Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos (6 page)

When her father, Group Captain Victor Laws, found that his daughter had only been issued with a raincoat, beret and kitbag, he sent her off to Moss Bros, the tailors, for a made-to-measure uniform. So as a very junior aircraftwoman second class (ACW2), Millicent wore a smart bespoke uniform. Within a few weeks she was posted to the operations room of HQ Fighter Command at RAF Bentley Priory in Stanmore, north London, where she plotted the course and numbers of incoming enemy aircraft on a large map:

The duty rosters were run on the hours of naval watches and the worst part of the job was having to crawl out of bed for the one that started at 4am, especially as the winter of 1939/40 was one of the coldest on record and there was often deep snow.

In May 1940 Millicent was commissioned and posted to train as a plotter of air photographs at Heston. Like the first civilian PIs, who had by then departed for Bomber Command, her ‘training’ meant ‘learning on the job’. Wing Commander Cotton was no longer to be seen at Heston, as in June 1940 he had been relieved of his command. Although he had revolutionised PR and PI practices in the early months of the war he was too much of a maverick to work for anyone but himself. His deputy, Squadron Leader Geoffrey Tuttle, a regular RAF officer and supporter of women in PI, replaced him.

When Heston was taken over by the RAF in 1940, the commercial side of the airport ceased and all the aircraft were used for PR purposes. Nightly enemy bombing raids all through the summer threatened to stop flying, and the Photographic Section, which was working round the clock on processing and plotting the films, was particularly badly affected. The work continued day and night, however, although the plotters had to shuttle back and forth many times from the plotting hut to air-raid shelters while the bombs fell outside:

The bombs on the airfield did not bother me as much as the two mile cycle-ride back to my billet after working a shift. I was only nineteen, but often had to escort another girl, ten years older than me, an extra mile to her billet because she was scared of the bombing, then I quickly pedalled back home alone.

The plotter’s job was to mark the exact position at which each photograph was taken on to a map before the prints were sent for interpretation. Their only guide was the trace the pilot made over his map showing the route he had taken, although even this was often inaccurate. The task was made harder in these early days by battling with out-of-date lists, inaccurate information from reference books and the ancient machinery used for copying the plots. The frequency of bombing raids at Heston progressively disrupted operations and relocation became essential. On 26 December 1940 Millicent and her fellow plotters moved with 1 PRU to RAF Benson in Oxfordshire.

Meanwhile, at the AOC in Wembley, taken over by the RAF in January 1940, more PIs were needed to handle the increasing volume of photographs coming from 1 PRU. The civilian PIs contacted former university colleagues experienced in working with aerial photographs, and very soon a number of archaeologists and geographers were employed at Wembley and they rapidly adapted their knowledge to military requirements. Newly trained WAAF officers and the handful of PIs at the Air Ministry moved to the AOC in 1940.

Mollie Thompson had completed her BSc (Economics) degree at University College, London, in 1937 and was in her first job in the research department of the Portland Cement Company in Westminster when war broke out. The company decided to evacuate to the country with a smaller staff and encouraged its younger members to join one of the services by offering to subsidise their service pay until it matched the level of their civilian salary. In September 1939 Mollie joined the WAAF as an ACW2 in Coastal Command and was later posted to the Air Ministry for training in PI. Mollie wrote:

I knew nothing about photography before the war and always assumed that the reason I was picked for PI was because of the nature of my university degree. A BSc (Econ) then comprised compulsory courses in economics and banking, one major subject, one minor subject plus two languages. My major subject was economic geography which included maps and map making, some geology, some meteorology, trade and industrial products. Economic history included world trade, industrial development and transportation. My languages were French and German. As you can see, much of this fitted neatly into PI work.
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Mollie was commissioned and posted to Wembley where she was very soon analysing air photographs of the coastlines of France and the Low Countries.

After the Dunkirk evacuation in June 1940, the expectation of an attempted enemy invasion of Britain became a near certainty. The only reliable means of securing information on where the German invasion force was gathering, and the strength and readiness of its troops and transport, was by air reconnaissance. This intelligence was of paramount importance in planning the British defensive response and photographic cover was flown whenever possible, often several times a day, to determine aircraft movements, troop concentrations and the positions of naval vessels. Throughout that summer, the Wembley PIs monitored the build-up of the German invasion force along the Channel coast, examining each photographic sortie for increased enemy activity and a first sighting of the barges necessary for transporting an invasion force. Day after day reconnaissance aircraft returned to base with photography, and in July five barges were spotted under construction in a Rotterdam shipyard, quickly followed by more seen in Antwerp and Amsterdam. Successive air photographs showed a concentration of barges at the French and Belgian Channel ports with a supporting force of E-boats and merchant vessels moving into position. The daily count and recount of the assembled lines of moored barges preparing to load continued as PIs reported on their numbers and readiness. By 17 September the number of barges was over 1,700 and the invasion was thought to be imminent. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, warned Parliament in secret session that a major assault might be launched on Britain at any moment.

The aircraft used to obtain this photography were the modified Spitfires introduced by Cotton. The pilots relied on the aircraft’s superior speed, height and manoeuvrability to evade enemy fighters, photograph the invasion preparations and return to base. However, the small-scale photography produced at such high altitudes could only be exploited by one machine in the whole country. The Wild A-5 stereo-comparator at the AOC, manufactured for civilian survey purposes, could, with a few adaptations, be utilised to analyse the Spitfire photography. Michael Spender, a civilian geographer and arctic explorer, was the expert on using the Wild A-5 and headed the team of PIs scrutinising the highest priority photographs in order to determine the invasion situation.

Two women who worked with Michael Spender were Ann McKnight-Kauffer, who was determined to be a PI before she had even joined the WAAF, and Eve Holiday, who arrived at Wembley by a more circuitous route. Early in 1939 she had enrolled in the WAAF:

I attended evening classes in a barracks in Leeds during which I and other volunteers took rifles to pieces and cleaned them, did physical training, country dancing and cooking!
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Eve was called up at the outbreak of war, spent ten days as an ambulance driver, a few days in one kitchen, a few weeks in another and several months as a map clerk. When interviewed for PI training she impressed the questioner with her knowledge of coke oven battery designs learnt from her engineer father.

Throughout 1940 increasing numbers of WAAF personnel arrived at Wembley for PI training and were then immediately put to work. When the Germans failed to gain air supremacy in the Battle of Britain, their invasion force still remained in readiness and the repeated checking of barges continued. At last, in October, while the London Blitz continued, the PIs reported signs of lessened activity on the quaysides and shortly afterwards the dispersal of the fleet indicated that the threat of invasion was over. In that same month, the AOC building received a direct hit and during the winter PIs often had to wear raincoats and put umbrellas up over their desks to protect the photographs. The search for new premises resulted in Danesfield House being requisitioned and renamed RAF Medmenham. When the Wembley interpreters relocated in April 1941 one-third of the total PI personnel were WAAF commissioned officers.

While the PIs at Wembley were monitoring the enemy preparations for invasion, other WAAFs were working as plotters throughout the Battle of Britain in the operations rooms of Fighter Command.

Stella Ogle, a future PI, was on holiday in Devon and, like many other people on 3 September, heard on the wireless that Britain had declared war on Germany:

While the news had been expected, the reality of it brought an extraordinary feeling that life as I knew it had simply come to an end. While viewing the unknown future with mixed feelings of fear and exhilaration, I was most anxious to return home to Winchester, where I was an art teacher, certain that if I did not get back within the next day or two I would be too late to join my chosen service.

I had had a chance of joining the ATS earlier in the year; two Winchester bright, young things were very keen on my joining, as they explained that if I started drilling now I should be able to have a direct commission before the war actually started. Well, neither drilling in the Drill Hall nor the direct commission appealed to me very much. I was more interested in the fact that the ATS uniform was the most unbecoming colour imaginable for my rather sallow complexion and if I had to choose between khaki, navy blue or air force blue, the last was obviously the best for me. So the Air Force it was to be.
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After volunteering Stella read a brief notice in
The Times
newspaper inviting applications for a job of ‘the greatest secrecy and importance’ that the RAF was about to undertake. Off she went to the recruiting office again and was sent to Southampton where a harassed woman told her that:

She did not actually know what the job was, except that it was very, very secret and needed all sorts of qualifications, but she didn’t know what they were, but she thought I would be very suitable for them!

Stella Ogle, another early recruit to plotting, who worked in the operations room at RAF Bentley Priory.

Stella found herself at RAF Leighton Buzzard with eight other girls on a similar quest, one of whom lorded it over the others as she had been drilling all summer and had become an acting lance corporal:

As we sat in a crowded assembly hall chatting and wondering when we would get a cup of tea, an immaculate figure came to the front of the stage – auburn hair in a strict Eton crop and a beautifully cut officers’ uniform. She spoke, in a very icy tone, ‘Has anyone here had any previous experience in the WAAF?’ Up shot the arm of the eager beaver acting Lance Corporal. ‘Indeed’, continued the chilling voice, ‘and how is it that you are remaining seated in the presence of an officer?’

As they all hastily scrambled to their feet for the remainder of their short, sharp harangue, Stella realised that life had indeed changed. After a very serious talk on security and signing the Official Secrets Act, Stella was sent to be a plotter at HQ Fighter Command at RAF Bentley Priory, where the ballroom had been hastily adapted as an operations room:

We plotted the course of the enemy raids as they came over the coast into England and passed that information on. On our accuracy and alertness depended not only the success of the interception of the incoming bombers by our own fighter aircraft, but frequently the lives of the pilots themselves.

The hours were 4 hours on, 8 hours off, interspersed with 24-hour rest days; and like Millicent, she hated turning out of bed for the 4 a.m. shift. The work was concentrated yet, especially during the Phoney War, the anxious hours could also be frustrating. They waited in a high state of alertness and in perfect silence, around a map of England, listening for one of the outstations to contact them. On the balcony above they could hear the murmur of officers’ voices, a telephone bell ringing, the arrival of a messenger; and all the time the duty officer would be leaning over the banister, watching intensely, like them, for something to happen. When a message came, it was in the form of a plot, and the WAAF linked to the outstation marked the exact position of the incoming aircraft on the map, adding more coloured buttons as the numbers were assessed, before repeating the plot aloud to attract the attention of the duty officer. Some time later Stella trained as a PI and was posted to Medmenham.