ORGANISATION OF TRANSMISSIONS.
The organisation of a network of clandestine agents in France was contemplated at the beginning of 1941. Obviously one of the main problems to settle was that of communication between LONDON and FRANCE.
At that time FRANCE was, if not completely occupied, at least theroughly under German control. Any communication system therefore, must of necessity offer the greatest guarantee of security. Besides couriers who were beginning to go back and forth across neutral frontiers - a system which presented neither speed, regularity nor security - it became necessary from the beginning to resort to the use of wireless.
This explains why the first agent sent to the field was an operator with radio set and codes. His mission was to get himself established, to find a 'Boite aux lettres' (accommodation address for mail and sometimes for personnel), to contact LONDON and cable all particulars about that 'Boite aux lettres', so that other agents, previous to their departure from LONDON, could be told where to leave their messages and learn all details about similar facilities of their own.
This was done between the 6th and 9th of May 1941. During the following days, other agents were infiltrated who thus knew in advance how to forward their messages.
From a technical standpoint, contacts with the LONDON basestation were quite easy. The communication plan included three weekly contact periods, known as 'skeds', with a possibility of additional skeds upon request (QRX).
Each sked lasted from one to three hours, a rather long time, but the basestation receivers were not very sensitive nor very selective and frequent repetitions had often to be asked for by the inexperienced operators. (This must have a nightmare for the wireless operators in the field. I believe this the basestation which was ran by SIS/MI-6)
The code used was the double transposition system with a simple key, with a book or a memorised text. Provided certain precautions were taken for encoding, this system offered sufficient guarantee of security.
It was difficult for the enemy to locate a clandestine station when it started sending. First the enemy posts had to detect it; then they had to discover that it was talking to the basestation in LONDON. It took nearly two months for German listening posts to locate the first clandestine sending station which was in IDRE. (Don't believe this, the Germans had a very sophisticated DF network with high quality receivers). As IDRE was then in the non-occupied zone, it seems likely that the Germans ordered VICHY to conduct the search by means of both police and radio location services. With their long distance location stations, the Germans had to detect the presence of this clandestine radio somewhere around CHATEAUROUX. They probably asked VICHY to pin-point the agent with radio-location cars. Cars of this type (model 26-ter, French Army) made their appearance around CHATEAUROUX in June 1941. They were not capable of direction finding, they could only detect and locate approximately the position of the station using as a guide the intensity of reception. Furthermore it was obvious that Army Engineers operating these cars, as well as their superiors, did not exhibit much enthusiasm at tracking down a clandestine operator, no doubt an allied agent, therefore working against the Germans. The Germans themselves had to send a car equipped with a radio detector, but failing to get the exact location of the radio, they gave up the search.
The VICHY police (Security Section) and the Gestapo were on the alert. The Vichy inspectors, who were in a better position than the Germans to trace the threads of a secret organisation in an area with which they were more familiar, conducted an investigation and began laying traps. They searched hotels and houses, checked identity papers over the whole area, but the investigation, based on more assumption of the presence of a clandestine agent somewhere in the town of CHATEAUROUX failed to produce ant result.
The first operator was denounced and captured in October 1941.
(Georges Pierre André Bégué born 22 November 1911, died 18 December 1993) code named Bombproof, was a French engineer and agent of the United Kingdom's clandestine organization, the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The purpose of SOE in France, occupied by Nazi Germany in World War II, was to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance. SOE agents allied themselves with French Resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment parachuted in from England. Bégué was the first of 470 SOE F (France) Section agents infiltrated into France. He was a wireless operator. He proposed the use of BBC to transmit coded messages to resistance groups in Europe, a practice which became ubiquitous. He also arranged for the first of many thousands of airdrops of supplies and arms to resistance groups in France. He was captured by the French police in October 1941. He escaped from prison in 1942 and returned to the United Kingdom).
At that time there remained in France about 10 agents some of whom had not yet been able to instruct LONDON on how to contact them. There were no more operators in contact with LONDON and it was only two or three months later that agents in the occupied Zone succeeded in contacting LONDON again.
The problem then was to re-establish communications and to contact one after the other agents with whom contact had been lost. The target was to set up in each area a team complete with organiser, operator, courier, operation and sabotage expert, instructor, etc. Teams must be independent from each other and each form a watertight compartment (circuit, or network). A new team sent to the field would be received by a reception committee from a circuit already in operation. Agents would be housed as long as necessary to get them accustomed to new conditions and then directed to their final destination. Then all contacts must be cut. In each circuit a radio operator would keep independent contact with LONDON. The operator's only work was to establish that contact and maintain it. He was not to run any risk to jeopardize this precious link.
Regulation on practical organisation in the field were carefully defined, based on the valuable experience of six months. It was recognised that the primary condition, not only for success, but even for the survival of a circuit was a good communication system. For an organiser who had no means of rapid communications with his superiors or was without a radio, through whom he could quickly report on each little operational phase or give frequent reports on the strategic and operational situation was of no value to the organisation. Eventually it was even admitted - and this opinion was justified by facts more than once - that a circuit existed only as long as its operator is able to function. Even if the organiser is caught, the operator can help in the sending from LONDON and the placing in the field of a new organiser. In this way the interruption can be of short duration.
Such were the improvements of a practical and general nature. On the technical side, there were no changes. An operator arrived in the field with one, but often two sets. He set to work preferably in a city or some important center. For, even if the Germans were able to detect his location within a radius of a kilometer or even half a kilometer, no thorough house search could be undertaken without attracting the operator's attention and he could temporarily interrupt his traffic (Only if he had people observing the area).
For good transmission, some locations were better than others, landing themselves better to the setting up of an aerial, but it was up to each operator to use his ingenuity in order to get the best results. Before leaving ENGLAND he had been trained above all in the use of morse, procedures and code and had acquired some technical notions on radio and radio equipment. If, however, the operator was an agent who had not received any previous training - and that was the case in many instances - he often had to make several attempts to establish contact, and feel his own way towards finding the best installation possible. True enough, may 'tricks of the the trade' were useful to know and put into practice, but it was better to 'reason' them and apply them in the right place.
One operator could get surprisingly good results with a very short inside aerial whereas an other, with twenty yards of wire well spread and insulated, could hardly get the basestation and might soon have the Gestapo or the police on his track.
The story is told of an operator who had decided to settle himself in a large house surrounded with trees, on the border of a main highway and right at the edge of a town. No doubt he must have thought himself most unlucky when he was captured at work, but he had made the serious mistake of working in a room from which, on account of the surrounding trees, he was unable to watch the approaches to the house and the enemy managed to locate him in the course of his transmissions, within a circle that got smaller and smaller until the map showed that only this house remained inside the circle. Furthermore it was easy for the Germans to check their calculations; they merely followed the road and noted a very marked angle variation and a maximum intensity when they passed the house.
Such mistake was disastrous for the operator whose sole preoccupation had been to settle himself as discretely as possible. Beside his host and hostess no-one knew or could even suspect his activities, but constant sending on his part had revealed the existence of a set in the area firstly to long distance detectors and finally to detectors operating in the range of his ground-wave. Nor had he, for his protection, that anonymity which a position in the middle of a densely populated area could have given him, nor the possibility which it gives of seeing the danger coming if one takes the trouble to be on the look-out for it (While doing a sked, one doesn't have time to see what is going on outside) .
In December 1942, there were in France about 10 operators, 4 of whom were active. These were located in BORDEAUX, ARLES and PARIS (Who were they?). The others were not able to establish contact for various reasons. Some were not sufficiently trained; others had lost their radio set or their crystals and plans at the time of landing in France. One even had been so upset by the trip that his memory had failed him and he was unable to remember his code.
LONDON then decided to take steps to improve this situation and to study with great care all the details of the mission of each operator. training, equipment, communication plan and code. The sityation slowly improved, but its prgress was limited by:
a. the difficulty in recruiting personnel,
b. long delays for infiltration of agents,
c. difficulty of obtaining radio equipment (both first and replacement equipment),
d. difficulty of getting equipment to the right place and in perfect condition.
Some of these difficulties could never be overcome, or if they were, it was thanks to cunning and daring, often at the risk of both operator and RAF pilot.
It must be noted that, in September 1942, the SOE transmission station, known as '53', took the place of the SIS transmission station known as 'Section 8' for handling all traffic with our agents. This change was a necessary and profitable one for it placed at our disposal a powerful installation with much equipment and personnel, so that it became possible to increase the number of operators in the field and to give them better traffic facilities.
Furthermore, radio sets for use by an operator - such as Mark 5 and 'Paraset' - originally came from Section 8, soon began to manufactured in workshops whose entire production went to SOE.
One after the other, the following crystal sets came out:
- A/Mark I, then A/Mark I, suitcase type, medium size, from 3 to 8 megacycles, ? watts, mains or battery.
- A/Mark II, then A/Mark II, suitcase type, small size, megacycles 3-4-5, 0r 6-9, 6 watt, mains (battery in extra box).
- B/Mark I, suitcase type, large size, 3 to 16 megacycles, 15/18 watts, mains and battery.
These last models were the best, the A/Mark II especially for operators working above the LOIRE; and B/Mark I for those South of that line. But not enough sets were made until April 1943 and it was rarely possible to give operators more than one set each.
In September 1943, the B/Mark II came out, suitcase type, small size and low weight considering its 20 watts power. Transmitter, receiver and power unit together formed an excellent set, easy to adjust and more powerful en sensitive than other sets.
The A/Mark III came soon after; although very small it provided 6 watts power. These last two models were manufactured in large quantity so that it was possible to equip each operator with three of four sets. This notable increase of the number of sets in operation made possible improvements in their tactical use, as be be shown later.
A few words must now be said about codes. In January 1943, the code system in use was still the double transposition with simple or double indicator taken no longer from a book but from a memorized poem. Owing to increased traffic, i.e. the large number of messages passed between each operator and the basestation, this method of coding was not reliable. Growing fears entertained about its security were unfortunately justified when, one one occasion, the Intelligence Service got word that the Gestapo had in its possession the text in clear of a telegram which it had intercepted a few days before and which had been sent by an operator from our LYON circuit. In September 1942, our LYON organiser (Virginia Hall?) had prepared a dropping operation on a ground near BELLEVILLE-SUR-SAONE and he had cabled to LONDON the ground coordinates, including the name of BELLEVILLE as well as the BBC message. The operation was tried a first time during the September moon-period and failed. Owing to bad weather and poor visibility, the pilot had searched vainly for the light markers on the ground for many minutes. During the second moon, the same operation was requested by LYON and for security reasons, LONDON asked LYON for confirmation of coordinates. Naturally these contained once more the word of BELLEVILLE and the BBC message. This time, the operation was a succes, but German nightpatrols were aware that a plane had dropped parachutes somewhere near BELLEVILLE. In November, when the operation was attempted once more, the presence of German patrols nearby hampered the work of the reception committee and the light had to be turned off just when the plane appeared. Five days later, another attempt was made which meant the same BBC message, followed by the passing of a plane near BELLEVILLE. By that time, what had seemed suspicious to the Germans was now a certainty. In December, LONDON thought it wise to to postpone operations on this ground. In the meantime, the LYON operator was being closely pursued by the enemy detectors, for it was likely that the Germans had succeeded in reconstructing the details of the skeds and frequencies of this plan and it is logical to assume that all messages were intercepted and sent to decoding offices, to be 'broken'. In January, LYON requested once again an operation on BELLEVILLE and a few hours later, the same BBC message was broadcast. This time, the German code officers were no longer in doubt. All they had to do was to find out which message sent by the operator within the last fortnight contained again the word BELLEVILLE and the BBC message the text was familiar to them. Indeed, it is fairly simple for a code expert with well trained assistente to discover, among a dozen message in code, which contains a given sentence and to decipher it.
All this goes to show the intricacies which had to be overcome for the smooth running of the radio organisation and to prevent the enemy from making use of intercepted intelligence. It was therefore necessary that each phase of the organisation of the communication system be completed as rapidly as possible before the enemy had a chance to catch up with it. The fist phase obviously had been the establishment of a radio 'bridgehead'. But this bridgehead would have been wiped out had no others followed it within a short time. This was the second phase, that of expansion. The number of operators in the field jumped from 4 in December 1942, to 15 in June 1943 and 32 in December 1943 in spite of a few losses.
Experience showed that the average life of an operator did not exceed 6 months. For, in a circuit were the number of operations within the same moon period, and therefore the number of grounds used grew rapidly, the operator had to handle a heavy traffic. He must send the coordinates of all selected grounds and the BBC messages and ground-lighting system applicable to them (Wrong, there was a fixed system for placing the fields in the field); requests for equipment and situation reports further swelled the traffic. The three or four weekly contacts as arranged in the beginning were no longer sufficient and it was often necessary to report to daily skeds, even twice daily skeds. So that the Germans managed without much difficulty to pick up all the details of the communication plan, since the same frequencies were detected on the same days every week. And even if all precautions were taken, even if the operator had succeeded in dodging short range location finding devices, the number of contacts necessary was bound to indicate the presence of the same operator in a certain location of the city. Even if he moved about in order to escape short range location finding, momentarily, he could not escape long range detectors. Furthermore, instead of catching the operator once they had detected and located him, the Germans preferred to leave him alone for a while. For they knew that sooner or later, the circuit organiser or his assistent, one or two couriers and other agents would come to the operator's hiding place (Wrong, the operator would only be visited by his own courier). And rather than risk putting the whole organisation to flight by an early arrest of the operator, it was better to let him work and wait to see. A curious although unfortunate instance must be related here. An organiser said his radio had settled in a small provincial town. For 4 or 5 months, they had had ample time to hide and build up a whole system of protection in order to dodge any possible enemy investigation. What happened is that it was not they who were the victims but a new team, freshly arrived in the same area section. who had not time to get properly settled and were unaware of the German investigation already in progress at the time of their arrival. This shows that the communication system lacked flexibility and it was during the third phase, the saturation phase, that the operator's work place was improved.
Possibly a profitable solution for all the problems involved might have been the adoption of an entirely new system, which would have forced the enemy to devise and put into operation a completely new system of his own, all of which would have taken him considerable time. It would have been possible, for instance, to use fast transmitters capable of sending the average message in no more than one or two seconds, in this way making the message almost undetectable and the set practically impossible to locate. Such transmitter exist and worked successfully. Some were based on the principale of automatic sending by means of mechanical reading of a perforated strip (papertape), others on the rapid reading of a reel photoelectrical impressed with an amplifier. Not only would their use in clandestine communication have baffled enemy listening posts for a long time, but they would have compelled the Germans first to discover the new method used, then to set up a very complicated location finding device, costly in both personnel and equipment. It seems as though improvements in communications could have been made between 1943 and June 1944 by merely correcting the system already in use. One must note however that the B/Mark II and the A/Mark III radio sets, both of the suitcase type and slightly more powerful and compact than all former models, came out in 1943 (?).