Spying on V2: Schwarz-Kappelle, Sandys, Hitler

[Steelhead]

This from a book that belongs on the desk of every decoder of Gravity's
Rainbow, Anthony Cave-Brown's remarkable history of Allied intelligence
operations during WW II, A Bodyguard of Lies:

"...with shocking suddenness, a new element began to intrude on the
preparations for D-Day. For all the excellence of Allied intelligence, the
"Far Shore"--as the invasion beaches were called in conference, for
security reasons--was a mystery to the Overlord planners. It lay across the
channel like some Lorelei, beckoning but menacing; for most of the Martians
were convinced that Hitler was keeping some secret weapon for employment on
D-Day, a device that would shatter the sea and air fleets and cut down the
invaders in great writhing mounds. No one knew what this weapon might be,
but few doubted that Hitler had one--or more. The gunrooms of Europe echoed
with debates about what they were, and every prediction was made from
long-range rockets to lethal rays and "radioactive dust." Speculation grew
until it bordered on an actual neurosis, and Hitler cleverly fed that
neurosis with all manner of rumors and deceptions until his secret weapons
became a scare to rank with Scalion and the Spanish Armada.

"Allied fears deepened when Hitler used a rash of wireless-controlled,
rocket-propelled bombs against the invasion fleet at Salerno; and then his
new HS293 wireless-controlled glider bombs began to take a heavy toll of
Allied ships in the Mediterranean. Even more unsettling was the sudden
appearance of vast concrete installations at a number of little villages
along the Channel coast in the Pas de Calais. Apparently these
encrustations housed some form of long-range artillery capable not only of
bringing new devastation to English cities but also of causing great damage
to the enormous concentrations of Allied shipping and material that would
assemble in southern England for D-Day. But what would their warheads
carry: explosives, glider or rocket bombs, some instrument of chemical or
bacteriological warfare, the atomic bomb? MI-6 and SOE strained every
channel of information to find out what these secret weapons were, where
they were manufactured, where they were emplaced, and how they could be
destroyed.

"As it happened, MI-6 and the Allied high commanders already knew something
about two of Hitler's secret weapons--the V1 and V2 rockets. The
intelligence attack by MI-6 on the German missile program had begun on
March 22, 1943, when two generals of the Afrika Korps, Thoma and Cruewell,
met for the first time since their capture in the "London Cage," a mansion
in Kensington Palace Gardens where the British interrogated high-ranking
German prisoners. Until that time, MI-6 only suspected that the Wehrmacht
was developing such weapons, a suspicion in which the Oslo Report had
played a key part. Although other revelations in the report had been proved
true, there was a tendency at Broadway to believe that it and several other
reports of missile research and development were attempts by the Germans to
send the intelligence and aerial reconnaissance services off on wild,
expensive, time-consuming chases for mares' nests. But when the two
generals met and began to talk, in a room that was wired to record their
conversation, that belief ended. For Thoma "expressed surprise that London
was not yet in ruins from a rocket bombardment," and described what he had
seen when he visited a firing range in Germany where giant rockets were
being tested...

"[Churchill] was advised that a single investigator should be appointed to
head the intelligence attack. He should be, they suggested, a man with the
authority to be able to call upon such members of the scientific and
intelligence communities as appropriate. Churchill agreed and nominated as
the investigator his son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, the Joint Parliamentary
Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, a product of Eton and Magdalen
College, Oxford, of the Diplomatic Service, and a young Establishment
figure who had commanded Britain's first anti-aircraft rocket regimen.

"Under Sandys, the investigation intensified, particularly in the field of
aerial reconnaissance. Information about the German rocket program began to
flood in, much of it concerning activities in Peenemunde, on a small island
in the Baltic. Agents were infiltrated into the area and Peenemunde was
photographed from the air, but it was still thought possible that the
installation was a hoax until a clever piece of scientific deduction--and
ULTRA--revealed otherwise. A clerk in the German Air Ministry sent revised
instructions for applying for petrol coupons to all German experimental
stations, listing them on the circular in the order of their importance.
Peenemunde was at the top of the list, and when the circular fell into the
hands of [agent] RV Jones, as he would write, "The petrol instruction, to
my mind, finished the case. They showed that Peenemunde was genuine.."

"Another piece of corroborative evidence was provided by ULTRA. Jones
believed that the Germans would use radar to plot the experimental flights
of their test rockets, and he altered the cryptoanalysts at Bletchley to
look for any signals to indicate that German radar companies were being
moved up to the Baltic coast. Such a signal was soon forthcoming. Moreover,
the company which began to track the missiles broadcast its plots in a
simple code that was also intercepted. From those intercepts Jones was able
both to pinpoint the location of the launch sites and to obtain detailed
information on the performance of the missiles themselves.

"Intelligence gathered from other sources provided more information about
where German missiles were being manufactured, and the purpose of the
peculiar installations in the Pas de Calais. Then came the Lisbon Report
and all the pieces of the puzzle began to fit together. Although it has
never been revealed who handed the report to the MI-6 station chief at
Lisbon, its source was almost surely Captain Ludwig Gehre, an officer of
the Abwehr and a prominent member of the Schwarze-Kapelle. It was a
document of immense value to the Allies, for it described Hitler's
V-weapons program in some detail and reported that:

"'Hitler and members of his cabinet recently inspected both weapons [the V1
and V2] at Peenemunde. About 10th June, Hitler told assembled military
leaders that the Germans had only to hold out, since by the end of 1943
London would be leveled to the ground and Britain forced to capitulate.
October 20th is at present fixed as Zero Day for rocket attacks to begin.
Hitler ordered the construction of 30,000 A-4 projectiles by that day; this
is, however, beyond the bounds of possibility. Production of weapons is to
have first priority and 1500 skilled workers have been transferred to this
work from anti-aircraft and artillery production.'"