Most Secret War

by R.V. Jones

As for my own career in the O.T.C., my father expected me to be turned out as smartly as a Guardsman, with such details as puttees finishing not more than one half inch beyond the top of the fibula. The incident that probably gave him most satisfaction and most annoyance was when I was in summer camp and the parade was inspected without warning by a colonel in the Coldstream Guards. It happened that I had not had time to clean my brass that day, and I expected to be in trouble. To my surprise, the colonel complimented me on the smartness of my turnout and my father was as pleased with the fact that even with a day’s unpolished brass I had impressed a Coldstream colonel as he was annoyed by the fact that I had not cleaned it.

We had a new and enthusiastic physics master who set us more homework than I could manage; and at the end of more than two hours when the supposed allocation was 45 minutes, I had to solve a problem in specific heats. I worked the answer out to thirteen places of decimals, knowing perfectly well that this was quite unjustified, and in fact getting the answer wrong. The master promptly sent for me, saying that surely I knew better than to work out an answer to that degree of meaningless precision. I replied that I did, but that I thought he would like an answer matching the length of the homework that he had set us. The result was that he moderated his demands, but the point of the story in this context is that as fourth form schoolboys we already well knew how many places of decimals were justified in particular measurements: its significance was to be evident at Coventry in 1940.

T. C. Keeley was my tutor; and in addition to physics he offered wisdom. He warned us that if another war broke out there would be a disastrous period for six months while those who had reached high positions on inadequate abilities in peacetime would have to be replaced.

‘Caution! The bombs in this crate are packed in a different manner from that formerly used. Compared with the old methods the bombs are now packed upside down, and the crate must therefore be opened at the bottom. To prevent confusion, the bottom has been labelled “Top”.’

Spectacular acts of bureaucratic muddle and foolishness are one of the recurring themes of the book.

He pointed out to me that the world was heading towards dictatorships, with Stalin in Russia, Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany; and Roosevelt had just won the Presidential Election in America.

This is Lindemann talking in 1933.

It was the 22nd of March and the Victory Parade of the Brigade of Guards. My mother and I were standing somewhere in the great crowd near Hyde Park Corner, and I had my first experience of an individual perceiving a truth that was staring the crowd in the face, and yet all the rest failing to see it until it was spelled out for them. As Company after Company came by, the crowd burst into cheer after cheer. And then there came a company that was different—all its men were in civilian clothes. The cheering died away, the crowd was subdued. What were civilians doing in a parade like this? Were they recruits who had joined in time to miss the war? I shared the disappointment that these drab men should interlope among the splendid Guardsmen. And then the hush was broken by the indignant voice of a woman crying ‘Cheer the men in civvies—they were the men who went first’. It was absolutely true, for these were the survivors of the ‘Old Contemptibles’, already demobilized on the rule of ‘first in, first out’. The shamed crowd apologized with thundering cheers. Although I have not spoken of it in the fifty years since, I remember because the voice had been my own mother’s. And one of the men in civvies, marching unmistakably as a Guardsman even though, thanks to Festubert, his left arm was three inches short, was my father.

I replied that infra-red certainly had its limitations of not being useful through cloud and of not giving an indication of range, but that radar, too, was vulnerable, especially to a ‘smoke screen’ of spurious radar reflections which only need be lengths of wire half a wavelength long. Lindemann told me that he would get Churchill to raise this point at the Sub-Committee.

The next step in the disciplinary process was to overawe me with the Official Secrets Act. I was shown the Laboratory copy of the Act and asked to sign a certificate to the effect that I had read the Official Secrets Act (1911) and understood it. I could not resist adding a postscript to my signature: ‘The 1920 Act is also worth reading.’ Actually, having been interested in official secrets I had some time before purchased from the Stationery Office copies of both Acts to see how they applied to my work and to anyone who might try to reveal it. It was almost incredible that the security authorities in the Admiralty had not been aware of the later Act, and I awaited results. The certificate was duly taken back to the Laboratory office and a little later a despatch rider was sent up to the Admiralty to check whether there really was an Act in 1920.

The building was almost ready for occupation when the Deputy Superintendent, performing one of his other functions, took in the Superintendent’s usual tray of afternoon tea, with the comment, ‘I suppose that you will be wanting tea when we move over to the new building, sir?’ ‘Of course’, replied the Superintendent. ‘Well, then, sir, you are not going to get it!’ ‘Why not. Are you going on strike?’ ‘Certainly not, sir—but there’s no electric point to boil my electric kettle!’ And then as the extent of this peculiarly civil service disaster sank in, he added, ‘And what’s more, sir, there is no electric point in the whole building.’ ‘How do you know this?’ asked the Superintendent. ‘I’ve looked at the plans, sir, and what’s more there’s no gas and no running water except in the lavatories.’

They were to sit on one side of a long table, and the prisoner was to be marched in and stood to attention between two guards as members of the interrogation panel fired questions at him. When they had settled themselves down, the door was thrown open and the prisoner marched in. He was a typical product of Nazi success. His uniform was smart, his jackboots were gleaming, and his movements executed with German precision. As he came to the centre of the room he was halted and turned to face the panel. No sooner had he executed his turn than he clicked his heels together and gave a very smart Nazi salute. For this the panel were unprepared, and none more so than Josh, who stood up as smartly, gave the Nazi salute and repeated the prisoner’s ‘Heil Hitler!’ Then, realizing that he had done the wrong thing, he looked in embarrassment at his colleagues and sat down with such speed that he missed his chair and, to the prisoner’s astonishment, disappeared completely under the table.

my days went in perusing the S.I.S. files. These were not inspiring, for they were very weak on matters concerning science and technology, since (in common with most Ministers of the Crown and their Permanent Secretaries) the average S.I.S. agent was a scientific analphabet.

I need to use the word "analphabet".

Because there was a shortage of cryptographers, the three Services were asked whether there were any among their recruits who had a cryptographic background, and the museum keeper was one of those discovered in this way because he had described his occupation as that of a ‘cryptogamic botanist’. When he told me this my comment had been, ‘The silly idiots, they ought to have known that it meant that you had a secret wife!’ He gave me a most curious look—it was some time afterwards that I discovered that although he was indeed married, he also maintained a clandestine ménage.

Experts on one’s own side are indeed valuable in the assessment of Intelligence, but their real function is not to make the final assessment—they are in effect your spies on the laws of nature which are relevant to the particular weapon under development. Usually they will be correct in their observations, and indeed more correct than most of your other sources. But from time to time they will be wrong for the reasons that I have just described and such occasions usually turn out to be very important. Their evidence must therefore be weighed impartially together with that from all other sources, and if there is a substantial consensus from these other sources in conflict with what your own experts say, then their evidence must be questioned very carefully.

Wintle suggested that our conference, to which by now he had summoned some others, would go better with sherry all round, and so he sent an Air Ministry messenger across to a pub on the other side of Whitehall. This made the conference unique among the many hundreds that I have attended in Government offices. I was astonished when Wintle said, ‘This is a damned good idea of yours, old boy, issuing direct-vision spectroscopes to the observers. But I have a better idea. Let’s send out spectrographs, so that they can bring back photographs, which you and I can examine for ourselves.’ A cavalryman who knew the difference between a spectroscope and a spectrograph was clearly someone to be reckoned with.

The most outstanding member of the Committee was Chaim Weizmann, who had an immense oriental presence—in fact the only other man I have ever known with such a presence was the Mahdi.

On 10th May Anthony Eden announced the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers, and before he had finished the broadcast I had telephoned Richmond police station to join. I attended the first few parades, with an enormous personal superiority, for no one else had any weapons, and I had six pistols and a rifle. But the records of the L.D.V. show that on 13th August 1940, long before it became the Home Guard, I was given a discharge, ostensibly on the grounds that my services ‘were no Longer Required’, this being a curious euphemism for the fact that they were by then more urgently required elsewhere.

About the third trainload turned out to be a couple of companies of Foot Guards. What a contrast! They were glorious to see. They fell in on the platform, dressed, and marched out at attention, not even looking at the girls in the crowd of onlookers. Every Guardsman had his full equipment and his rifle. Everything was polished and properly adjusted. Thank God, I thought, that ass Hore-Belisha can never undermine the Guards. The sight of them was like a tonic—with a very large gin in it—which I promptly had in their honour.

At the meeting with Tizard an interesting sidelight emerged. Nutting had with him one of his Deputy Directors, Group Captain Lang, who told us that the latest Chiefs of Staff appreciation of the war situation was that invasion was possible within a week, likely within two weeks and almost certain within three. I did not myself believe it, but it gives some idea of the atmosphere in which we had to operate.

From our encounter, I of course felt the elation of a young man at being noticed by any Prime Minister, but somehow it was much more. It was the same whenever we met in the war—I had the feeling of being recharged by contact with a source of living power. Here was strength, resolution, humour, readiness to listen, to ask the searching question and, when convinced, to act. He was rarely complimentary at the time, handsome though his compliments could be afterwards, for he had been brought up in sterner days. In 1940 it was compliment enough to be called in by him at the crisis; but to stand up to his questioning attack and then to convince him was the greatest exhilaration of all.

Churchill was now convinced, and he said that he would like to see all future information but that it might compromise our source if we continued to use the German code name. So he told us that in future all teleprints on the subject should be headed ‘Operation Smith’. His instructions were carried out, with the surprising result that the War Office appeared to lose all interest in information coming from Bletchley regarding the invasion. After some time, the reason was found. It turned out that the War Office had its own Operation Smith, which was indeed concerned with the invasion. It was the code name for the movement from one of its minor administrative branches from its current headquarters in somewhere like Stroud or Tetbury to some place further north if the Germans should have invaded and posed a threat to south Gloucestershire. The result was that when the Bletchley teleprints were received in the War Office, duly headed according to the Prime Minister’s instruction, they were immediately sent to the Colonel in Gloucestershire, who no doubt impressed by the service that the War Office was providing but realizing that the material was too secret for general circulation, locked them in his safe and told nobody.

I went back to Richmond wondering whether this was the beginning of the end. The fires in the docks were enormous: they could never be put out before nightfall. Even if we jammed the beams completely, the night bombers would have perfect markers, for the flames in the docks could be seen from the coast. All the Luftwaffe would then have to do was to keep the fires stoked up with successive raids, while its main force aimed a few miles to the west and so pulverized central London.

It's strikingly easy for even hard-nosed skeptical people to over-catastrophize a situation.

Our remaining defect probably lay in the simple operation of picking up the German beams on a receiver, noting the dial reading and converting this to a frequency, and then setting a jammer on this same frequency. Put simply, British instruments were not as precise as they were supposed to be—and many people may have died as a result. I myself had been interested in many aspects of precision before the war, from straightening the ranks at Trooping the Colour to making accurate measurements in science: but even if I had had no previous inclination in that direction, the experience of Coventry and the other cities would have burnt precision into my mind.

As I expected, the report produced a most violent reaction, particularly on the part of Lywood, and the next thing I knew was that the report had been recalled by Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of Air Staff. This proved the most effective way possible of getting every copy read from cover to cover before it was returned; and I noted the fact for use later in the war because the natural reaction of anyone who is asked for the return of a document is to peruse it intently to find out what it is that ought not to have been revealed.

Luckily for us the Germans made the classic military mistake, which we were later to repeat, of trying out devices on a small operational scale before depending on them for major efforts. It was only for this reason that I was able to unravel the beam systems in the nick of time.

I then asked them to go out and check how stable the Freyas were, because I suspected that the high stability that we had observed was merely another example of German thoroughness and precision, even where it was not required. A fortnight later the experts came back and told me that I was right: the stability of every German radar station was better than that of the best instruments that we had available to check them. In fact, Martin Ryle, afterwards to win a Nobel Prize for Radioastronomy, was one of our observers, and he told me that ever afterwards if he wanted to know whether a radar transmission was British or German, all he had to do was to check its stability.

Cox would be in Air Force uniform. Garrard drew my attention to this, whereupon I did my utmost to get Cox into Army uniform for the operation, and also given an Army number. Otherwise, if he were captured, he would clearly be ‘odd man out’ and thus the object of special attention from German interrogators. It seems incredible, even at this distance of time, but the War Office adamantly refused to co-operate, with the result that Cox had to go in his Air Force uniform. The only thing that I could do was to see Cox personally, tell him what had happened, and warn him about the danger if he were captured.

In my report I included a map to show where Bruneval was, and added what I described as the track of a somewhat older and larger ‘raid’ in the hope of providing historical encouragement. It looked very like radar plots on an aircraft, and I actually had an officer ring me up and say ‘I didn’t know that we’d made that other raid—when did we do it?’ I then happily pointed out that if he would look at the beginning of the raid track, which started at Bosham he would see that it was timed as AD 1346 (Figure 10) and was in fact Edward III’s route to Crecy.

the Bruneval raid made people speculate about the possibility that the Germans might plan a retaliation, and where better than on Swanage? Apprehension increased when we discovered that a German parachute company had moved into position near Cherbourg, although there was no indication of what its intentions were. The news of this move leaked down to T.R.E., and I saw my opportunity. I was due to visit the Establishment, anyway, to see how the investigation of the Bruneval equipment was going, and so Hugh Smith and I drove down to Swanage. We said nothing about the possibility of a German retaliation, but merely carried our tin hats everywhere and had revolvers ostentatiously strapped to our belts. We also contrived to give the impression of nervousness and an anxiety to get back to London as soon as possible. The next we heard was that T.R.E. was moving in a hurry to Malvern where, as the Royal Radar Establishment, it still is.

The following year I found evidence that the Germans were setting up a station near Lugo in northwest Spain, of the type known as ‘Elektra Sonne’ which would transmit a fan of beams out into the Atlantic and over the Bay of Biscay. This, with a similar station near Brest, would provide a cross pattern of beams by which an aircraft or a U-boat could very easily determine its position. Remembering what difficulty I had had in briefing our Ambassador in the Gibraltar instance, I boggled at having to go through the whole process again for the new station. Happily, the thought occurred to me that we were operating more aircraft over the Bay of Biscay than the Germans were. I therefore telephoned the Chief Navigation Officer at Coastal Command and asked him whether, if I could provide him with a fan of beams from northwest Spain, he could honestly say that Coastal Command could make better use of it than the Germans themselves. He held an enquiry at the Command and two days later called back affirmatively, adding that the Command would very much appreciate the service.

When, in February 1944, the Luftwaffe staged some minor raids on London, he had a room on the fourth or fifth floor of a house in Queen’s Gate. This was struck by a bomb and most of the house destroyed. He was in bed at the time and, fortunately, the bed remained perched, as it were, on a shelf formed by the surviving fragment of the floor. He felt all round his bed in the dark and found that most of the floor was missing but, deciding that he was at least safe where he was, went to sleep again, and awoke to find a crowd in Queen’s Gate pointing to the spectacle he presented.

The conference had to start without him whilst a search was being made, and it was interrupted by the appearance of a corporal, who came in and said to the C.-in-C. ‘Excuse me, Sir, but we’ve found the Deputy C.-in-C. He’s up a tree, and we can’t get him down!’ Yet another of his interests were moths, and he had happened to spot an unusual moth high up a tree which he proceeded to climb, only to find that it was beginning to sway under his considerable weight, and he dared not climb any further. But neither could he see his way down again. It took quite an effort to retrieve him.

Leigh Mallory very decently gave the opinion that even though his defences might be neutralized he was now convinced that the advantage lay with saving the casualties in Bomber Command, and that he would take the responsibility. That concluded the argument, and Churchill said ‘Very well, let us open the Window!’ And just as Churchill could say that my appearance at his meeting in June 1940 reminded him of the passage in the Ingoldsby Legend that starts ‘But now one Mr. Jones comes forth and depones’, so could I now counter on Watson-Watt’s behalf from Jane Austen’s Mr. Woodhouse: ‘Open the windows! But, surely Mr. Churchill, nobody would think of opening the windows at Randalls. Nobody could be so imprudent!’

Had we realized the improvement in our bombing technique we might have abandoned area bombing earlier, or at least have put more effort into precision attacks at night. The precedent was already with us, for example in the raid that I myself had requested—that on the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen on 22nd June 1943. Here we used the Master Bomber technique, and when it was combined with Oboe pathfinding, precision attacks became distinctly feasible. Even without Oboe at Friedrichshafen, the random bombing error was no more than 400 yards. But we had become so indoctrinated with the area policy that few of us realized that Portal’s original oil bombing policy could now have been revived with a hope of success.

After the lunch Seppi appeared in my office, much amused: the Prof did not want his disreputable brother to know exactly where he worked, so he had offered to drop Seppi at Seppi’s office. Seppi, on the other hand, thought that the location of M.I.6 headquarters was too secret even for the Prof to know, so he had insisted that the Prof should be dropped first. They drove round and round St. James’s Park, neither prepared to give way to the other.

The Prof’s secretiveness also amused his brother Charles, who told me that one of his tasks as Attaché in Washington was to arrange the transport of all nuclear physicists and others from Britain who were visiting or working at such stations as Los Alamos in connection with the atomic bomb project. Among these visitors was the Prof, who used to spin Charles the most fantastic yarns regarding the purpose of his visits, not knowing that his brother was already in the atomic picture and had in fact made all the travel arrangements for him.

Apparently the Lindemann siblings never gossiped.

Another officer who had been infiltrated became so enthusiastic as to have defended me to an Air Commodore who told him that I was a funny chap, and that he, the Air Commodore, had not been able to get on with me. ‘Well Sir,’ was the reply—and it came from a Flight Lieutenant—‘You must remember, he doesn’t suffer fools gladly!’

For some reason or other he stubbornly refused to allow the modification to be made; but flying in Mosquitoes convinced me even further that with these aircraft wing-tip cameras would be a great advantage, and by this time I was beginning to get on personal terms with ‘Daddy ’Laws. Finally, I found his weak point: of all the improbable hobbies for a Group Captain, his was the making of jam. If only I could convince him that I, too, was interested in jam-making, he might be more sympathetic to my ideas about cameras. My moment came when I asked him one day whether he had ever made quince jam. ‘No!’ he exclaimed—and then with a wistful look in his eye, ‘But by God, I’d like to!’ I offered to get him some quinces, and henceforward photographic Mosquitoes for low-level work were fitted with forward-facing wing-tip cameras, with the much improved result we had expected.

Subconsciously I acquired the two secrets of lecturing from which everything else follows: first, to believe that you have something worth telling your audience, and then to imagine yourself as one of that audience. Nearly all the advice that I have seen given to would-be lecturers deals with the trimmings without mentioning the fundamentals: but if you get these right, they entail all the rest. You must, for example, talk in terms that appeal to the background experience of your audience. You must be audible at the back of the room, where the details of your lantern slides must be visible and your blackboard writing legible; and you should not distract your audience with antics and fidgeting. You must also detect by the change in tension when you are in danger of losing its interest. But all these follow from the simple consideration of trying to regard yourself from the point of view of a member of the audience in the back row.

Major Manus, a Canadian, who greeted me with ‘Dr. Jones? Good God! I thought that you were dead!’ When I asked him why, he replied, ‘I gave orders for you to be shot!’ It turned out that he had previously been on the Planning Staff for the Dieppe Raid, and he had understood that I myself was going on the Raid. He had therefore detailed two men to guard me as far as possible but had also ordered them to shoot me if I were about to be captured by the Germans, because with my knowledge I was such a security risk. He told me that he had not been on the Raid himself, but that he had been waiting to meet the survivors as they landed and could find no trace of me, and he therefore thought it best not to make any further enquiries.

Difficulties had been increasing rapidly in the way of Anglo-American co-operation, due in part to American suspicions of our interest being more commercial than military, and I imagine that Churchill swept all these away with a magnificent gesture that could put us in a very awkward position after the war. I could to some extent sympathize with American suspicions, for in the Tube Alloys outer office the first thing that greeted a visitor was a large wall map of Britain divided up into the I.C.I. sales divisions, its presence in fact signifying nothing more sinister than that Akers and Perrin were I.C.I. employees seconded to the Government.

Had I known more about Piggott, I might not have been so misled by his quiet air, for this proved to hide unexpected resource. Shortly after the war, for example, he and his wife had problems with cutting their baby’s nails, because whenever they tried to do so, the baby screamed its head off. One night they heard a bump, and rushed into the baby’s room to find that it had climbed out of its cot and fallen on the floor, knocking itself unconscious. Before Piggott went for the doctor he said, ‘Here’s our chance,’ and cut the baby’s nails.

He tended to jump into a new field, thinking that his fresh ideas were better than those who had worked in the field for some time. Sometimes they were, but not always. He was given to ‘rational’ solutions of problems which sometimes completely overlooked the human aspects involved, and he would then press these solutions with a fervour that belied their apparent rationalism.

I told him that we had called it ‘The Kammhuber Line’. He smiled gratefully, for nobody in Germany had thought of the title; I hope that it compensated a little for the inconvenience of imprisonment.