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Abstract
From 1941 to 1944, MI5 faced determined attempts to penetrate Allied Air Forces using trained pilot agents recruited by German Military Intelligence (Abwehr). The mission of these pilot agents was to gather military intelligence and to return to German held territory. This pattern of targeting Allied Air Forces has not been recognized by historians. This article examines MI5's responses to the threat using recently released files in the National Archives.
Notes
1 John C. Masterman, The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945 (NY: Avon Books 1972); Frederick Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1974).
2 Masterman, The Double-Cross System, p.67.
3 Terry Crowdy, Deceving Hitler: Double-Cross and Deception in World War II (London: Osprey 2011) p.7.
4 Juan Pujol and Nigel West, Operation Garbo: The Personal Story of the Most Successful Spy of World War II (London: Biteback Publishing 2011); Ben McIntyre, Agent Zigzag: The True Wartime Story of Eddie Chapman: The Most Notorious Double Agent of World War II (London: Bloomsbury 2010); Russell Miller, Codename Tricycle – The True Story of the Second World War's Most Extraordinary Double Agent (London: Pimlico 2005).
5 Nigel West, Historical Dictionary of World War II Intelligence (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press 2008) p.xx.
6 David Kahn, Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (NY: De Capo 2000).
7 Ladislas Farago, The Game of the Foxes: British and German Intelligence Operations and Personalities Which Changed the Course of the Second World War (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1971).
8 E. Verhoeyen, Spionnen aan de achterdeur: De Duitse Abwehr in België 1936–1945 (Antwerpen: Maklu 2011). See also F. A. C. Kluiters and E. Verhoeyen, ‘An International Spymaster and Mystery Man: Abwehr Officer Hilmar G. J. Dierks (1889–1940) and his Agents’ < http://www.nisa-intelligence.nl/PDF-bestanden/Dierks.pdf> (accessed 22 September 2012).
9 See, for example, F. H. Hinsley and C. A. G. Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, volumeIV (London: HMSO 1990).
10House of Commons Debates, 21 August 1940, vol.364, cols.1,350-1,414; Royal Assent, House of Commons Debates, 22 August 1940, vol.364, col.1475.
11 The National Archives (TNA), Public Record Office (PRO) AIR27/1661: Operations Record Book [hereafter ORB] No.302 Squadron; TNA: PRO AIR27/1680: ORB No.310 Squadron.
12 TNA: PRO AIR27/1663: ORB No.303 Squadron; TNA: PRO AIR27/1673: ORB No.306 Squadron; TNA: PRO AIR27/1675: ORB No.307 Squadron; TNA: PRO AIR27/1678: ORB No.308 Squadron; TNA: PRO AIR27/1679: ORB No.309 Squadron; TNA: PRO AIR27/1691: ORB No.312 Squadron.
13 Henry Lafont, Aviateurs de la Liberté (Paris: Service Historique de l'Armée de l'Air 2002) p.227.
14 TNA: PRO HW19/347. Hugh Trevor Roper, ‘Abwehr Incompetence’, RIS11.
15 Kahn, Hitler's Spies, p.239.
16 West, Historical Dictionary, p.137.
17 Brooks Richards, Secret Flotillas, Clandestine Sea Operations to Brittany 1940–1944 (London: Routledge 2004) pp.81–4.
18 Farago, The Game of the Foxes, p.222.
19 Oliver Hoare, Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies (London: Public Record Office 2000).
20 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized Biography of MI5 (London: Penguin 2010) p.252.
21 West, Historical Dictionary, p.39.
22 Jimmy Burns, Papa Spy (London: Bloomsbury 2010) p.147.
23 Ibid., p.149.
24 Sir Samuel Hoare, Ambassador on a Special Mission (London: Collins 1946) p.200.
25 Ibid., p.226.
26 TNA: PRO HW19/316. Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p.248. See also TNA: PRO HW19/316. ‘Notes on the History of ISOS’.
27 See R. A. Ratcliff, Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra and the End of Secure Ciphers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006).
28 Christopher Andrew, ‘Introduction to “The ISOS Years: Madrid 1941–3”’, Journal of Contemporary History 30/3 (1995) pp.355–8.
29 Kenneth Benton, ‘The ISOS Years: Madrid 1941–3’, Journal of Contemporary History 30/3 (1995) p.372.
30 Ibid., p.359. Desmond Bristow, A Game of Moles: The Deceptions of an MI6 Officer (London: Little Brown and Company 1993) p.34.
31 Take for example, the case of Pierre Neukermans, a former Belgian soldier who arrived in Britain in July 1943 via the British Consulate at Barcelona. After interrogation he was given a job in the Belgian government's ministry of agriculture. However, he was arrested in late 1943 as the scale of the Abwehr effort to place agents in Britain became apparent. He later confessed to being an Abwehr agent, but claimed that he sent only two insignificant secret ink letters to the receiving address specified by his handlers. ISOS decrypts proved that he had reported on sensitive issues on more than two occasions to a different address than the one he revealed to MI5. Pierre Neukermans was convicted of spying at the Central Criminal Court 1 May 1944 and executed at Pentonville on 23 June 1944 by Albert Pierrepoint. See TNA: PRO HO144/22039 and TNA: PRO PCOM9/1041. The trial and execution were widely reported. See, for example, The [Hobart] Mercury, 24 June 1944, p.2. See also Verhoeyen, Spionnen aan de achterdeur, pp.445–7.
32 TNA: PRO KV4/186 Guy Liddell Diary, 21 August 1940.
33 Nigel West, MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations 1909–45 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1983) p.98.
34 TNA, PRO CAB81/90: Minutes of Joint Intelligence Committee, 10 April 1942.
35 Allied Nationals (Detentions), question by Dr Morgan to Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, House of Commons Debates, 21 January 1942, vol.377, col.1475.
36 West, MI6, p.98. For the payoff see TNA: PRO KV4/194: Guy Liddell Diary 5 June 1944. For the apparent case of murder see TNA: PRO KV4/191: Guy Liddell Diary 14 January 1943.
37 TNA: PRO KV4/191: Guy Liddell Diary 23 March 1943.
38 Remarkably by 1944 MI5 had their own agent inside Free French Headquarters in London. Pilot Roger Grosjean arrived in Britain in 1943. He was questioned at the Royal Victoria Patriotic School and admitted that the Abwehr had facilitated his escape to come to England and carry out a spying mission. The nature of his mission was identical to that of a number of other agents that MI5 would encounter in 1943 and 1944: to report on military matters, and to steal an aircraft and return to German held territory at the end of his mission. MI5 believed Grosjean that there was never a question of him carrying out the mission, and that he was only using the Abwehr to facilitate his escape to Britain. Grosjean was inducted into the double cross system with the codename Fido. He was posted to the headquarters of one of the Free French intelligence agencies at Duke Street in St James's. His double cross communications with the Abwehr were at best sporadic, raising questions about whether MI5 also used him as a means to monitor activities in Duke Street. Grosjean's file has so far not been released by MI5, despite recent requests, and despite the fact that his case is cross referenced within other files which have been released. See François Grosjean, ‘Fido: French Pilot and Security Service Double Agent Malgré Lui’, International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 23/2 (2010) pp.337–52.
39 Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, pp.93–4. For Korab's MI5 file see TNA: PRO KV 2/1439-1442.
40 TNA: PRO KV4/189: Guy Liddell Diary 1 June 1942. For his MI5 file see TNA: PRO KV2/375.
41 TNA: PRO KV4/190 Guy Liddell Diary 24 July 1942.
42 For his MI5 file see TNA: PRO KV2/1152.
43 Masterman, The Double-Cross System, p.140. For the MI5 case files on Czerniawski see TNA: PRO KV2/72-73.
44 Hinsley and Simkins, British Intelligence in the Second World War, p.238.
45 Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, p.299. For Reile's account see Oskar Reile, Der Deutsche Geheim Dienst im II. Weltkrieg: Westfront (Weltbild Verlag: Augsburg 1989) pp.157–66. Czerniawski finished the war with the rank of Colonel. Unable to return to Poland in 1945 he lived out his life in England. He was wrongly accused of being a German collaborator in several post-war publications. He died in London on 26 April 1985 at the age of 75 and is buried in the Polish Pilots Cemetery in Newark.
46 TNA: PRO KV2/1084: 2nd Report on Lecoq, 11 December 1942.
47 TNA: PRO KV 2/1084: Lieut J. H. Osbourne, file on Lucien Lecoq, 12 December 1942.
48 TNA: PRO KV 2/1084: H. P. Milmo (MI5) to Miss K. O. Lee (Home Office), 16 December 1942. After the war Lecoq was handed over to the French, who took no further action against him; see Visa Section, British Embassy (Paris) to Director Passport Control (London), 12 April 1949, TNA: PRO KV2/1085.
49 TNA, PRO KV 2/366: Case of Henri de Montbron, Camp 020, 17 December 1943.
50 TNA: PRO KV 2/366: Information on German Agents, Part 1, Agents Sent Abroad by the Germans.
51 TNA: PRO KV 2/366: Minute by Lt-Col Robertson, 26 October 1943.
52 TNA: PRO KV 2/366: Lieut Speyer to Col Stephens, 15 December 1943. The response from the air ministry has not been found.
53 For his MI5 file see TNA: PRO KV2/1138.
54 Following the invasion of France, Fido secured a posting to a squadron at Meknes in Morocco. Serving under the name Perrin he served with the French Air Force until the end of the war. In the post-war period he became a renowned archaeologist for his work on the menhirs of Corsica. He died in Corsica in June 1975. In April 1954 he completed the manuscript of a book, The Sun is in Leo, on his wartime service which remained unpublished at his death.
55 TNA: PRO KV2/2447: Comment by Major Wall Row on the Interim Report on the Case of Jean Fraval, pp.20–1, 18 March 1944.
56 TNA: PRO KV2/2448: Copies of orders.
57 TNA: PRO KV4/8: On 6 May 1945 Fraval was handed over to French authorities for further questioning.
58 TNA: PRO KV4/8: Report on the operations of Camp 020 and Camp 020-R (B.I.E.) in connection with the interrogation of enemy agents during the war, 1939–1945, 27 November 1945.
59 Martin Johannes Gräßler, Das Ende der deutschen Abwehr: Die Zerschlagung des militärischen Geheimdienstes durch die SS (München: Grin Verlag 2008) p.27.
60 General Gabriel Cochet 1888–1973 was an aviator in the First World War and a Brigadier General in 1939. He was an early resistant, staging a daring escape from detention and crossing the Pyrenees in late 1942. From 1943 he served de Gaulle in Algiers and London.
61 TNA: PRO KV4/192: Guy Liddell Diary, 6 November 1943.
62 TNA: PRO AIR27/1741: Operations Record Book No.345 Squadron.
63 TNA: PRO KV 2/2446: Fraval file, 1st edition, 14 March 1944.
64 TNA: PRO KV 2/2448: Summary of persons mentioned in connection with the Fraval Case.
65 TNA: PRO KV 2/2446: Description of Georges Montet by Fraval points against the possibility that Lucien and Georges were the same person.
66 Ian Fleming, Thunderball (London: Jonathan Cape 1961).
67 For example, some elements of the plot for Casino Royale 1953 were suggested by Fleming's gambling in a Lisbon casino in 1941. Losing a substantial amount of money to Portuguese businessmen, he speculated about the excitement if they had been German intelligence agents and he had been able to bankrupt them. See Ben Macintyre, For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming + James Bond (London: Bloomsbury 2008) pp.35–6.
68 Andrew Lycett, Ian Fleming (London: Phoenix 1996) p.165.
69 ‘Duplicity, Treachery Bring Death’, The [Launceston] Examiner, 16 April 1947, p.1. See also ‘End of a Czech Informer’, The [London] Times, 16 April 1947, p.3.
70 František Kaucky, Zrada na křídlech Hurricanu: Příběh agenta na Západě, pilota A. PřeuČila (Praha: Magnet-Press 1992); see also fn.3, based on unpublished material from the archive M. Janecek (supplemented by handwritten notes of Professor A. Krajina) in Stanislav F. Berton, ‘Das Attentat auf Reinhard Heydrich vom 27 Mai 1942. Ein Bericht des Kriminalrats Heinz Pannwitz’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Im Auftrag des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte München herausgegeben 33/4 (1985) p.675.
71 ‘Hero Spy Unmasked as Hitler's Spy in the RAF’, The Observer, 15 June 2003 < http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/15/paulharris.theobserver> (accessed 10 October 2011). The fact that Preucil's flight from the North East of England ended in a forced landing at Ortho towards the German border, instead of at one of the airfields towards the coast or in the middle of Belgium, suggests that either he became lost or that a landing had been pre-arranged at a particular airfield which he failed to make. Daylight deep penetration into German held airspace by a single fighter in 1941 further points to the possibility that there had been preparations for Preucil's departure flight.
72 Richard Aldrich, ‘Policing the Past: Official History, Secrecy and British Intelligence since 1945’, English Historical Review 119/483 (2004) pp.922–53.
73 TNA: PRO KV 2/2446: Monthly Summary of Current Cases at Camps 020 and 020R, 1 April 1944.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
G. H. Bennett
G. H. Bennett is associate professor of history at Plymouth University.