13. Norway's role in British wartime intelligence
Edward Thomas
For the purpose of this chapter, the term intelligence is
used only in the sense of information gathered and analysed in
support of those making operational and strategic decisions. I
will be discussing the role of SOE and the Norwegian resistance
only inasfar as they were sources of this sort of information.
Sharing Sandy Glen's great admiration for the Norwegian
people I would be less than human if I did not start by saluting
some of the fine Norwegian naval officers I had to do with during
my two years as naval intelligence officer in Iceland: the celebrated
Captain Ullring, then in command of the gunboat, HNMS Fridhof
Nansen, who shared my office when he came ashore; Commander
Brinck and his brave squadron of young Kvartermester who flew
dangerous patrols in single engined Northrop float-planes over
the fog and ice of the Denmark Strait on the look-out for German
raiders - and gave me a taste of their work; and Commander Brekke
who commanded HNMS Honningsvåg, an armed trawler
captured from the Germans in circumstances calling for great courage
and presence of mind. I sailed with him in fair weather and foul,
learning to like 'Labskaus' and to say 'Fand steke mij'!
It was in Iceland in 1940 that I first experienced the
workings of Ultra, though I was not then party to the secret.
Fridhof Nansen did important - and largely forgotten -
work in frustrating early German attempts to land meteorological
parties in Greenland and Jan Mayen. These were organised by the
Abwehr whose cypher had just been broken at Bletchley Park. The
decrypts revealed their intentions and the fact that Goering attached
great importance to them, as did the Germans to their subsequent
met. activities in the Arctic. What intelligence made of them
is chronicled in our history.
Ultra played no part in the Altmark incident, the
German naval Enigma not being broken till a year later. Coastal
Command followed up reports from agents run by the French, and
these led to her interception in Jøsingfjord. If the Nelson
touch was displayed there it was Nelson's intelligence methods
that led to the first battle of Narvik. Captain Warburton-Lee
and his destroyers were sent there on the strength of no more
than a solitary Reuter report saying that a single German warship
had reached Narvik, and wisely sought confirmation from a pilot
station in the Vestfjord. There he was told that six destroyers,
'bigger than yours', had passed by, steering north. This was to
prove a sorry underestimate.
The failure to give warning of Hitler's invasion of Norway
was a disgrace to British intelligence and to Whitehall in general.
Many clues pointing in the right direction had been received.
But they went separately to the three Service Departments and
the Foreign Office, none of whom individually thought them conclusive.
For example the report of 4th April of a German photo reconnaissance
flight over Norway's west coast - a unique event - went to ground
in the Air Ministry, while the operational significance of Abwehr
decrypts about the activities of a German spy ship in Norwegian
territorial waters well before the invasion went undetected in
the Admiralty. In those days there was no effective machinery
for bringing all the evidence together and thinking about what
it might mean. Had there been it is scarcely credible that it
would not have dented the prevailing view in Whitehall that the
Germans would never dare send an expedition acrosss the sea in
face of British naval power. As it was, sightings of Germany's
big warships were thought to presage a break-out into the Atlantic.
The short campaign taught the British quite exceptionally
valuable intelligence lessons. One arose from the breaking of
the first operational Enigma. This was the version of the cypher
used by the German Army and Luftwaffe throughout the campaign.
Bletchley poured out decrypts about the strength, intentions and
whereabouts of the enemy. No one had expected the Enigma to be
used in this way or on this scale. No arrangements had been made
to send its highly secret yield to the battle zone, and none could
be improvised. So it served only to keep London informed of what
was going on and laid an immensely important foundation for future
understanding of the organisation and workings of the German forces.
But a manner in which it might in future be sent to operational
commanders was suggested during the retreat from Oslo to the north
by King Haakon and the British Embassy staff. The Oslo representative
of the SIS succeeded in keeping in touch with London throughout
the perilous journey by means of his secret radio channel. In
all future campaigns, from France onwards, the SIS's signals network
was used for passing operational intelligence direct from Bletchley
Park to Army and RAF commanders in the field. The Admiralty used
its own network. After Iceland I worked for a time at Bletchley
translating and editing, at breakneck speed, decrypts revealing
the instructions sent to U-boats in the Atlantic, the activities
of the German navy off Norway, and very much else besides.
The British Embassy in Oslo had already, in the first
days of the war, been the scene of a sensational intelligence
coup. The 'Oslo Report', pushed through the letter box by a German
who was to remain anonymous for fifty years, was one of the most
remarkable intelligence documents of the war. It set forth so
much about German scientific and technological advances - radar,
navigational beams, guided missiles, rockets and other experimental
weapons - that at first practically everyone believed it to be
a hoax. But Dr R. V. Jones - that redoubtable scientific intelligence
officer - thought it probably genuine and used it throughout the
war as a touchstone for interpreting often fragmentary evidence
about German scientific innovations. In the end its truth was
to be proved in almost every particular. Dr Jones now tells us
that its author was Professor Hans Ferdinand Meyer, wartime head
of Siemens Central Laboratories.
Returning to Ultra, the Enigma of the Luftwaffe had been
broken in 1940. But the versions of the cypher used by the German
Army and Navy proved much more difficult. That the German naval
Enigma was broken, and an immense contribution to winning the
war thereby achieved, owes much to Norway. By April 1940 Bletchley
had made good theoretical progress, and was then helped by the
few papers remaining in a German patrol vessel captured and looted
on its way to Narvik. But to make the further decisive step Bletchley
needed further and more systematic captures. The Lofoten raid
of March 1941 was planned primarily with this end in view. Material
captured from the armed trawler Krebs set Bletchley well
on the way to a decisive solution which was completed soon afterwards
by three further captures. Two, from weather ships on the high
seas (but based in Norway), were planned operations. But the third
- the famous U-110 - was fortuitous. With this invaluable help
Bletchley read the Home Waters settings, which carried 95% of
the traffic, from March to the end of May, albeit with some delay:
but from then on it broke the daily changing settings with little
or no delay until the end of the war. The December 1941 raid on
Vågsøy yielded further valuable cryptographic material.
So the high price exacted by German reprisals was not wholly in
vain. Ultra made a very great contribution to winning the Battle
of the Atlantic - a battle on which all depended - and was thus
responsible for saving perhaps hundreds of Norwegian merchant
ships and the lives of their crews. Its illumination of the sea
war off Norway included regular testimony to the German's constant
fear of Allied landings.
The Enigma played a part in the early stages of the Bismarck
episode. The Luftwaffe was flying abnormal reconnaissance of the
ice edge from Trondheim/Værnes, and decrypts revealing this
were the first warning that something was afoot. They caused the
C in C, Home Fleet, to refuel his shadowing cruisers. But what
set British forces in motion was information from the Norwegian
military attaché to his British colleague in Stockholm
to the effect that two large German warships - the other was Prinz
Eugen, later to be torpedoed off the Norwegian coast - had
been sighted steaming through the Kattegat by the aircraft of
a Swedish cruiser. The rest of the story is well known. But the
part played by the Norwegian MA is insufficiently acknowledged.
It was not until 1942 that Hitler's fear of invasion -
he said that every ship not in Norway was in the wrong place -
and German knowledge of the successful passing of convoys by the
Arctic route to north Russia sent their big ships to Norwegian
bases. The intelligence story revolved largely round their movements
and intentions. But not exclusively. In June 1941 Ultra from north
Norway had finally dispelled doubts in Whitehall as to whether
Hitler really intended to invade Russia. Because the Germans had
to resort exclusively to radio communication with remote Finnmark
their traffic, in the Luftwaffe Enigma, could be intercepted and
decrypted. This was not the case on other fronts. From 14 June
it furnished clear indications that Germany intended to push forward
in Finnmark, and to do so on 22 June. That they failed to capture
Murmansk and the Kola Inlet - a failure pregnant with significance
- was helped by the disruption of their supply shipping off north
Norway by British and Russian submarines. The British were guided
by authorities in London who now had good information from the
Enigma about German convoy movements, routes, escorts and patrols.
Ultra was to provide information of this sort right up
to the end of the war. But it was seldom complete and often late.
That the information needed for Allied air and naval operations
in coastal waters, and for the activities of SIS and SOE, was
so extraordinarily full sprang from the enormous amount of information
that came to hand to supplement the Ultra. Ultra was, in any
case, only distributed to very few recipients and was mostly used
as background. Photo reconnaissance played a big part. But most
of the non-Ultra information came from Norwegian sources. The
Norwegian High Command in London had its own sources, and collaboration
between them and the SIS almost entirely lacked the friction experienced
with other governments in exile. They agreed on an early division
of labour, the SIS obtaining information from the ship-watchers,
and the Norwegian government political, military and static information.
This filled out the information about the German army of occupation
received from Ultra. The OSS had no difficulty in accepting the
Anglo-Norwegian system of control I seem to remember that it was
OSS agents who warned in early 1941 of the German intention to
renew their attempts to establish met. stations in Greenland.
Even the SIS and SOE got on with much less than their
normal friction. So there must have been something special about
Norway. All information about the Resistance came, of course,
from the SOE. But they also gathered enormous amounts of information
about the German occupation. Since, by a ruling at the highest
level, this was circulated by the SIS as CX reports it is impossible
- as is the case with other occupied countries - for historians
to tell precisely what information came from SOE. A further valuable
non-Ultra source was the systematic and informed interrogation
of escapees from Norway and elsewhere at the London Reception
Centre in Wandsworth which was run by naval intelligence. Captured,
or stolen, documents were always another valuable source. Perhaps
the biggest coup of this kind was the capture during the Vågsøy
raid of maps showing the coastal defences not only of Norway but
of all occupied Europe. All this is the sort of information which,
evaluated against the background of Ultra, was used for the planning
of Jupiter and the re-occupation of Norway.
One very important supplement to Ultra was the establishment
by the SIS of its ship-watching stations from the Kattegat to
furthest north which was in action from early 1942. One subject
on which Ultra could not be relied on to provide timely warning
, or sometimes any warning at all, was the movement of Germany's
main naval units. Reports from the ship watchers were often the
first to be received in London. The movements of these ships between
Germany and their Norwegian bases were often accompanied by dramas
in which I became involved when I later joined the Home Fleet.
But today I must concentrate on Bismarck's sister-ship,
the Tirpitz. Her sucessful destruction, wrote Churchill,
'would alter the entire naval situation throughout the whole world.
She thus became an intelligence target of the highest priority.
After Bomber Command's three unsuccessful attacks on her in the
Trondheimsfjord in early 1942 she sailed north for Altafjord and
the notorious PQ 17 operation - one which demonstrated the frailty
of Ultra. The ship-watchers played no part in this as it was not
until a year later that the SIS, after many attempts, succeeded
in establishing an agent overlooking Tirpitz's anchorage
at the base of Altafjord. I could say more about PQ 17 since the
view we take in our history differs from that generally propagated.
But now is not the time.
After PQ 17, in July 1942, Tirpitz returned, not
to Altafjord but to Narvik. It was against her that one of the
most daring attacks of the war was planned. It is not generally
known that Leif Larsen's attempt to bluff his way to her vicinity
had to be switched at the last moment to Trondheim. Ultra had
revealed, on the eve of his planned departure for Narvik, that
Tirpitz had arrived, completely unheralded by any sources,
at Trondheim on 24th October. Larsen sailed as scheduled on 26th
October having had barely 24 hours in which to re-jig his attack.
The sad outcome of this has already been related at this conference.
He was in the mould of the great Norse heroes. Another Leif Eiriksson.
Another Norwegian, no less brave, figured in the next
attacks on the Tirpitz. This was the SIS's man in Altafjord
- the famous Torstein Raaby who was to re-appear after the war
as radio operator on the Kon Tiki. After a refit in Trondheim
Tirpitz sailed again for the north in February 1943, her
departure having been reported by the ship-watcher in Trondheimsfjord.
Thereafter she lay in Altafjord while the next attack was planned.
This was to be by RN midget submarines, or X-craft, towed north
by six fleet submarines. This attack had also to be planned for
both Narvik and Trondheim in case Tirpitz moved. RAF photo
reconnaissance from north Russia kept watch on her, making sure
she didn't. I leave to your imagination the vast amount of all-source
intelligence needed for the planning. The operation succeeded
- though not fully. One of the X-craft had difficulty in getting
through the battleship's net enclosure and this hampered its attack.
What proved to be correct information about the depth of the net
enclosure had been provided by the British naval attaché
in Stockholm who had received it from 'young Norwegian resistance
men'. Goodness knows how they obtained it! But their information
was unfortunately, not to say scandalously, rejected by Admiralty's
boom-defence experts.
The first damage reports came from Raaby. They were the
first he sent. Thereafter both he and Ultra kept up a running
commentary on the repairs to the wounded battleship. In fact,
Raaby was to transmit daily for ten months. By this time, September
1943, I had been posted to HMS Duke of York as intelligence
staff officer to that great and much-loved Admiral of the Fleet,
Lord Fraser of North Cape, who on Boxing Day 1943 brought about
the destruction of Tirpitz's stable-mate, the Scharnhorst.
She had sailed into the Arctic night, reported only by Ultra,
on Christmas Day completely unaware of the presence of the Duke
of York. It is a proud thing for us all to know that a memorial
to the event, and to Bruce Fraser, now stands on Nordkapp. The
Norwegian fleet destroyer, HNMS Stord, played a notable
part in the battle.
In the spring of 1944 Raaby reported that Tirpitz
was once again fit to travel and a further attack was planned.
It was to be made in April by carrier aircraft of the Home Fleet
and they required intelligence of a different sort, notably about
anti-aircraft defences. Again it came from all sources and was
valuably supplemented by Raaby and PR from north Russia. All
this was put together by the excellent Inter-Service Topographical
Department in Oxford where many Norwegians were present to lend
realism to the intelligence. It had been set up in consequence
of the pitiful dearth of this sort of intelligence which had hampered
the British forces in Norway in 1940. The Duke of York
was present at the fly-off and nothing more beautiful, or professional,
could be imagined than the sight of the entire fleet racing into
the wind in Arctic sunshine against the backdrop of Norway's snow
caps.
The attack disabled Tirpitz for three months and
this time the navy had to depend entirely on Raaby for information
on the progress of repairs. Follow-up attacks were attempted by
the carriers for which Raaby, with utmost daring, transmitted
hourly weather reports. All were frustrated; and in July, Raaby
having by now been forced to flee into Sweden, another agent from
a safer place in Altafjord reported Tirpitz again on the
move. A further large-scale attack was planned and this time,
at my suggestion, we took Raaby with us in the Duke of York.
Alcohol meant no more to him than mother's milk: and my mess bill
soared.
This attack also failed and Tirpitz was finally
sunk off Tromsø by RAF Bomber Command. By this time intensified
attacks aimed at German merchant shipping in the Leads had been
in progress for over a year. Sadly, innocent Norwegian ships sometimes
suffered. These attacks were carried out by RAF Coastal Command,
carrier aircraft and submarines of the Home Fleet, and the Norwegian
motor torpedo boat flotilla based in the Shetlands. Again a large
intelligence effort was called for. These attacks had grown in
importance. Despite the fact that economic intelligence estimated
that ore shipments from Narvik had grown considerably during 1942-1943,
it was of the opinion that Germany was suffering from a grave
overall shortage of shipping in northern waters. This strain was
increased by the restrictions on shipping progressively imposed
by Sweden from 1943 and, after the Finnish armistice, by Germany's
having to withdraw her northern army through Skibotn and the Inner
Leads. The anti-shipping campaign was also intended to reinforce
Fortitude North, the Allies' pre - D-Day deception plan.
This succeeded in tying down a large force of U-boats in southern
Norway, while it was not until six months after D-Day that Germany
started to withdraw ground forces from Norway to other fronts.
These movements were reflected in Ultra and in reports from Norwegian
sources.
The anti-shipping campaign contributed materially to the
strategic weakening of Germany at this time. During 1944 economic
intelligence showed that sinkings were outstripping new construction,
while ore shipments declined from 40,000 tons in October 1943
to 12,000 tons in November 1944. Bombing of Norwegian ports assumed
high priority towards the end of 1944 when Ultra and PR showed
that the Germans intended to continue the U-boat war from Norway
after the evacuation of their French bases, now employing a new
type of ocean-going U-boat whose formidable characteristics were
disclosed by decrypts of Japanese messages from Berlin to Tokyo.
These revealed the high hopes pinned on these monsters by Hitler
and Dönitz and were among the reasons why some thought that
the Germans would continue the war from Norway after the collapse
of Germany. Intelligence in London, while lacking intelligence
either way of such an intention, confessed in March 1945 that
such a development could not be ruled out, but thought that any
resistance must be short-lived because of Germany's chronic shortage
of oil and of the difficulty of moving stocks of any description
to Norway. Of this there was, in any event, no evidence. Indeed
Ultra had shown that oil was being moved from Norway to Germany
to ease the shortage there. The Allied bombing of the huge concrete
shelters for the new U-boats in Bergen and Trondheim was most
regrettably accompanied by many Norwegian deaths. Ultra showed
that the start of the new Atlantic offensive, originally planned
for the autumn of 1944, was being progressively delayed, largely
because of the bombing of Germany by Bomber Command and its mining
of the Baltic, and the first of the new monster U-boats did not
sail from Bergen until a couple of days before Germany's capitulation.
She achieved nothing.
I will conclude, as I started, with scientific intelligence.
Our history describes the intelligence background to the famous
raids on Norsk Hydro's heavy water plant at Vemork, near Rjukan,
of which I can give you now only a compressed summary. In early
1942, when the feasibility of constructing an atomic bomb had
been accepted and work on a British one approved, nothing definite
was known of a German programme, or even if there was one. That
the Germans were in some way active in the nuclear research field
was known to Allied intelligence from, amongst other sources,
the testimony of Swedish scientists - and one Norwegian scientist
- having contacts with German scientists known to be interested
in nuclear research. This could, in any case, be safely conjectured
from SIS and Norwegian reports of mid-1942 that the Germans attached
importance to increasing the output of heavy water from Vemork.
Opinions differed among the Allies as to whether heavy water could
be used in making a viable military weapon within the likely time
span of the war. Given the lack of firm intelligence either way,
however, SOE was ordered in mid-1942 to plan the destruction of
Vemork.
Much information was collected from well-placed Norwegians;
but the attack by Combined Operations personnel of November 1942
ended, as is well-known, in dismal failure. There followed Joachim
Rønneberg's brilliant attack of February 1943. This time
Norwegian Army volunteers were employed backed by much fuller
information from PR, the Norwegian High Command and local SIS
sources. This destroyed several months' output of heavy water
and put the plant out of action. Further stocks were destroyed,
by a separate SOE action, while being moved to Germany.
In August 1943 SOE reported that small-scale production
had been re-started and in the light of this, and of other information
that the Germans were bent on restoring the position, Vermork
was finally razed to the ground by the US Air Force. Some have
claimed that this put an end to German attempts to produce an
atomic bomb. But the British had long thought that the Germans
were interested in heavy water for some other purpose - perhaps
for the production of fission weapons less than an atomic bomb
proper. Some Americans thought differently. In the end the British
were proved right. Just as well they were. Otherwise we might
not be here today.