Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (15 page)

In 1944, the numbers of conventionally built U-boats suddenly dropped and PIs sought to find the reason. They found the answer when they spotted large sections of submarine hull being prefabricated at different locations and then transported to shipyards for assembly, thereby cutting the overall building time by several months. In the same year, midget submarines were found at many seaplane bases. In both cases, identifying something different or unusual on new photography had triggered a comparison with previous photographic evidence of the area, which had helped to provide the answer.

Betty Campbell had grown up on Clydeside, near Glasgow, and learnt a lot about ships and shipping. She trained as a teacher, joined the WAAF and after PI training, worked in the Naval Section at RAF Medmenham monitoring enemy U-boat construction. Betty married Willem Skappel, a Norwegian who had escaped to England in spring 1940, following the Nazi occupation of his country. He had run an aerial survey and map-making business in Oslo, gaining an intimate knowledge of the Norwegian coastline. Willem and his brother were suspected of using their printing facilities to produce an underground newspaper and his brother was arrested and shipped to Germany. Willem kept his bicycle outside his office window, and when the expected knock on the door came, he leapt through the window on to the bike, and headed for the Swedish border. He was flown to the Shetland Isles and spent two weeks being debriefed in an internment camp before being cleared for PI work; he and Betty met on their training course at Nuneham Park. Willem was the only permanent Norwegian officer at Medmenham and worked in ‘Z1’, a specialist sub-section of Second Phase concerned with Norway and the Baltic, where his knowledge of Norwegian coastal waters was invaluable. He also trained his compatriots in PI before they went to work on operational airfields.
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An air photograph used to monitor U-boat construction in Hamburg shipyard. The latticed structures at the bottom are the construction pens designed to conceal building progress – they were unsuccessful.

Many special studies and handbooks were produced by the sections at Medmenham, all designed to aid identification and knowledge. Lavender Bruce’s future husband, Lieutenant Bryan Westwood RNVR, devised a method of gauging the speed of shipping from the wave patterns shown on air photographs. When a PI reported on a convoy, its location and course would be stated together with the number and types of ships. In addition, the time of arrival at its destination could be calculated from the speed at which the vessels were travelling, providing the navy with important intelligence. Lieutenant Geoffrey Price RNVR, who married an ATS PI at Medmenham, describes his work in ‘A’, the Naval Section:

I looked after the contingent at Medmenham which consisted of three RNVR officers and three WRNS officers who were permanent staff; with small contingents of Naval officers coming through on short courses before going to the Pacific to work, mostly, in aircraft carriers. We kept a close eye on the German Navy, the merchant marine and a very sharp watch on the U-boats. This covered both the operation and the building of U-boats. One of the marine movements always under close scrutiny was the passage of cargo ships to and from Norwegian iron ore ports. It was possible from photographic cover to watch each ship, which was individually known to us by its correct name, from its loading in Hamburg or its German or continental port, to its unloading in Narvik or other Norwegian port and then after its cargo of iron ore was loaded and the ship well on its way to Germany we would arrange for it to be sunk. The cargo from Germany was nearly always known as well and, if considered necessary, this would be sunk on the outward voyage. It was rather unsporting to let a vessel load up before being sunk, but of much greater benefit to the war effort.

‘Z
1
’ sub-section, responsible for Norway and the Baltic. Seated from left: Grania Guiness, Mary Howitt, Jean Starling and Elizabeth Dennis. Standing at left is Willem Skappel, who escaped from Norway in 1940. Standing at the back is Vivien Russell.

The economic section followed a similar plan. This section was manned by officers with inside knowledge of the workings of all manner of factories, steel works etc. It would arrange the bombing of them or by other means of destruction or damage. The rebuilding would then be carefully watched until such time as it looked like coming into production again; when it would be attacked again. Very unsporting!
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The WRNS officers at Medmenham were few in number and other ranks did not serve there. Second Officers Evelyn Bellhouse and Margaret Binns worked in ‘A’ Section for some time and other WRNS members included Dorothy Vaughan-Williams and Christine Guthrie, who was later posted to the Allied HQ in Ceylon, in preparation for the planned attacks in the Pacific War.

Mary Winmill was born in Calcutta, returning to England at the age of 7. After leaving school she trained as a secretary before studying in France and Germany and becoming fluent in both languages. A few days into the war Mary and a friend travelled to Edinburgh to join the WRNS and then went to Portsmouth for basic training. She spent the next eighteen months as a cipher officer in Edinburgh, putting secret messages into code to send, and decoding incoming ones. She then transferred to the ‘Y’ service on radio interception and served at several east coast naval intercept stations, where her linguistic skills were fully utilised:

I listened on Radio Transmission (R/T) to the German E-boat captains as they chattered to each other before leaving ports in occupied Europe to hunt for Allied shipping in the North Sea and English Channel. The information gleaned from these conversations was used on a daily basis to warn Royal Navy and merchant ships of where and when they might be attacked by the enemy, thus enabling them to take evasive action. After several months however, the Germans realised that their social chatter was being intercepted and the practice ceased.
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Mary married an army officer who was a PI and when her service with the interception service came to an end she retrained as a PI. She then joined her husband at RAF Medmenham and worked in the Naval Section, where she was the only WRNS officer at the time.

Other women’s services were slightly envious of the Wrens as it was believed that they were issued with black silk stockings, with seams, as part of their uniform – far preferable to the khaki or grey thick lisle stockings which were uniform issue for the ATS and WAAF. At some point during the war, however, a small, extra allowance of clothing coupons was made to all servicewomen, enabling them to buy such things as handkerchiefs, thinner stockings and other non-issue items. Another difference was that WRNS officers wore ‘natty little tricorn hats’ while the two other services had opted for a cap style more akin to men’s headwear for their female recruits. Although, as one WAAF said: ‘caps were jammed on to all kinds of coiffeurs – it was the time of the Vera Lynn look.’ An unforeseen advantage to the WRNS uniform, as Mary Winmill discovered, was the double-breasted reefer jacket that gradually stretched to became a single-breasted number, allowing her to continue working until just before her first baby was due to be born. WAAFs and ATS could buy themselves a short ‘battledress’-style blouson with plastic buttons, which saved the daily metal button polishing. The majority of women took pride in their uniform and accepted the associated pressing and button polishing without complaint, finding satisfaction in being smartly turned out. Practice was required to manipulate the collar studs with which, in common with servicemen, they were issued to anchor their collarless shirts to separate starched collars.

Mary Winmill, a WRNS who worked in the Naval Section.

First-Phase army PIs had formed part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France in 1939, and following the withdrawal from mainland Europe, an Army Photographic Interpretation Section (APIS) was established at Wembley. With the move to Medmenham in 1941 the APIS became known as the Army Section ‘B’, with the function of providing strategic military intelligence from photographic cover over a large part of Europe. RAF and WAAF personnel worked alongside American, Canadian and British army and ATS in the Section, which followed the practice of forming several sub-sections. Military establishments were watched, including barracks and training areas, where new types of tanks and military vehicles might be spotted. Under continuous scrutiny were the enemy artillery and flak (German anti-aircraft fire) installations that formed the Channel and North Sea coastal defences. Reports and maps showing these were continuously updated and provided essential information for the target data needed for air and seaborne operations. Topographical and detailed defence interpretation was called for in many areas prior to commando raids and paratroop operations, and for this reason army PIs always played an important role in the strategic-planning team for future combined operations.

One of the many incredible accounts of enemy establishments being discovered by PIs at RAF Medmenham was that of the underground factories, for which an army inter-service sub-section – ‘B6’, under the leadership of Captain McBride – was set up to investigate. The widespread searches made by the Section in connection with enemy secret weapon manufacture in 1943–44 will form part of a later chapter, but during those searches ‘B6’ had spotted a large number of underground sites all over continental Europe. Although some were just storage depots, many were factories identified by the PIs from the standard building pattern of latrines, which were always the first essential to be built when there were plans to employ large numbers of workers. The construction of a complete aircraft factory, capable of producing fully assembled aircraft, was discovered built deep underground near the Czechoslovakian border near a town called Kahla. The PIs found that the flat top of a long, high ridge had been stripped of trees and a runway constructed; further searches found parked aircraft, later identified as new jet fighters. Geologists determined in which strata of rock the factory would be built and where the entrances were likely to be. The number of workers on the site was estimated by measuring the hutted camp alongside and applying British army standards for the number of bunks permitted in a specific area. Two of the WAAF members of the ‘B6’ team were Helga O’Brien and Sarah Churchill, who wrote:

Puzzling and tedious as it often was, there were moments of terrific excitement and discovery. One American interpreter had been watching a particular mountain in his regular checks on an area. Suddenly he noticed a change: it appeared that the top of the mountain had been shaved off. At the mountain’s base a railway line disappeared into it. There was no apparent reason for this, but we were never allowed to ‘assume’ anything. He had been allocated this area so he must survey it constantly. I was in the room one day when, after weeks of unrewarding scrutiny, there was a shout of delight – there was a photograph of a plane being winched up the side of his mountain! The Germans had built an underground factory. Aeroplanes were winched to the top of the mountain then the ‘shaved’ mountain top was used as a runway.
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