Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (11 page)

Millicent Laws was one of the few WAAFs who attended an early OTU, temporarily relocated to Bulstrode Park in Buckinghamshire. Unable to recall anything of the content of the course, Millicent’s abiding memory is the ‘pep’ talk given to the cadets on the last afternoon by the then commandant WAAF, Dame Katherine Trefusis-Forbes. Her final words – ‘You must have
guts!
’ – rang in their bemused ears as they headed back to their various units.

Elizabeth Johnston-Smith was the only WAAF to take and pass the PI course twice. In June 1940 she was living in Bournemouth and planning to go to art school, when suddenly the town was full of exhausted soldiers who had lost everything in their evacuation from France. It was Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain later on that summer that determined Elizabeth to join the WAAF. She was subsequently commissioned, went into WAAF administration and was posted to 3 Group Bomber Command at RAF Exning, in Suffolk, which she greatly enjoyed:

Several months later I was called ‘out of the blue’ to the Air Ministry and interviewed by Douglas Kendall for PI training – I don’t know why! It sounded interesting and I duly went to Nuneham Park for the PI course, which I enjoyed and passed. I was then sent to Medmenham to be interviewed by a panel to decide which section I should go in. But when I looked at the ‘old bods’ on the panel (I was only 20) I thought, ‘they look a bit stuffy’, and requested a transfer back to Bomber Command. There were no vacancies so I did WAAF Admin in the Midlands until 1943 when I got fed up with that, reapplied to Nuneham Park and passed the PI course again. Steve Stephenson told me that I was the only person to have done the course twice and passed both times!
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Elizabeth Johnston-Smith passed the PI course twice.

Elizabeth has another unique claim as she is almost certainly the only WAAF ever to have sat on the knee of the Commander-in-Chief, Bomber Command:

At Exning, I was chosen to play the part of Cinderella in the Christmas pantomime. At the final performance the last song was ‘Kiss the Boys Goodbye’ and then the cast trooped down to sit on the knees of the top brass sitting on the front row – and I sat on ‘Bomber’s’ much to the delight of the audience! The following morning I encountered Air Marshal Harris at work. I delivered a smashing salute, and received a smile and ‘Good Morning Cinders’ in reply!

During the latter half of 1941, when the USA was still neutral, the personnel at Medmenham became accustomed to increasing numbers of US navy and marine officers coming to learn about the organisation of British PI. Pamela Dudding recalls a US naval officer being there for two or three months: ‘I avoided him at breakfast because he put marmalade on his kippers!’

Helena Ewen tells an interesting anecdote indicating that US preparations for war against Japan were in place before the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941:

In November/December 1941 I attended the first PI course at RAF Benson with six WAAF and six RAF officers plus a WRNS officer. Also attending, but keeping apart from us, were two American civilians. On the morning of Monday 8th December they appeared in American service uniforms and joined in with us fully – now as Allies.
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Having passed their PI course and, if not already commissioned, attended an OTU course, the new PIs set off, either to Medmenham or to one of the four PR bases in Britain. RAF Benson was near Wallingford, in Oxfordshire; RAF St Eval on the north coast of Cornwall; RAF Wick in the far north-east of Aberdeenshire; and RAF Leuchars on the coast of Fife, in the east of Scotland.

Mary Grierson, always known as ‘Bunny’, had joined the WAAF straight from school and worked at Wembley before moving in 1941 to RAF Benson where 1 PRU was based. With four reconnaissance squadrons operating from the base, the PIs were fully occupied. The photographic unit and First-Phase hut were sited just beyond the airfield boundary in the little village of Ewelme, so they could walk or cycle there from Benson through the tranquil countryside, crossing hedges and a stream with watercress beds. A path led to their hut and above them they could see the manor house where Henry VIII had spent his honeymoon with Catherine Howard. Ten PIs, a mixture of RAF, WAAF and USAAF, were on duty at any one time. ‘Bunny’ wrote:

First Phase Interpretation was carried out at the aerodrome from which the PRU aircraft operated. It was essentially a report which contained tactical information which affected the day to day course of the war, and consisted of a brief teleprint which was issued as soon as possible after the landing of the aircraft.

Close cooperation between Station Intelligence, the organisations that requested the cover and First Phase Sections was very necessary, especially after the D-Day landings as the programme for flying would be continually changing due to the speed of the Allied advances. It was also important to file data in a manner suitable for quick and easy reference due to the speed at which information had to be issued.

While the process of de-briefing the pilot was in hand with the Station Intelligence Officer, the camera magazine would be removed from the aircraft by the Photographic personnel and rushed to their Section for processing. The time taken to process and print varied according to the number and length of films to be dealt with on the machines available, but one and a half to two hours was an average time taken for the whole procedure of processing, viewing and printing of one sortie.

Once processed the film was taken through to the First Phase Section where it was viewed by rolling it over a desk lit from underneath and checking with the pilot’s trace, data relevant to the area and the jobs claimed by the pilot. Speed being one of the essentials, much depended on the memory and experience of the PI viewing the film and if, at moments glance, he or she could determine the unusual from the usual trend of activity on any class of target, the number of prints required could be cut down to an absolute minimum. Specialist PIs were not needed on First Phase, rather a wide knowledge of enemy activities in general, gained through experience.
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PR aircraft also flew over target areas shortly after bombing raids had taken place and their photographs were examined by First-Phase PIs:

The point of our reports of damage assessment on targets was to inform the Bomber department responsible for the raid if it had been successful. If the photography showed that it had not been, and the target justified immediate damage, another attack would follow shortly.

Other targets analysed included ports and anchorages when the positions of all naval ships were reported on, with particular attention being given to U-boats. Convoys, either stationary or in movement, were important too, especially if they were within range of Allied coastal aircraft, when a message would immediately be sent through to the appropriate Coastal Command base and an attack could ensue.

RAF St Eval, near Wadebridge, was used as an operational base for squadrons of Coastal, Fighter and Bomber Commands. It was also well placed for the PR aircraft monitoring the movements of the German fleet off the west coast of France which was a constant threat to the British Atlantic convoys. Ann McKnight-Kauffer was posted to St Eval in February 1941, where she worked initially with one male senior interpreter, keeping a watch over a long list of enemy shipping:

The whole effort of PI was, of course, focussed on German shipping and there were always two, and sometimes three, PR covers of the ships each day – first the
Hipper
, and then the
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
. There was also a watch kept on the building of submarine pens at l’Orient.
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At first the senior PI was rather offhand with Ann, only giving her the boring jobs to do, so she was always counting aircraft; he was also rather fond of his own opinions. One day, after throwing another handful of airfield photographs on to her desk for her to count yet more aircraft, he made a particularly sweeping statement that Ann challenged him to substantiate. It turned out that he was wrong but the confrontation did clear the air and from then on he treated Ann as his equal:

The pilots were briefed by the Intelligence Officer before a sortie, and some of them then come to the PI section for additional gen. The PR aircraft were all Spitfires at first, but Mosquitos were coming in before I left in 1942. The usual procedure at St Eval was that when the aircraft landed, the pilot went to the Intelligence Officer to give the information he required. Meanwhile, the films were being processed, which took about an hour, and as soon as the negatives were developed the interpreters started working on them with a stereoscope. The PI report was supposed to be written within two hours of the aircraft landing. The pilots, if they were keen, usually looked in to see the negatives.

St Eval was regularly bombed and the Photographic Section was eventually moved off the airfield. Ann remarked:

You felt closer to it in an unusual way when you had been counting the German bombers at their airfield in the morning, and then that night they attacked your station.

In complete contrast to her work of analysing the movements of the German fleet and being bombed, Ann was flown from St Eval to London for a few days to be photographed in uniform by Cecil Beaton, and featured in a series for
Vogue
magazine. She was later posted back to Medmenham.

Eve Holiday was serving at RAF Wick when the German battleship
Bismarck
was identified.

Eve Holiday was chosen in January 1941 to go from Wembley with Michael Spender to set up a new PI unit at RAF Wick, an airfield sited on a bleak, treeless plateau on the extreme corner of north-east Scotland. With Norway now under German occupation, the station existed to keep a watch on enemy shipping using the fjords as a base from which they could attack British shipping convoys. Eve recalled:

When the Germans attacked our airfield, they came in over the sea almost below cliff-top level then swooped upwards to attack the airfield, usually starting with the Officers Mess. There was quite a lot of bombing, and one Heinkel 111 was shot down, the crew landing safely by parachute. For some reason they were brought to the Operations Room, where I happened to be. The Hauptman was brought to our Commanding Officer who was a quiet man. The German did a Heil Hitler to which the CO replied mildly, ‘Good Afternoon’.
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On 21 May 1941 an urgent phone call was received at RAF Wick from the Admiralty, stating that German ships had been spotted steaming north and must now be off the Norwegian coast. Two PR Spitfires were made ready and took off, one heading for the Oslo area and the other, piloted by 20-year-old Michael Suckling (nicknamed ‘Babe’ because of his youthful looks), covering the Bergen area. Eve was on duty with the senior PI, David Linton, as they watched them take-off for Sumburgh, on the Shetland Islands, where they refuelled to give them just enough range for their mission. As the aircraft would not return for several hours, Eve and Linton settled down to catch up on some routine tasks. Some time before their expected return, however, Eve heard a Spitfire circling and rushed out to meet Suckling who, as he climbed out of the cockpit shouted: ‘I’ve seen them. Two of them!’ When the PIs examined his photographs they identified two German battleships, the
Bismarck
and the
Prinz Eugen
, both at anchor in a Norwegian fjord with destroyers and merchant vessels. The photographs also showed that the protective torpedo booms were open, indicating an imminent move. An immediate warning signal was sent to the Admiralty. The ships did sail and an epic naval and air chase ensued that ended with the
Bismarck
being sunk in the Atlantic Ocean six days later.