Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (5 page)

An air photo of RAF Medmenham taken in 1945, showing Danesfield House, the gardens and the huts used as working and living space.

On the site of an Iron Age hill fort adjacent to the village, the present-day Danesfield House, destined later to become RAF Medmenham, was built. Robert William Hudson, son and heir to the ‘Sunlight’ Soap fortunes, bought the estate in 1897 and set about having a new house built for himself on the plateau overlooking a curve of the River Thames below. When it was completed in 1901, however, Hudson chose to sell it and a series of owners followed. Over 100 years later it is still a striking sight, built in the locally quarried white rock chalk. The flamboyant Italianate style of architecture provided the mansion with a gatehouse, courtyards, towers, large latticed windows, a sprinkling of crenellations and tall, decorated chimneys.
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Captain Derek van den Bogaerde (better known as the post-war actor Dirk Bogarde), who worked there during the war, referred to it somewhat disparagingly as ‘The Wedding Cake’. It was Winston Churchill, the wartime Prime Minister, who reputedly coined its more familiar name, referring to it as ‘The Chalk House with the Tudor Chimneys’. He visited the house more frequently than is officially recorded to examine particularly interesting air photographs and to visit his daughter, Sarah, who worked there.

In 1938 the house was sold to a Mr Stanley Garton who renovated it just in time to see it occupied by eighty boys, evacuated from a London school at the outbreak of war. In 1941, the boys having departed, Danesfield House was occupied once more, this time by the RAF, who requisitioned it to rehouse the unit from Wembley. It was renamed the Central Interpretation Unit (CIU) and of the fifty-three PIs who had moved to their new home by April 1941 one-third were commissioned WAAF officers.
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The RAF was administratively responsible for the CIU and designated it as RAF Medmenham, part of Coastal Command. It was one of the first truly joint-service organisations to be established, with army, navy and air force personnel working alongside each other. It was international too, with representation from the Dominions, European occupied countries and America. In recognition of this, the CIU became the ACIU (Allied Central Interpretation Unit) in 1944.

The women’s uniformed services were re-established before the outbreak of war. The new Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) was authorised by Royal Warrant in September 1938, its role being to provide female volunteers who would undertake certain non-combatant duties in connection with the military and air forces. After a hard fight by Director ATS, a Defence (Women’s Forces) Regulation dated 25 April 1941 was published and among its provisions was the commissioning of female officers and a declaration that women enrolled for service with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and the ATS were deemed to be members of the armed forces of the Crown with military rank, with female officers enjoying equal status to male officers. Despite the fact that women replaced men on a one-for-one basis, they received only two-thirds of male pay rates – a disadvantage universal throughout the Allied women’s services and one that still rankled many years later.

The Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) was speedily re-established in 1939 and had its own code of regulations. Members of the WRNS were not given equivalent naval ranks to men, could not wear the distinguishing marks of naval officers and their officers were not entitled to a salute. In this respect they were unique among the British women’s services, and there was a long-running dispute over the fact that they were denied the full status granted to both the ATS and the WAAF.

The recruiting drive that followed the setting up of the ATS in 1938 also produced the personnel to form forty-eight RAF companies within its framework. At first all recruits wore the ATS-issue khaki uniform, with the forty-eight companies wearing RAF distinguishing insignia. The Director ATS argued that a blue uniform for these companies ‘would encourage loyalty, enthusiasm and good discipline’, and in March 1939 the new uniform of RAF blue was authorised, although stocks of material were not immediately available. These forty-eight companies were transferred as the nucleus of the WAAF when it was formed in June 1939, although the volunteers had to improvise by wearing a mixture of issued uniform items and civilian clothing for several months.

With manpower shortages becoming critical by mid-1941, the War Cabinet announced the conscription of women on 2 December 1941; a step not systematically adopted by any other combatant power. All unmarried women and childless widows were made liable for compulsory service. At first only those between the ages of 20 and 25 were called up; the limit was later dropped to 19 and could be extended to 30 if required.
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A number of the earliest volunteers in the WAAF became clerks (special duties) and were sent to train as plotters in operations rooms where they were soon to be engaged in helping to direct the action throughout the Battle of Britain and subsequent bombing raids. Mary James, who was a plotter in the ‘ops’ room at Fighter Command’s HQ at RAF Bentley Priory in north London, wrote:

At first the authorities had been reluctant to use women in this role, claiming that they did not have enough mental dexterity. They were also thought unsuitable because of the need for high security – some would surely chatter about their work.

How little they knew about women:

It soon became obvious that the Waafs were far more dextrous and speedy than the men. Their job was to mark the positions of enemy and RAF formations in ever changing situations, from information fed to them by radio: new raids would be given to them while they were still working on earlier ones. It was gruelling, demanding, technically challenging work with great responsibility for accuracy – knowing that pilots and civilians could die if they made a mistake. At times when the ‘Ops’ rooms rocked with the bombing, the girls (their average age was 20) stood to their work with quiet coolness.
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Several of these WAAFs were later selected to train as PIs and were posted to RAF Medmenham, where they joined many others involved in the same work, some recently out of school, others older. Their analysis of air photographs and the accuracy of their reports could affect the success, or otherwise, of a planned raid or operation and the lives of those taking part in it. They were continually examining the facts, hints and snippets of information to be gleaned from photography, trying to determine what the enemy was doing, why they were doing it and, most importantly, what their intentions were. They worked for months on producing precise information for the landings in North Africa, Italy and Normandy. If any hint of a leak or gossip of what they saw and knew had reached enemy ears, it could have had disastrous consequences for the Allies and, more particularly, for the troops concerned. There were no leaks, there was no gossip. Friends working in adjacent rooms did not talk to each other about what they were engaged in, and decades later some have still been reluctant to discuss their work.

More words from Flight Lieutenant Cyril Tiquet:

Who are they, these men and women who saw so much? In the RAF they call them photographic interpreters. They would smile if you called them spies. They get their information, not by adventurous journeys into enemy territory, but by sitting at a desk poring over pictures. They peep, not through keyholes and forbidden places, but through the twin lenses of a stereoscope. They are armed, not with gun and dagger, but with a slide-rule and a mathematical table.
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Now is the time to meet some of these women.

Notes

  
1
. Wellington, Duke of, Croker Papers (1885), Vol. iii, from
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

  
2
. Ticquet, Cyril, from an article entitled
‘Spies of the Skies’ in
Chamber’s Journal
,
January 1946 (Medmenham Collection).

  
3
. Foulkes, Debbie,
www.forgottennewsmakers.com.

  
4
. Leggat, Robert,
www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/women.htm.

  
5
. Richards, Peter,
Cam
(the Cambridge Alumni Magazine), June 1998.

  
6
. Obituary,
The Independent,
28 December 1989.

  
7
. Obituary,
The Independent,
26 February 1997.

  
8
. Barker, Ralph,
Aviator Extraordinary
(Chatto & Windus, 1969).

  
9
. Chadsey, Mollie (
née
Thompson), correspondence with the author, 2009–10.

10
. Plaisted, Arthur,
The Romance of a Chiltern Village
(Village Bookshop, 1958).

11
. AOC Wembley Report,
PIU Wembley Organisation and Establishment 18 February 1941
(Medmenham Collection).

12
. Cassin-Smith, Jack,
Women at War
(Osprey, 1980).

13
. James, Mary, from an article entitled ‘The Big Picture’
in
Royal Air Force Salute
,
2010.

14
. Ticquet,
ibid
.

As soon as Britain declared war on 3 September 1939, women started volunteering to join the services. Some had enrolled during the preceding months as the inevitability of war increased, while others joined up as soon as possible once war was declared, ready to serve in any job to which they were directed. Many were selected for specialist training later on, including those in photographic interpretation.

The first women PIs of the Second World War were different, however, as they were recruited to learn and fulfil a specific role and were employed as civilians. In the early weeks of the war four women joined four RAF officers to train as PIs at Heston Airfield where Wing Commander Sidney Cotton, newly commissioned by the RAF, was in command. Their employment was possibly at the behest of Cotton, who considered that women naturally possessed the necessary attributes for PI work. WAAF regulations at that time required all recruits to serve six months in the ranks before being commissioned, so in order to train them immediately as PIs, these women had to be employed as civilians.

One of the four was Angus Wilson, who owed her unusual forename to her father; having decided on the name, he was not to be deterred by the gender of the new baby. Angus, with her colleagues Cynthia Wood, Mary Chance and Mary MacLean, learned the art of PI largely by trial and error, constant practice and gained experience. In early 1940 they moved to the temporary HQ Bomber Command, which had its own PI section, where they carried out exactly the same work as the RAF officers, but being civilians, were not entitled to eat in the officers’ mess. One day they were having their picnic lunch at their desks as usual, when Cynthia decided that her bottle of milk was a bit off so tipped it out of the upstairs window. Her timing was perfect, unfortunately, for down below was a senior officer in pristine uniform, and the milk landed on top of him – his reaction can be imagined.
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Within a few months the women were transferred to the new underground HQ Bomber Command near High Wycombe, with the PI section office adjacent to the operations room, where they assessed the accuracy of RAF bombing operations and the extent of the damage caused. Shortly after the move they were commissioned into the WAAF and joined by another recruit, Honor Clements, who replaced Mary Chance.

In 1938 Millicent Laws had tried to join the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) at the Duke of York’s Territorial Army HQ in Chelsea:

I wanted to learn to drive lorries but there were no vacancies, so I continued working in a solicitor’s office until 7 September 1939, when I joined the WAAF. Once again I was turned down as a driver and, wanting a change from secretarial duties, became a Clerk (Special Duties) and was sent initially to RAF Hendon where we just did lots of drilling.
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Millicent Laws was initially a WAAF plotter at RAF Bentley Priory, the headquarters of Fighter Command, during the Battle of Britain.