WWII: Special Operations

The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 1
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
1. Background
1940 was a dreadful year for much of
mainland Europe. The Nazis invaded
Scandinavia (Norway, Denmark) and then
Holland, Belgium and France, all with
lightning speed (hence the term Blitzkrieg
– quite literally “lightning war”).
Only the English Channel and Britain’s navy
and air force stood in the way of an
invasion (which Adolf Hitler had
codenamed Operation Sealion).
Thankfully, in the ensuing Battle of Britain
the Royal Air Force managed to retain
control of the skies and the invasion was
postponed indefinitely.
When Winston Churchill became prime
Real agents during weapons training
Photo: Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum ©IWM
Did you know?

Several thousand volunteers were
recruited.

Of more than 15 nationalities.

Many were ordinary civilians.

Women played a key role & many
demonstrated astonishing bravery
& courage.
minister in May 1940 he ordered his
Minister for Economic Warfare, Dr Hugh
Dalton, to “set Europe ablaze”.
And so the Special Operations Executive
(SOE) was born.
George Cross (GC)
The highest civilian
award for bravery.
Only 4 women have
ever received it, 3 of
them members of
The idea was simple: a new and
Special Operations
- Odette Hallowes
unconventional type of warfare involving
- Violet Szabo
sabotage and dirty tricks!
- Noor Inayat Khan
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 1a
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
Recruitment & Training
Potential agents were interviewed and assessed in secret. Initially, they had no idea
what for. If successful they were invited to join Special Ops and then underwent
extensive training at the locations shown below. As well as needing the right
‘temperament’ recruits were often selected because they spoke a foreign language
fluently, and/or they knew an area of enemy territory well.
Key Special Operations locations:
Arisaig:
Many locations called STSs (Special
Fitness & Survival
Training Schools). Agents often grouped in
Weapons & sabotage
‘country sections’.
Station XVII
(Brickendonbury Manor):
Sabotage Training
Ringway (Now Manchester
Station IX:
Airport) & Tatton Park:
Design of spy gadgets
Parachute training
Thame Park (nr Oxford):
HQ Baker Street, London:
Wireless & Coding
Staff known as the “Baker
Street Irregulars”
Helford River:
Boats & sailing
New Forest
“Finishing School”
Tangmere – Special
Duties Squadron –
flew agents in/out
of enemy territory
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 1b
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
Recruitment & Training
Agents were put through their paces, gaining fitness and knowledge on how to
survive in enemy territory. The final phase usually took them to one of about a
dozen houses in the New Forest which have become known as The Finishing School
for Secret Agents. Here they honed their skills. Training modules included;
Module A
Module B
Forgery, key-making,
Reconnaissance,
disguise, survival, criminal
house-breaking, safe-
skills, security & silent killing
breaking, burglary
Module C
Module D
Enemy identification, Nazi
Propaganda, political
organisations, uniform & rank
warfare, & non-attributable
recognition
sabotage
Module E
Codes, ciphers, secret inks &
invisible writing
The Forgetting School
Agents who failed the course or wanted to leave and those who
‘burnt-out’ often knew too much. It is said some were sent to a
‘Forgetting School’ where they were isolated and sat out the rest
of the war, or until what they knew was no longer important.
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 2
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
Suitcase Wireless Set
2. Communications
Imagine a world without mobile phones or
the internet. For agents in Special Ops
working behind enemy lines, staying in
touch with their HQ in Britain was a tricky
and dangerous business.
Most messages were sent in Morse code
using a variety of wireless sets. Each
network of agents had one or more skilled
wireless operators.
The heavy ‘suitcase’ wireless set shown
here had to be carried from one
transmitting site to another. If you were
stopped & searched it was ‘game over’ for
the agent.
Did you know that…
1. Wireless operators were known
Radio sets were also disguised as hoovers
& gramophone players. Batteries had to be
recharged, often using a ‘bicycle’ charger.
The Nazis used camouflaged ‘detector
vans’ to hunt down wireless operators
while ‘on air’.
as ‘Pianists’.
2. Risk of capture was high. The
average life expectancy was often
measured in weeks!
3. Just like handwriting styles
wireless operators developed their
own recognisable ‘signatures’
sending Morse signals.
To maintain secrecy, agents had to
encipher their messages and also decode
HQ’s replies (see Leaflet 4 for how they
did it).
Photo: © Clive Bassett
4. An old saying among agents –
“Beware of fat men!” - referred
to the enemy’s intelligence
officers who’d walk the streets
with detectors strapped to their
stomachs beneath their clothes.
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 3
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
3. Basic Equipment & Disguise
The diagram below shows some of the standard equipment used by agents
in the field. Key to survival was attention to detail, careful concealment,
and ability to stay calm under situations of extreme danger.
Fake ID
Dagger Pen that also
Papers
converts into a compass
Code Keys
Printed on silk
Silk Map:
Hidden in jacket lining
Pistol
Disguises included:
Water purification tablets
Suitcase Wireless Set
Photos: © Author’s collection & courtesy of Clive Bassett (Carpetbagger museum)
© 2012 www.craigsimpsonbooks.com
Fake moustache/beards,
Mepacreme
(turns skin yellow-brown),
Dyed hair,
Wrinkle cream,
Gum pads,
False teeth…etc
The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 3a
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
Spy Gadget Gallery
[Photos: Kind permission Clive Bassett (Carpetbagger Museum)]
Here is some of the ingenious equipment made available to agents. It is said
that Ian Fleming got his inspiration for ‘Q’ and his gadgets in the James Bond
books from the section in Special Operations employed to dream them up.
Just a few cm long this tiny device was a single-shot gun,
effective at close range. Sleeve pistols and the famous
silenced Welrod, firing up to five shots, were also
available.
Dozens of different pressure switches, tyre bursters, detonators,
fuses etc. were made, perfect for sabotaging a train, enemy
factory etc. Carborundum powder was also supplied – when mixed
with oil it was highly abrasive and could make wheel bearings seize
up.
Time Pencils: Really useful timer delays
that lasted from minutes to hours, days or
even weeks. Colour-coded bands tell agent
how long the delay lasts.
The Welbike: A mini motorbike
parachuted behind enemy lines. Fuel
shortages meant its use was limited.
The Exploding Rat! Probably the most
famous Special Operation’s gadget.
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 4
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
4. Codes & Ciphers
Various methods were used by agents to encrypt their messages, and they ‘evolved’
over the course of the war. Here are just some of them.
Poem Codes
Book Codes
Unique poems were memorised by
Any book can be used but both the
agents. They selected lines at
agent & HQ must have exactly the
random and then wrote down the
same one, same edition etc. The agent
position of each letter in the
randomly selects a piece of text and
alphabet. This gave a sequence of
does the same as with the poem code,
numbers they then used to
assigning the letters their positions in
‘transpose’ each letter of their
the alphabet to create a sequence of
message. They began their
numbers, and then uses these to
transmissions with a reference to
‘transpose’ their message. They’d
the lines used. As only they and
start their message stating the page
HQ knew the poem, they were hard
& line(s) used.
to crack.
Example:
Poem line: If I were a dog
This gives: 9,6,9,23,5,18,5,1,4,15,7
Message: Meet at two pm
Coded Message: Vknq fl yxs et
i.e. M is shifted 9 letters, E by 6, E
by 9, T by 23 etc etc…
Often, for both poem and book codes
the agent would repeat the coding
exercise to make it really hard to
crack – known as double transposition.
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 4a
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
4. Codes & Ciphers (continued)
You may have already spotted the weakness of methods like Poem and Book Coding.
If the agent was captured and interrogated, he or she might reveal their poem or
the book being used – the enemy would then easily be able to decode the messages,
or even send their own, pretending to be the agent! This actually happened in
Holland and it cost many lives.
To know whether it really was the agent, HQ ordered them to insert so-called
‘real’ and ‘bluff’ checks – deliberate mistakes agreed in advance. Even this
precaution didn’t always work.
Eventually, Special Operations Code Master (a man called Leo Marks) realised that
a better method would be to supply the agent with lists of numbers that were used
just once and then destroyed – no way would the agent be able to remember the
sequence. Two approaches were used as explained below.
Silk Code Keys
One-Time Pads
Some agents had trouble destroying
silks in an emergency & so paper pads
were developed, each page containing
a unique transposition sequence (only
HQ had a copy). Having used it, the
agent would tear it out and either
Printed on silk, the agent used
burn it or eat it! Even these weren’t
each line once, then tore it off and
perfect – carrying many around was
burnt it. Being silk it could be
hard to conceal and tricky to get rid
readily concealed in lining of a
of when stopped and searched.
coat.
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 5
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
(© Photos: courtesy of Violet Szabo Museum & National Archive)
5. Famous agents & missions
Violet Szabo GC: Undertook two missions in France. In the
first she parachuted in and had orders to check out whether a
circuit had been blown by the enemy. It had. She delivered the
news back to London. When D-Day arrived in June 1944, Violet
(codename: Louise) parachuted into France’s Limoges region – to
play her part in halting the advance of German Panzer divisions
heading for the Normandy beaches. Caught up in a fire fight she
was captured after helping a fellow agent escape. Taken to Paris
(Fresnes prison) she was interrogated but revealed nothing.
Eventually sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, she was
executed as an enemy agent.
Claus Helberg: One of the Norwegian Heroes of
Telemark who took part in the sabotage raid at the
heavy water factory at Vemork (Norway), thereby
delaying the Nazi’s ability to make an atomic bomb. His
post-raid escape from the enemy across the Hardanger
mountain plateau was astonishing for its courage and
never-say-die determination.
Noor Inayat Khan GC: A wireless operator codenamed
Madeleine, Noor was flown into France to support
Resistance circuits operating in Paris. Initially one of many
wireless operators, within months she was the last, the
others having been arrested. Despite the danger she
insisted on keeping on working. She, too, was finally caught
after being betrayed. Under interrogation she revealed
nothing. She also made several escape attempts but was
eventually executed as an enemy spy.
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The Real Special Operations: Educational Leaflet 5a
WWII: Special Operations
Britain’s Secret Army of agents & spies
5. Famous agents & missions (cont’d)
Yvonne Rudellat: codenamed Jacqueline she was the first female Special
Operations agent to enter France (via a fishing boat). She worked for a circuit
called Monkeypuzzle near Tours. Later she set up her own circuit in the Loire
which proved very successful when it came to sabotage.
Sonia Butt: reputedly the youngest female agent to parachute into France,
people recall her cool and calm manner – but she put her knowledge of
explosives to good use disrupting communication lines and troop movements.
Nancy Wake: the most decorated woman of WWII, Nancy’s codename was
Hélène although the Germans called her The White Mouse. She led a band of
about 7000 French Resistance fighters (Maquis), turning them into highly
effective guerrilla forces.
Virginia Hall: codenamed Germaine, Virginia helped organise local French
Resistance networks and downed airmen to reach the escape routes in Vichy
France. The Germans nicknamed her the lady with the limp – years before
she’d accidentally shot herself in the foot and so had an artificial one! To
escape France, she trekked across the Pyrenees. Closer to D-Day and working
for the American equivalent of Special Ops (the OSS) she found herself south
of Paris and in the thick of the fighting – her group accepting the surrender of
the German Southern Command at Le Chambon.
Odette Hallowes GC: working in France alongside another agent, Peter
Churchill, Odette was arrested by the Nazis and brutally tortured. She refused
to reveal what she knew about her fellow agents, thereby saving their lives.
Eventually sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, she survived a terrible
ordeal and famously accepted the surrender of the camp’s commandant.
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