Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (13 page)

Joan Vyvyan Slade at work; the run of photographs on the wall is called a mosaic.

The
London Gazette
records awards made to personnel of all three services. In 1941 the following announcement was published:

In August 1940, Sergeant Youle was on duty in a Station telephone exchange when the Station was attacked and bombed by five enemy aircraft. Part of the building containing the telephone exchange suffered a direct hit and other bombs fell in very close proximity. The telephone staff were subjected to a heavy rain of debris and splinters and to the noise of the concussion of exploding bombs. It was solely due to the cool bravery of, and superb example set by Sergeant Youle, that the telephone operators carried on with their task with calmness and complete efficiency at a most dangerous time for them. She has at all times set an excellent example of coolness and efficiency to all.
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Jean Youle was commissioned on 20 January 1942, trained as a PI and posted to RAF Medmenham where she worked in Second Phase.

The function of the Second-Phase Section was to report fully and immediately on enemy activity, on a day-to-day basis, with the Command that ordered the sortie receiving their report within 24 hours of the flight. The most comprehensive and detailed record of all enemy activities from the North Cape of Norway to the Spanish frontier and throughout all the occupied countries of Europe was compiled at Medmenham and constantly updated. The PIs saw every aspect of the German war effort and provided essential intelligence for Allied strategic planning. Diana Byron described a typical day in Second Phase:

If the day was fine and all the pilots were flying with all cameras whirring, then by 8pm a massive amount of material would be delivered to us. Then it was heads down for 12 hours.

The Duty Intelligence Officer (DIO) gave out the piles of photographs and the first thing was to find out where you were looking at. Next you went to find previous cover of the whole amount of photographs, if possible. Then you compared the new with the old with your mind working overtime, studying photographs, finding out what had been built, what had gone. Were there more or less of anything? We were always comparing.

We all had our pet places that we loved to know about. We followed airfields and also shipping from north Norway, the Baltic, down the European coast, through France and into the Mediterranean as far as Genoa. It was a hefty lot to learn and we got to know the areas intimately and could see from the next cover how much had come and how much had gone. What had happened to the ‘Hipper’? Was she still under nets? Was the ‘Gneisenau’ all right or had they actually broken the gates at St Nazaire?

It was the most wonderful thing to be ‘in’, to be really ‘in’ the war, but somehow it didn’t seem like war, at least not to me as I was doing something that simply fascinated me – finding out about the movements of another nation’s Navy, Army and Air Force.

Jean Youle, from Australia, was awarded the Military Medal in 1940.

It really was astonishing just how much detail one could get out of photographs. We followed the elite of the German Navy and that was really so difficult. I am no mathematician but we were told to find out not only where they were but also to pinpoint them to an exact location. It sometimes took hours to do this if all you had on the photograph was a rocky speck on one side and a huge German warship on the other. You had to give exactly where it was and if you had no indication from the pilot’s trace, it was very time consuming, but we always managed very well, I think. We had a table for working out the speed of the ships.

You came off duty mentally as well as physically exhausted, to life in a world that didn’t really exist because, at that time, you were still living amid things that were going on over the other side, and not at home – a very unusual circumstance. All our reports had to be concise, brief, accurate and in good clear English – and they had to be ready to send on within 24 hours. On cloudy days, when photography was impossible, we caught up and finished off any jobs we had left over.
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With twenty or more interpreters on duty at any one time, the Section was divided into many smaller sub-sections each assigned to one subject. This flexible organisation allowed additional sub-sections to be opened at very short notice if a new subject of concern arose. Throughout the war, shipping was reported on with as much detail as possible, including a daily watch kept on the whereabouts and movements of the
Tirpitz
. Other capital ships were continuously monitored in port or underway, as they were a perpetual threat to Allied convoys. Records of enemy merchant ships and blockade runners were also kept on a regular, but less frequent, basis as a change in their pattern of movement could be a sign of a future operation. If the normal pattern of activity anywhere changed, the photographic cover flown could be rapidly increased and continued until the reason for the change was established.

Diana Byron married Richard Cussons, a PR pilot from RAF Benson, who in 1942 was detached to RAF Wick, in north-east Scotland, to track and monitor the
Tirpitz
. He flew a Spitfire Mk IV PR, which operated at its extreme range when flying to Norway and back, despite its fuel tanks being filled to overflowing at Wick, then topped up at Sumburgh on the Shetland Islands, so that it was only just possible to get airborne again. The pilot then flew 400 miles or so over nothing but sea, navigating by dead reckoning, until he reached the Norwegian coast when a recognisable point on the map could be picked up. Richard described his PR missions to locate the
Tirpitz
in a book:

The general idea was to fly fast and high and nip in, take the photos and nip out again before the enemy realised what was happening. Our defence against enemy action depended mainly on ‘rubber necking’ – that is, keeping a very good look out in all directions!

The author added:

It took a special courage to fly at great altitude in freezing conditions for hours at a time over the featureless expanse of the North Sea. Spitfire flights to reconnoitre the ‘Tirpitz’ at this time lasted between four and five and a half hours. Not only had the pilot’s navigation to be accurate, but as he either had no radio, or had to maintain radio silence, he had no one with whom to share his lonely flight.
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Reconnaissance aircraft carried no weapons or ammunition, these having been stripped out to carry more fuel, and there was a danger of instruments freezing at high altitudes. The pilot’s defence, and his life, relied on height, speed, observation and first-class navigation. Having reached the target, which was frequently heavily defended with anti-aircraft guns and intercepting enemy aircraft, the pilot had to fly over it in a certain sequence, north to south photographing one strip, then south to north on a parallel strip. Maintenance of a steady and level course was essential to ensure the whole target was covered and that good quality photographs were taken. If his aircraft was damaged the PR pilot could not communicate with his base and when he failed to return from a sortie it was assumed he was dead – some crashed into the sea to prevent the enemy getting their film. It is small wonder then that all PIs felt a great responsibility for the PR pilots on their lonely, dangerous flights, and ensured that the greatest accuracy of information was provided for their pre-sortie briefings. When it was decided, after interpretation, that the target had not been sufficiently covered and its importance was such that more photographs were essential, the pilot had to re-fly the sortie, knowing that enemy defences would be ready and waiting for him.

The Coverage sub-section worked in watches all round the clock, examining incoming sorties to decide which jobs had been satisfactorily photographed and which must be flown again. A WAAF who worked in Coverage was Ann Sentence-Tapp, known as ‘The Polished Tap’ for, as Diana remembered, she was always a model of neatness and glamour. In the summer of 1944, members of the American WAC were posted into Medmenham to assist in dealing with the huge increase in photographs to be interpreted due to the Normandy invasions. Two pre-war photographers, Lieutenants Lois Willard and D.T. Cooke joined lieutenants Mabel Menders and P.L. Linder to work alongside their WAAF counterparts in Coverage. Several USAAF personnel were posted in too, one of whom recorded in an amazed tone: ‘My immediate boss was a WAAF!’ British female emancipation was perhaps some years ahead of America. Both male and female PIs who worked at Medmenham during the war agree that those employed in the unit carried out similar work. It was accepted that the person most capable of doing a job got that job, regardless of gender. As Mollie Thompson wrote, many years later: ‘I do not recall any “glass ceiling” at Medmenham.’

Pamela Dudding had been a secretary in the Foreign Office before joining the WAAF, and trained with Joan Bawden. Pamela met her future husband on the PI course and they married in November 1941, claiming to be the ‘First Medmenham Alliance’:

We lived out in Marlow and bought a Norton motorbike to get to and from Medmenham. Although we both worked on Second Phase, we were often on different shifts, so had to share the bike. It was very large and heavy and I had difficulty in moving it, but the guards on the gate used to get it started for me and see me on my way.

I worked all the time in Second Phase, primarily on ports, which I loved as I come from a naval family. If we were watching a particular port it could be for several weeks with new sorties coming in all the time and we had to pinpoint everything we could see coming and going. Shipping movements were very important so we watched all big ships like hawks to see if there was any hint of them preparing to leave and what was being loaded.

We also had to measure the heights of the balloon barrages, because they were always being changed and that was desperately important for the wretched pilots flying in low. I liked maths at school and was very good at trigonometry. We did not have any of these modern gadgets, like calculators, but I had a slide rule and my knowledge of trigonometry, and one job I liked doing very much was working on balloon heights. I asked for sorties to be flown in sunshine whenever possible as then there was a good shadow of the tethering line on the balloon and it was easier to calculate an exact height.
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Sarah Churchill worked in Second Phase after passing her PI course:

By eight o’clock in the evening, when we started our shift, the photographs and plotted positions would have to be at Medmenham for us. Within twelve hours – we worked until eight in the morning – the photographs had to be interpreted and a full report made, which was then rushed to the Air Ministry. Each area was allocated to a specific interpreter – one of mine was Kiel Harbour and I had to plot the movement of shipping estimating, for instance, when they were shifting smaller craft to make room for a battleship or destroyer. I still have the scraps of paper on which I wrote the measurements of enemy ships, the number of gun turrets and other features – the only means of identifying each ship from the air.
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