Helen Fry
Hitler’s Secret Structures in France

Dr. Helen Fry - Hitler’s Secret Structures in France

- Thank you. So, this is the second part in looking at the race for Hitler’s secret weapons, but also that forms part of the race to find his super structures. As we’re going to see, this was part of the very secret war against Nazi Germany. Next slide, please. And one of the challenges that the Allies had of course, was that the Germans were phenomenal at construction. The whole of the Atlantic wall was heavily defended. And if you are going to land your troops on the beaches of Normandy, which of course, they successfully did from the 6th of June, 1944, you have to have intelligence ahead of that of the coastal defences. But even before we get to that, we have not only agents behind enemy lines, but we have messages being picked up by the code breakers at Bletchley Park of not only of troop movements but of details of activity in France. We have something which is close to my heart and my own research, the eavesdropping programme, the bugging of Hitler’s generals and prisoners of war at three sites in Britain just outside London. And I’ll remind you of those, Trent Park at Cockfosters, just north of London, and Latimer House and Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire. And it was absolutely essential throughout the wartime to discover, to corroborate some of the intelligence that’s coming back from agents behind enemy lines of what’s seen on the ground. Some of our Allied prisoners of war, who’d escaped from prisoner of war camps, had made it across Nazi-occupied France. What have they seen, not only in terms of troop movements, but what about the defences, and in particular the coastal defences? So, those that successfully came back were debriefed by the intelligence services on what they’ve discovered. When we come to the super structures in France, it is utterly extraordinary.

And I got quite excited, because as you’ll see through today’s lecture, I uncovered some primary research and drawings that the intelligence services had gathered, some of them from aerial intelligence from the air ministry, drawings, some of them by prisoners, some who had worked actually on the construction. They had been captured by us at various points in the wartime, but some of them have previously been involved in constructing these Nazi super structures, and it is utterly phenomenal. And what we can see there, the map of Normandy and beyond, one of the earliest pieces of intelligence we needed for the Battle of the Atlantic and the battle and struggle for the Atlantic would last most of the war time in actual fact, Hitler’s U-boats were one of the biggest threats in the early part of the war. And the primary threat of course, was not only to our own battleships, one of which Hood was sunk off the coast of Norway in 1940, but they were attacking our supply convoys. And if you effectively cut off supplies from the UK as an island, supplies primarily coming from America, then very quickly the nation’s going to fall. So, we had to protect those convoys. They were protected by the Royal Navy, but the Germans were actually attacking not only the convoys, the supply ships, but also the convoys protecting them. And of course, you can’t replace the Royal Navy’s ships so quickly.

So, we had this hunt for Hitler’s U-boats. And what we discovered through various methods of intelligence were these huge, deep bunkers, the U-boat pens at Brest, Lorient, Saint-Nazaire, La Rochelle, and Bordeaux. And sometimes if you have an aerial photography over these sites, if you see the bottom photograph there, it’s almost impossible if you’re flying over unless you’re at the right angle of seeing that entrance there to single the U-boat pen. And these U-boat pens were sunk deep underground back into the coast. And we relied primarily on eyewitness accounts of German prisoners of war who were captured in various theatres of war, who gave up intelligence on just what they’d seen in some of the U-boat pens. Next slide, please. And the U-boat pens were important. There were some constructed in Germany as well. But if Hitler’s going to attack our convoys and shipping and mount operations in the Atlantic, he needs to have various bases for the U-boat pens. And if they are sunk, largely deep underground, or slightly under the water level in places, then they can be hidden. They can’t be seen by aerial photography if the RAF are flying over. They have to be protected from Allied bombing. And these are enormous concrete structures. One wonders how they managed to construct them because we did have regular reconnaissance flights over France. You wonder how they managed to construct these huge complexes without our knowledge largely.

So, the U-boat pens, and I’ve got some images coming up shortly, were largely to protect the U-boat. So, when they’ve done their operations, they might slip into some of the pens at La Rochelle for example, or at Brest. But also, they went so far back that they were capable of undergoing maintenance. So, if a U-boat needed checking, needed some repair, this could actually be done in special workshops, a whole complex. So, it’s not just long enough for the U-boats themselves, but behind that is a whole ‘nother world with proper repair shops that could actually undertake repairs to U-boats so they don’t have to go limping back to Germany, they can be repaired there and sent out again across the Atlantic. And this was an awesome threat. Next slide, please. And one, as I said, which lasted for most of the war. So, that’s a photograph there of U-boat pens at Brest. And of course, the water level changes as we know. But very difficult to work out, particularly from the air, unless you have confirmation because we can’t bomb every single concrete structure. There’s just too much of it in France alone, let alone elsewhere. Next slide, please. You can see there that kind of, can you really work out that there are U-boat pens tucked in behind here? Next slide, please. And I mentioned to you about the drawings. I got really excited when I discovered these drawings because there are a whole series of sketches and the Allied intelligence commanders had to try and verify this intelligence. So, this gives you an idea of the sheer structure and of course, most of it will be submerged below the water line. These are phenomenal and the height of a person would barely make it up that huge structure. So, we’re talking at least a hundred foot. Next slide, please.

They are heavily reinforced. We also got our prisoners of war to try and build maps of where exactly these shelters were that would help us, because our aircraft that are flying over on reconnaissance missions don’t have long to take their series of photographs. And it’s very risky because they can be shot down and that did happen. So, there you can see at Brest there is also behind this U-boat shelter, a naval school for training. So, that’s really useful and important intelligence. Next slide, please. So, this again gives you an idea below the surface of the land, just how deep these are. These are heavily reinforced. You can’t tell from the air. You might have identified concrete bunkers potentially. The prisoners might have given up those bunkers below this particular area on the coast. But if you are going to bomb it, it’s no good if you bomb the site and it makes very little impact. You have to know how thick the concrete is, how deep it goes, whether it’s reinforced. And so, we think of the big pieces of intelligence that we gained in the cracking of the Enigma codes, but we also needed the tiny snippets of information, technological information, construction intelligence that would give us an idea of how the Germans had constructed their U-boat shelters. And if we can make these non-operational, as well as knocking out the U-boats, they’ve got nowhere close to be able to repair them. And at one point our intelligence was so successful that we were picking up that Germany was struggling, were trying but struggling to produce one U-boat a week.

Now that’s quite a rate of replenishing your fleet that’s going to attack Allied forces, particularly at sea. Next slide, please. But the more we could knock out, if we could knock them out faster then they can actually be replenished, rebuilt, then we are onto a winning game. But it was touch and go at points, that balance between how many U-boats we could knock out. And those U-boats that were were knocked out, usually when they surfaced, when we managed to sink those U-boats, there were survivors and they were hauled out of the water and brought to those three secret sites that I mentioned. Trent Park, Latimer House, and Wilson Park, and prisoners gave up, sometimes in interrogation if they decided to be cooperative, but often when they went back to the cell where they were being held, they would boast to their mate what they hadn’t told the interrogating officer. So, you can see that some of this information, the drawings we were able to construct, largely, not totally, but largely came from the prisoners of war that we captured. And so, their intelligence is absolutely vital, a vital part of the jigsaw in winning the intelligence game. And I just find that image there, obviously with the tide low, of the U-boat shelter at Brest in Normandy, just extraordinary, massive, massive complex. And these are not one-offs. Next slide, please. So, they are, as I said, being heavily reinforced. You’ve got a massive, a massive concrete that’s a huge challenge if you’re going to try and damage this structure. Reinforced with steel beams. But as I mentioned, at the back of these pens, there’s a huge complex of facilities that enable all kinds of work to carry on.

Yes, repair shops. So, they have to be big enough behind for the repairs to be done on the whole length of the U-boat. You’ve got to have areas for supplies, spare parts. You also have living quarters for the crew. You have a canteen, you have restrooms. They also carried out training and briefings. There were offices for administration and I think, you know, nobody realised when they first discovered the Allied commanders were gaining this intelligence on the U-boat pens, they just thought it was a series of pens just under the surface there set back in the coast. But it goes way back with all this incredible complex of support for the U-boat war. Next slide, please. There’s another one, a drawing of these incredibly huge shelters. And you can see there how once the water line, it submerged under the waterline, you’ve basically just got a platform, a concrete platform which could just be a new concrete harbour, couldn’t it? I mean, how are you going to know without the intelligence from our agents and our prisoners of war? Next slide, please. Got some images there, yeah, that gives you a very good idea of how they can just slip in and of course, once the tide is higher they can slip in submerged under there, they’re almost, well, they are undetectable. So, that’s one of the greatest threats, early threats during the wartime.

And in the bottom there you’ve got one that would take a couple of U-boats. Occasionally you just have one sunk into the coast and incredibly difficult to find all of this stuff. Next slide, please. So, we relied on that intelligence. Now, eventually there was a joint Allied raid on the port of Brest in August '43. It’s about the same time roughly as we’re mounting attacks on Hitler’s secret weapon programme in Northern Germany on Peenemunde, and I talked about that previously. So, we have multi-layer, strategic attacks to knock out Hitler’s secret weapon programme, but also to try and damage these incredible forces. So, there was a lot of damage carried out by the US Army Air Forces. I’m not sure if that’s something which people are really aware of, but hugely costly missions because pilots could lose their lives. It was by no means safe. And there is a kind of chart online if you are interested that will give each operation and how many aircraft were lost. And in some cases, they would send over 100 bombers or more and at least a third of them could be shot down, could be lost in action. So, we mustn’t underestimate in the fight to find and mount destruction of Hitler’s super structures, it was a costly effort. We could lose airmen and aircraft in that. And neither of those you can replace very quickly. So, you cannot build your aircraft very quickly and a new pilot, you can’t train in less than three months. So, it was really vital to try and do as much damage to this. And this is before we’ve even got to the Normandy landings on D-Day. But unfortunately, as we discovered from subsequent intelligence from prisoners of war particularly, the Germans were very good at repairing the damage fairly quickly.

And as I’ve put there, that battle for the Atlantic, the Battle of the Atlantic was fought, it was a hard-fought struggle for most of the war. And it’s now becoming clear that without intelligence from German prisoners of war that we’d captured in all kinds of theatres of war, it is well known that we could have lost the Battle of the Atlantic. It was just so close. But we cannot underestimate the intelligence that was gathered from all sources were so essential to the struggle and to winning that war. Next slide, please. As we saw on the map at the beginning, Brest wasn’t the only U-boat pen along the coast there in France. We have one at Lorient. Again, huge structures. Ever so slightly, very similar in structure, but ever so slightly different as reflected in this drawing from one of the intelligence files. And so, for me, as I said at the beginning, very exciting to uncover. And that’s something as a historian, you’ll never, never know what you’re going to uncover when you pull a file at a national archives. You have a rough idea what might be in it, but it could just be air intelligence from a certain date. It could be naval intelligence. But these actual files were copied into air intelligence, air ministry files. And so, for me very exciting to find proof of what we knew, but to find that in intelligence files. So, for historians it’s a very slow, often years of research that will finally come together and that becomes exciting because we can begin to understand the link between operations, between agents behind enemy lines, between prisoners of war, what was the significance?

The belief that prisoners of war in particular, were your most valuable sources of intelligence, this proves it. Next slide, please. Because we were able to construct these drawings of the U-boat pens. And these photographs of the interior there on the bottom, of course, this was a more recent photograph. Some of those are still available. You can visit, they are tourist sites. I think they are worth visiting. I haven’t myself, but I’d like to one day. Just sheer phenomenal structures that just stand there and realise the total awe of this. Incredibly difficult to to damage completely. And on the left there at the side of Lorient, you can see a U-boat quite easy just slip in there. Incredibly difficult to tell what that structure is. With hindsight, once they start getting the intelligence together, one can look at various aerial photography and analyse it and think, “Ah, is this another U-boat pen?” But we can’t just indiscriminately start bombing these sites, you have to have corroboration before you mount an expensive operation to essentially knock one of, try to damage this to make it non-operational. And of course, you cannot just, as I said earlier, randomly bomb concrete. You might completely be wasting your time. And so, the intelligence was absolutely vital and it’s from prisoners of war, some of whom we captured actually just before D-Day. About six months before D-day we had around 15, 18 prisoners of war who were Polish conscripts into the German army, and they in particular had been working on these coastal defences. And they’re not named, even now in the archives, they’re just given a number. We never know their their original name.

But they were conscripts to the German army, forcibly made to serve the German army. And they were put in a labour section building these coastal defences of France. And they gave up absolutely vital intelligence on how this was constructed, the kind of concrete, how it was reinforced, how deep, really, really valuable eyewitness accounts. And then we also have in some of the recorded conversations, a couple of U-boat crew in their cell back at Latimer House, admitting to, you know, “You’ve never seen such a thing as the U-boat pen.” “Oh, I haven’t been to Lorient.” “Oh, yes, I was stationed there for a bit.” That kind of conversation. “And you won’t believe it,” he said, “that it goes way, way, way back.” And they’re giving eyewitness descriptions. “There are even living quarters.” “No, living quarters?” “Yes, for as many as 60 crew,” or that kind of information. And this is the kind of stuff you cannot see from any amount of aerial photography is not going to give you this kind of intelligence. Next slide, please. But it’s not just the U-boat pens, of course. One of the most serious and dangerous threats was the new German technology. And you’ll have heard me talk about this before in some of my lectures. And I want to kind of underpin what we’ve actually talked about in recent times. Peenemunde in the northern coast of Germany of course, that we knew was where the secret weapons were being developed. And we mustn’t underestimate just how serious this was. At the top of the screen there you’ve got the V-1, that’s on a ramp in France. And on the left, sorry, the right of the screen a V-2. The bottom of the screen you’ve got the damage, the utter devastation that these weapons can do. And to be able to protect these weapons, Hitler began to construct a whole number of super structures in France itself.

France being pretty much the nearest part in which one could send these across to England. But the utter devastation, some of you may have witnessed that in your childhood in the wartime, the utter devastation that this could wreak. And if Hitler had actually managed to completely unleash this relentlessly without us putting this in check, we seriously could have lost the war, even before the race for the atomic bomb programme. And then that of course is another whole topic. Next slide, please. So, an aerial imagery there of the site at Peenemunde on the Baltic coast that we talked about before. When the RAF, as you know, flew over that in 1942 it wasn’t really possible, this series of buildings, to tell what this was. And in the bottom there you can see one of the workshops. Now, the bombing of Peenemunde that I talked about before, the middle of August, 1943 was absolutely crucial, absolutely crucial because it meant that the first V-1 did not land on London for another nine months. It landed on London a week after D-Day. We could not have mounted the D-Day landings if these V weapons have been operational. But having knocked up Peenemunde, the Germans, of course, started to have mobile rocket sites and those were primarily, but not only, based in France. Next slide, please.

And before we get to some of those V-1 and V-2 sites, some of you will remember me talking about the V-3. This was something I’d never heard of before until I worked on these. I think as far as I can tell, in the bugged conversations, the transcripts in the War Office files in London in Kew, our national archives are based at Kew, just in the south of London, the V-3 was a sort of super weapon that would actually be more than a game changer than the V-1 and the V-2. The V-3 was much smaller, about the length of a standard desk. Well, if you can get a standard desk. Much, much smaller, very hard to shoot down. But these were being developed in the autumn of 1944 and we only picked up about them through the bugged conversations of Hitler’s generals at Trent Park. And as a result of that, our RAF flew over Mimoyecques, which is south of Calais. And now, as you can see there, that tiny, tunnel entrance is all there is. You have no way of knowing what is under that. Could be nothing. But under that, next slide, is a whole structure. And again, what I uncovered, next slide, please, from the bugged conversations of German prisoners of war, who would actually then be hauled out by the interrogator to try and draw these structures. And we’ll come to those shortly. The RAF flew over Mimoyecques, as I said south of Calais, and under there, this is one of the imagery that came back for analysis. You would have no idea if you randomly flew over this site to even work out what’s under there. There’s a tiny aperture where the V-3 would come out. Next slide.

And I think this is just going to give you more of an idea. So, this is a drawing. This is 100 foot underground. You can see that ramp there like a massive ladder. And the V-3 with those chambers you can sort of load up the charges at different points. And it would start at the very base, the V-3, it was super gun, or known as the London gun. And look at the tiny aperture at the top. You know, this could easily be partly covered by a bit of shrubbery, not totally, but you could easily mask something like that. And bombers are not going to go over and randomly start bombing places where there are just holes. It could be old shafts of anything. So, it was absolutely vital that we had reliable intelligence. So, incredible, some of them of course, even deeper, these shafts. And the V-3 would be be loaded at the bottom and then a series of charges would propel it right at a high speed. This is early rocket technology that eventually would send a man to the moon in 1969. Next slide, please. Again, we’ll see, yeah, this a photograph taken at the end of the war. You can see just how deep this ladder, ladder for want of a better word, is. And within that structure underground, you can see the tunnel structure there at Mimoyecques, absolutely huge complex. But with that just tiny aperture on which the V-3 would be propelled out, all pointing towards London.

And Mimoyecques, of course, what would it be? 25 kilometres, Pas-de-Calais there. 25 kilometres maximum to London. Maybe a little bit more. There is no defence against this. If we hadn’t discovered this either, the V-3 in development and if we hadn’t, the Americans mounted a heavy raid on Mimoyecques, the bomb damage to that, if we hadn’t knocked this out, Hitler could have together had all this operational. It could have turned the tide of the war. For all the progress we’re making in '44 and '45, even when we’re into Germany, we have not given up the hunt for these super structures. Next slide, please. And we’ve even got a map here that the intelligence services have drawn of how these will go straight across there to London. Would wreak utter devastation. There is no defence. You can’t shoot these down. They’re too small, too fast. They are just like a sort of tiny ballistic missile that you might see today. Well, hopefully none of us have actually seen a real ballistic missile, but you know, this is the technology that would go on to be developed and so, so advanced. But to make this successful, after having lost Peenemunde, all of Hitler’s structures are going deep underground. Next slide, please. And yeah, these are some of the drawings that are in the same air intelligence file I discovered. I mean, I just find this incredible. It’s a whole 'nother secret world.

You can visit Mimoyecques. Again, it’s something I haven’t done. There is a museum there and I have met people who’ve been, and they said it, you know, it just takes your breath away. The sheer size and structure just takes your breath away. And this is a secret war now being mounted underground and it’s one that you could not detect without good and reliable intelligence. Next slide, please. And again, look at this. They’ve put possible reconstruction 'cause they did their utmost. But this is now known in hindsight of course, once the Allies reached, in the autumn of '44, reached that part of Calais. As we know, the Germans thought the landings were going to happen near Calais. They did not. We mounted the landings in Normandy. So, it was a while before that part of France was liberated and these diagrams were shown to be pretty accurate. But look at that enormous structure, all of it pretty much underground. And this one here actually they were constructing more than one of those ramps, those huge deep ramps. You can see the apertures there. That’s all you’ve got. How are you going to discover that if you’re flying over? Unless you know exactly from bugged conversations for example, what this was. And once we had corroboration from the bugged conversations of particularly Hitler’s generals at Trent Park, information would be sent to some of our secret agents operating in France to look out for eyewitness accounts of what they see, any changes, any major, you know, movement of construction to a particular area. This was absolutely vital. So, this intelligence could also be passed to agents and agents working in Belgium because we had mobile, the Germans have mobile rocket sites in Germany.

We absolutely, they were given diagrams on what to look for. If you see a structure that looks like this or modified, really, really crucial 'cause if you don’t knock these out, they’re going to start and they did of course, start. The V-1 and V-2 start landing on London and other places. Next slide, please. These are potentially game changers. I mean, look at this, it’s a kind of James Bond underworld. It gets even better if you like. I find this phenomenal. I had no idea that we had all these, well they are almost aren’t they, like James Bond structures. And that’s another aspect of Mimoyecques there. Next slide, please. And now, we’ve got some of the bomb damage that the Americans did to Mimoyecques. The V-3 technologically was never operational. There were two fired in practise. One into the Netherlands and we managed to retrieve that. And that’s now in a museum in London, Behind the Wire. And another one, I believe landed in Luxembourg. But the Germans never quite got the technology ready in time. We were just ahead in the landings and the advances. But you can imagine all the huge super structures were in place and built ready to cope as soon as these V weapons were operational. Next slide, please. So, I’m not sure if you are aware of some of the other sites. Siracourt, which is again in France, there along the coast. A sketch of what, again from eyewitnesses, from prisoners of war, of what this structure could possibly, what it was like.

Again, to me this could be a sketch from a movie couldn’t it? Certainly from a James Bond movie. And you can see on the left there just above secret, on the rock there, there is that kind of track, and that’s a track where a V-1 would come out. So, V-1 being otherwise known as the doodle bugs, they’re the earliest of Hitler’s secret weapons. And those were made operational about a week after D-Day. But this is Siracourt a site near Calais that would actually, with the rail routes coming in there on the right, basically submerged below ground apart from that kind of roof. Yes, next slide, please. So, look at that. If you’re going to fly over that, that’s the bunker, which was begun in 1943. Again, when you fly over the Germans made it look… Can we go back one, please? So, we can see that with the diagram there. Next slide, please But when it actually comes to flying over the site, you’ve got like a concrete platform and who knows what’s under there unless you’ve got the intelligence. And you’ve got that tiny aperture there on the left, sorry, on the right bottom of the screen. Next slide, please. So, that’s for the V-1. But simultaneously, as we’ll see, Hitler’s constructing not only these super site structures, bunkers deep underground to support the V-1, but it’s incredibly well planned because we’ve got the V-2 coming as well, and the V-3 behind it. We have prisoners who have managed to provide maps, diagrams. There you can see the main building that’s submerged below ground, of Siracourt. It talks about the water tower, storage there, and look, it’s actually just over 100 miles, yeah, 100 miles to London. That could reach London in no time. Next slide, please.

And the V-1s of course, are those that I’m told from people that experienced them in the wartime, if you heard that kind of whistle, that very distinctive whistle and heard it going past your ear, you’re okay. It’s when the noise stopped it’s about to land and that’s the most dangerous point. The V-2, they were totally noiseless. You just had no idea. And the V-3, well, would be far too fast to probably just see in a blink of an eye. But again, look at that very James Bond kind of structure deep below the ground. But this is the kind of thing that the Germans were building, these huge super structures to support their secret weapon programme in France. Next slide, please. And this I thought would be helpful to have a photograph alongside. You’ve got those air vents you can see along the top of the diagram, but really that’s all, with the concrete roof, that’s all that you can see above ground. And you can see there with the trees and the grass, it’s incredibly difficult. It almost looks as though it’s disused. You know, the Germans were very good at disguising. In fact, one of the prisoners talked to his mate and said, “Oh, yeah, they asked me about when I was working near such and such a place. And of course, what they’ll never know is that the bunker’s deep underground. There’s grass on the top, on the roof. And they put an area where they built a fake church.” And of course, that’s what we did knock it out. But we wouldn’t have known that from aerial photography.

So, this kind of intelligence is absolutely crucial. And I think it’s nice for you to be able to see just the link between what we are picking up from all kinds of sources of intelligence and the difference it’s making in exactly what it’s uncovering is just phenomenal. Next slide, please. Yeah, another one showing the, I love that one of the intelligence officers has written on there, “Showing present state.” So, that’s the known level of construction at that point before it was completed. It was completed in 1944. But again, look, so deeply embedded there underground, those huge, huge structures. And we’ve even got, we needed to know even like the earth, what that was like. So, if you can see there’s 10 foot of clay bed with chalk below. So, we need to be able to understand architecturally. We had a whole number of scientists and architects and whoever to support the intelligence services and be able to analyse how this could possibly be structured and on what kind of soil it can be supported. Next slide, please. Yeah, another one there of it almost complete but not totally. As I said, I just find this phenomenal. These huge, huge structures that I think most of us who’ve studied wartime completely unaware of how substantial and what a threat this was, all this being hidden underground. Next slide, please. And we also have, as I mentioned just now, huge planning. Hitler has properly planned this. While the V-2 is in development, we’ve got separate sites. So, not only the V-1 bunkers but we’ve also got the V-2 bunkers. And again, that sort of slab of concrete.

And there are so many of these structures. There are similar structures in Germany. We’ve got structures in Belgium. You cannot just mount indiscriminate, random bombing raids thinking, “Well, I’m going to knock out that concrete,” because there might not be anything underneath. But to have this intelligence, this is Sottevast, which again, is there in Normandy. Now, this was never completed. I think this is the one that was never completed because we overran it. We overran Normandy after the D-Day landings before this was properly completed. Next slide, please. So, we have, yeah this is the one. These photographs were taken just after the landings and show you the huge construction that goes into these complexes. But this one was never totally finished. Next slide, please. And then Watten had a bunker. This would be a V-2 launch site. It has quite a bit of a concrete walling around it. I know some of the Cold War, there’ve been a couple of Cold War bunkers in Britain that with the fortification and the concrete, incredibly difficult now to actually dismantle. Well, I don’t know if dismantle’s the right word, for new residential sites. Wilton Park just outside London in Buckinghamshire is one of the them. I think it would be quite a challenge. You can imagine these things are not easy to damage. Next slide, please. It gives you a whole idea. There, this is all you can see above ground of that complex and very, very difficult to actually mount any significant damage to that. So, our Allied commanders have to work out exactly a strategy on how and whether they can make this non-operational. Next slide, please. For these whole series of bunkers and diagrams, again, that main building that, can you go back just one a bit please?

Yeah, so, hidden with trees. Next slide, please. But as you can see from this, a lot of it sort of sunk into the hillside to make it really difficult, unless you’re at the right angle for any bombers to, sorry, any reconnaissance missions to actually photograph this significantly. And this is actually marked in the bottom of the drawing there, where some of the section was badly damaged. And I have to say it was really important that if they mount a bombing raid on any of these sites, you have to know how successful you’ve been. So, there will be reconnaissance missions that would fly over afterwards, it could be just a few days later, and again, photographs taken that had to be analysed to work out, okay, we’ve done this damage but how significant was it? How successful have we achieved our goal? So, it’s a huge operation just on this alone with all the war going on around. Next slide, please. So, we have another V-2 bunker at Wizernes. That’s not far from Calais. But again, look at this, you’ve just got a sort of dome above the surface. I mean, the drawing’s given us a slice of what’s underground. But again, to me this is so James Bond, isn’t it? Fleming would’ve had a field day. And in fact, one of the production designers was a German Jewish refugee, Sir Ken Adam went on. He was a fighter pilot and I never got to ask him actually if he saw any of the structures 'cause he did do some of the bombing raids over France. But you just wonder how much of this kind of imagery inspired his creations for film. He was a production designer and designed a lot of the sets for the early James Bond films. And on the right there you can see one of the V-2s just tucked away there by the entrance. Just so James Bond. Next slide please.

And again, you can see from the diagram the depth of this stuff. Next slide, please. Just give you a flavour for this. And again, I wanted to compare the drawing with that dome and you’ve got the mast, but that’s quite far down. And the railway line. That would be quite hard to tell once you’ve got trees and stuff growing. But on the bottom corner there, you can see this is the kind of imagery that you would see as an eyewitness or if you flew over it. So again, very, very well hidden. And if you’ve got so much of this concrete dotted through France, it’s impossible to knock all of it out. Next slide, please. And one of the tunnels where the trains could come in with the supplies, with the V weapons themselves, whether it’s V-1 or in this case a V-2. And in the bottom there again, you can see just little bits of concrete and they would’ve been hidden amongst trees and grass. Some of them may have looked derelict, we don’t really know if they’re operational. But we do get verification that they’re operational from our intelligence sources. That becomes absolutely vital, these sources of intelligence. And because we mounted various bombing raids against Hitler’s secret weapons, everything started to go underground, including the manufacture of certain parts to V-1 or the V-2. So, what you find is he used, I didn’t show any imagery today 'cause we didn’t have time, but there are similar structures, deep underground, underground factories in Czechoslovakia for example. Again, we have aerial imagery and diagrams of that. So, because this stuff is being knocked out and particularly in France, the V-1 and the V-2 were not made in one single location anymore. So, the different parts would be made in what could be anywhere within the Nazi regime.

And again, we did pick up intelligence on yes, there’s some funny shaped objects being transported. Well, I don’t know, just maybe a few miles from mines or maybe somewhere in Czechoslovakia. And that would alert us, our agents on the ground would say, “Yes, there’s an unusual movement by train of objects that looked a bit weird.” And again, diagrams would be would be drawn. We’d try to work out exactly. And then they would be constructed very quickly on one central point. But the whole manufacture in various pieces and various locations we would never have known about without our secret agents working on the ground. And particularly, without those secret intelligence sites working in the United Kingdom just outside London. And there was a contingent of American intelligence that was working at these three sites outside London as well. So, American intelligence was also involved in piecing together this whole picture. And this is just one aspect in the war. You know, you wonder at the sheer achievement of the Allied intelligence commanders in pulling together all this material. Next slide, please. And much of this, as I discussed last week, was analysed at what was known as RAF Medmenham and this is Danesfield House. It’s near Marlow on the Thames. So again, about 20, 30 kilometres, miles outside London. Beautiful, excuse me, it’s a beautiful, beautiful house. It still looks like this today. You can actually go and stay there. It’s a hotel. Beautiful place for a conference or to stay. Absolutely stunning grounds and it’s high up.

And at the bottom of the grounds you can see the Thames winding below. It’s just so beautiful. But deep in the countryside there near Marlow, close to the Thames, is this secret site where the aerial imagery was undertaken. And the women in particular were involved in this analysis work of the photographs. You can see one of the women there analysing the photographs and they have to obviously enlarge them and try and work out the detail, but also compare with earlier photography to see what changes there must have been. So, meticulous detail, hours and hours, next slide, please, of these analysts at Danesfield House. We’ve got some more imagery there. Some wonderful photographs of their work. And I’ll go on, probably later in the year, to talk more about the incredible work that they did because it wasn’t just imagery analysis. They actually created models and mockups of German ships, of the coast of Normandy ahead of the Allied landings. Incredible work. And this is where they’re piecing together and analysing the photographs that are coming back from those reconnaissance missions. And this was the site at RAF Medmenham and Danesfield House where they analysed and discovered, finally in '43, that Peenemunde on the Baltic coast really was a secret weapon development site. And it was their work, after the bugged conversations, that led to this photography, the new flying missions, it was their work on which Churchill authorised the bombing of Peenemunde in the middle of August, 1943. But that wasn’t it. The race to find from aerial photography the mobile launch sites, as well as analysing the imagery coming back on the super structures was done here and at some of the sister sites, but primarily at Danesfield House, but later at another site, Newnham. Next slide, please. And so, I’m just going to bring my comments to a close.

So, give you a visual again for those of you who may not have seen my lecture last week, but these three secret houses deep in the countryside. Well, it was pretty much in the countryside. On the right there, Trent Park at Cockfosters, it would have been much more in the countryside in the wartime. Now of course, with the urban development, Enfield, Cockfosters within the borough of Enfield, is pretty much a suburb within London. It just expanded so much. At the top of the screen, Latimer House in Buckinghamshire. And the bottom, Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire. And both of those are about 20 kilometres outside of London. Today not far from the M25. Of course, the M25, famous M25, was not built until after, way after the wartime. But that’s roughly to give you geographical areas to where these are. And these secret sites made the most, next slide, please, phenomenal analysis of intelligence. They were the sites where the secret listeners, I’ve got some of them here, viewed here. Most of them I interviewed actually. These 103 in total, German Jewish refugees, at those three sites. Can you go back one slide, please? Those three sites here, this is where they were with their headsets on listening to the German prisoners of war at Trent Park, Hitler’s captured generals living there, a life of relative luxury, spilling the beans. Not realising that they’re there relaxing and their chatter giving up vital intelligence, which enables us to win the intelligence war.

So, all this is going on deep in the countryside. Next slide. And all that’s feeding in the analysis on Hitler’s super structures in France and elsewhere, is being done several hundred miles from the original site, sometimes several thousand miles deep in the countryside outside London. Next slide, please. And I’ll just bring some concluding comments then. There you can see the map with each of the V-1 and V-2 sites. We’ve got Watten, Wizernes, and Siracourt that I talked about. Mimoyecques, you can see how close that is to the coast of Kent. And this really would’ve decimated all of our industries. You’ve got Sottevast there. There was something at Brecourt. These maps were used in the wartime to sort of pinpoint exactly. You had to know where this stuff is if you’re going to mount any operations. But primarily, and I think this is what I want to underline and to finish with today, you know, we marvel you can go and visit these super structures, what remains of them. And to see, to get an appreciation really not just that these mega, almost James Bond-type structures, but that just how well the Germans can conceal this and that these structures were going to support these absolutely terrifying V weapons, V-1, V-2, and that V-3 that would have been a game changer.

If we had not discovered the intelligence about those weapons and the sites that were there to support them and to have those visual imagery drawn, hand drawings of what these structures might be. And in the very early days of them being discovered, it was almost unbelievable. The Allied intelligence services sometimes questioned whether this could possibly be accurate. But we now know that it was. And so, I guess today then we finish and pay tribute to the Allied commanders that oversaw, alongside Bletchley Park and the code breakers, the intelligence that’s coming together that’s brought together, we pay tribute to those women and men working in intelligence and actually making a difference to the outcome of the war. What they gathered can truly be called war-winning intelligence. Thank you, and I’ll see you again for more “Secret War.”