abwehr to obtain approval to transmit any significant intelligence which might have enhanced the credibility of what they were trying to achieve. Once they detected them, SIS went along with these deceptions because they hoped that it might prolong the lives of the radio operators. In one particular case involving Lyra, in Vargsund on the Altafjord, the Germans captured the station in June 1944. They found a contact list which enabled them to roll up not only the station’s network in Troms and Finnmark, but some of those of other stations in the area as well. Nonetheless, Einar Johansen remained and set up the Denebola station shortly afterwards. The Germans knew of his presence and his activities, and were continually searching for him, but without success. He remained until the end of the war and, having earlier received a DSC, was awarded the DSO.42 The Lyra wireless operator, Trygve Duklæt, was made to keep up contact with London. SIS was warned what had happened, and kept up the pretence for nearly six months until the Germans lost interest in December following the sinking of Tirpitz.43 Duklæt was sent to Oslo and confined there until the liberation.
However, the Germans did come close to achieving some successful deception operations, in particular when they infiltrated Canopus. The agents, Arnfinn Grande and Kåre Nøstvold, were originally intended for Leo, near Trondheim. But, when they were dropped in March 1943, they could not find the radio and other equipment which had been sent with them. It was dropped in the wrong place. So they went to Sweden. The Abwehr learned of the drop, and found the equipment. Through a Norwegian agent Karl Adding, who had won the confidence of local resistance members, they sent a message to the Norwegian intelligence office MI.II in Stockholm asking the operator to return. Nøstvold did so, met Adding, and established contact with London in July. The Germans wanted him to establish contact with other resistance groups, but Nøstvold followed the guidance he had been given about avoiding such links, and refused to follow Adding’s proposals. He insisted on sending only marine intelligence and – for a period at least – whatever the Germans provided for him passed muster in London.44 SIS progress reports (which during this period were shown to Prime Minister Nygaardsvold as well as to Torp and Lie) record that he was sending in useful and sometimes valuable information. Without German intervention, Nøstvold went back to Stockholm in October and was supplied with equipment for Canopus as well as two further stations, Leporis and Aries. He returned in November, but did not re-establish contact with London. SIS learned shortly afterwards that the Germans were in touch with the station and so closed it down. They also learned at the same time that the short-lived station Capricorn, also in Trondheim, had been the unwitting recipient of intelligence provided to them by the Germans through an SOE group which they had infiltrated. So Capricorn was closed as well. All the agents, from both stations, escaped and were redeployed elsewhere.45
SIS progress reports contain regular references to German disruptions which compelled stations to close to allow things to quieten down. Sometimes they had close shaves. Upsilon II had to close in July 1943 when a German direction finding headquarters was set up barely fifty yards from where the station was based. More frequently the closures were the consequence of German activity following SOE operations in the neighbourhood. In November 1943, the operator manning the SIS Grid station reported that he had been obliged to close his station for a week because he had been given civil guard duty to prevent sabotage. SIS reported that he had complained, ‘stop this sabotage nonsense so that I can get on with my work’. This was a sentiment which Menzies might have been tempted to reflect to the Chiefs of Staff!46
The extent of coast-watching achievements
In addition to their reporting of the movements of German warships, coast-watching stations also provided extremely valuable coverage of merchant shipping along the Norwegian coast. It is not easy to make a reliable estimate of the volume of shipping which was sunk during the war, because of the range of different units involved in such operations – warships, MTBs, submarines, Bomber Command and Coastal Command. However, No. 18 Group of Coastal Command, responsible for this area (and a small part of Denmark), claimed responsibility for sinking 147 ships totalling over 267,000 tons, and damaging ninety ships totalling over 281,000 tons.47 An equally telling statistic was that iron ore shipments declined from 40,000 tons a month in October 1943 to 12,000 tons in November 1944.48 By 1943, the extent of successful Allied attacks on shipping in this area was so great that large ships were generally not permitted to sail beyond Tromsø. Most cargoes of strategic value were carried in smaller vessels, and ships were obliged to travel in convoys. Some of these sinkings can be attributed to RAF reconnaissance and signals interception. But the role played by the SIS coast-watchers was of the greatest significance.49
It is not often easy to establish from archival sources precisely which intelligence reports led to attacks on which merchant ships – though there is evidence for example that a report from Corona in May 1943 was the direct cause of an MTB sweep ‘which resulted in the sinking of a large modern German cargo ship carrying valuable cargo’. The Admiral Commanding, Orkneys and Shetlands, was reported to be particularly pleased with this operation because ‘it was carried out through the intelligence, planning and operational stages in the true naval manner’.50 However, by the end of 1941 the Ministry of Economic Warfare had started to collate intelligence from photographic reconnaissance and SIS reporting to produce a survey of ports used by merchant shipping, to which Oldell and Skylark B made significant contributions.51 This showed that the southern ports, especially Oslo and Bergen, were most heavily used and that shipping was concentrated in these more heavily defended anchorages until convoys could be formed for passage southward. Ports in northern Norway were used less and for shorter periods. Coastal Command therefore had to choose between attacking well-stocked but more dangerous anchorages in the south or the safer option of attempting to catch shipping further north in fjords and areas between defended anchorages. They chose the latter until much later in the war when German defences were weaker.52 By the end of 1942 SIS agents were regularly providing intelligence on the movements of ore carriers, tankers, troop transports, flak ships and some larger fishing vessels.53 Even better, by 1943, stations such as Aquarius were regularly providing intelligence about the planned departures of convoys the day before they took place, which allowed more time for attacks to be planned.54
NID had commented in July 1942 that more information on coast defences would be welcome and that certain vital areas were not adequately covered. However, by then SIS had already started to provide reporting on the locations and extent of enemy shore defences. This was reflected in the coastal defence reports which were produced by the Admiralty. In April 1942, for example, it was known to NID that in Norway there were some seventy-one gun emplacements fortified with heavy weapons, and another 137 containing smaller calibres. The locations of all significant fortifications around major ports had also been provided, as well as other important intelligence such as the location of minefields. SIS continued to develop this service throughout the war. It enabled both Coastal Command and Bomber Command to plan routes into Norway which had the best chance of avoiding these defences and thus limiting their losses.55
We have seen plenty of evidence of the extent to which the SIS coast-watching stations provided coverage of German naval movements – and Chapter 11 will consider the remarkable extent to which they contributed to coverage of Tirpitz, providing support for all of the attempts made to sink it while it was in Norwegian waters. It must sometimes have been as frustrating to SIS as it was to GC&CS that a combination of circumstances (poor weather, distance, unavailability of naval or air force units in the right location and sometimes sheer bad luck) prevented more successful attempts to sink German wars
hips. On one particular occasion in September 1943, Crux reported the passage southwards of Lützow past Mo i Rana. Together with a series of Ultra reports, this intelligence helped to provide unusually precise details of its passage as Lützow sailed almost the entire length of the Norwegian coast without – on this occasion – being troubled.56 It was a matter of some concern to SIS that the next four stations who might have seen her were not in a position to report on her passage. She passed Trondheim in the dark, the Erica station had been closed down, Cygnus was not yet properly established and Lützow passed the location of Aquarius so early in the morning that she was not observed. It was a reminder of some of the shortcomings of the system which was in place, and an encouragement to develop it further. But such intelligence contributed to other important objectives. In particular it facilitated appreciations by the Admiralty of German naval intentions, which enabled them to plan their own dispositions and quite frequently to take action to protect their own naval resources and convoys – though not, of course, PQ17.§§