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Part Seventeen
This article covers several miscellaneous topics.
JASPER MASKLEYNE THWARTS NAZI A-BOMB PROJECT ?
"But perhaps most intriguing is a photograph that appears in his personal wartime album, of a miniature submarine hooked onto the bottom of the hull of a larger ship. "This is the submarine we used to torpedo the German ship carrying the 'heavy water' needed for the creation of atomic weapons from Scandinavia to Germany, " reads the handwritten caption. A large X appears at the top of the page. No other information regarding this submarine is available." David Fisher's Epilogue to The War Magician
This quotation is of interest because it indirectly confirms Alistair Maskelyne's earlier claim that Fisher gained access to his father's wartime album. (This is the album that after Jasper's death in 1973 was given to Jasper's older brother Noel. Alistair says it was borrowed by Fisher and never returned. Brian McCullagh informed me John Salisse, a Maskelyne authority in England, has also complained that Fisher failed to return certain documents taken from his private collection. ) Furthermore, Fisher seems to be asserting that Maskelyne was involved in important clandestine operations in Scandinavia. This is surely misleading. The recognised accounts of Special Operations Executive (SOE) sabotage activity do not mention the use of a special submarine in the sinking of the heavy water consignment. SOE did construct a Welman one-man sub which carried a large explosive charge. The front section holding the charge could be attached magnetically to the underside of an enemy ship's hull. A photograph of this special submarine appears in J. Ladd and K. Melton's 'Clandestine Warfare': "The only record of operational missions by Welman pilots relates to a raid on Bergen in 1944. A team of Norwegians with both these craft and the submersible canoes, infiltrated onto the south coast of Norway in a fishing boat towing the Welman craft. There is no firm evidence that they managed to place charges on or under any craft in the harbour, and in all probability this daring team were drowned." Cruikshank also provides the following information about a failed sabotage mission: "An attack against a floating dock on Bergen harbour in November 1943 by four Welman one-man submarines failed." The first submarine was spotted and attacked by a German minesweeper. The diver was picked up and taken prisoner. The other three saboteurs aborted their mission and returned to their transport ship. On the information available, I am unsure if these extracts are discrepant accounts of the same mission or separate accounts of two different missions. SOE historian M.R.D. Foot, probably with access to the same sources, makes the following comment about the value of the Welman sub : "Unhappily, like so many of SOE's inventions, this one does not seem ever to have been of much use...One or two attempts were made to use it in Norwegian waters, but it does not appear that it ever actually sank anything." Update (October 2004): Boyce and Everett's , SOE the Scientific Secrets(2003) gives details of the November 1943 Bergen raid and how it went wrong. Cruikshank's description of the mission is more or less correct. Ladd and Melton's account appears to be in error. In contrast, the actual raid against the heavy water installation has been well documented. The first SOE raid occurred almost a year before these other operations: In February 1943, an SOE sabotage team successfully penetrated the Norsk Hydro plant and set off charges. In a follow-up mission in February 21st, 1944 the ferry carrying the remaining supplies of heavy water was blown up while crossing the lake. The mines were planted by resistance fighters. The ship was not torpedoed. There is absolutely no mention of the use of a miniature submarine in the recognised accounts. In any case, the Welman mini-submarine was not designed to carry torpedoes. Let me offer an alternative explanation to Fisher's. When Maskelyne wrote in his album —"This is the submarine we used to torpedo the German ship carrying the 'heavy water' needed for the creation of atomic weapons from Scandinavia to Germany " — the 'we' might simply mean the organisation he was associated with (ie, SOE) and does not necessarily mean Maskelyne was directly involved. The sentence overall is misleading and inaccurate. Yes, it is true that a special mini-sub was developed by SOE. Yes, this mini-sub was used in Norwegian waters . Yes, the SOE helped organise the sabotage of the heavy water plant. Yes, the ship carrying the heavy water was sunk. Maskelyne's handwritten note , which combines these separate incidents, leaves itself open to misinterpretation. Perhaps Maskelyne was deliberately exaggerating his involvement. Alternatively, he might not have known the precise details of these missions and was making a forgivable error in his annotation.
MASKELYNE & THE DOUBLE CROSS SYSTEM ?
Fraser-Smith claims that Maskelyne was involved in an important operation which made use of the double-agent ZigZag. According to Fraser-Smith, the Germans recruited an English criminal from a Channel Island jail and sent him as a saboteur to England in December 1942. Unknown to the German controllers, the safecracker, codenamed ZigZag (ZZ), surrendered to the British authorities and was quickly incorporated into the Double Cross (XX) system. One of his first tasks to impress his German backers was the sabotage of the valuable de Havilland aircraft plant at Hatfield : "It was at this highly tricky moment that Maskelyne was called in and a scheme devised. In one of the three factories being used he built papier-mâché dummies to look like pieces of broken generators. These were strewn with smashed bricks, blocks of concrete and other rubble around the powerhouse. A big relief canvas was made to cover the whole plant, painted to look from the air as if the place had been blown to Kingdom Come. ZZ then radioed to Germany; "Mission accomplished." The following day, a German plane reconnoitred and photographed the damaged plant, or rather Maskelyne's masterpiece. The double-agent safe-breaker received a warm signal of praise from his German instructors. ZZ became a most useful man to XX." Those who have read my previous articles will remember that I am sceptical of Fraser-Smith's Maskelyne anecdotes. I suspect that Fraser-Smith's literary collaborators frequently juiced up the text with inaccurate secondary sources. Where did Fraser-Smith or his ghost-writers dig up this incident ? Does 'Maskelyne's masterpiece' have any historic foundation or is it another amusing tale with little substance? Recently, I found what appears to be the source of this story, namely, the late J.C. Masterman himself, who wrote the espionage classic, "The Double Cross System", immediately after the war. (It wasn’t published until 1972 for censorship reasons.) Significantly, Masterman discusses ZigZag but makes no mention of Maskelyne. ZigZag was "a criminal who had been imprisoned in Jersey for safe-blowing and similar activities". Recruited by the Germans, ZigZag" offered his services to them in order, as he alleged, to escape to this country (England)."... "The tasks set him were first and foremost to sabotage the de Havilland works at Hatfield where Mosquito light bombers were made...He was promised 15,000 pounds for the de Havilland sabotage." Masterman later adds : "ZIGZAG started the year (1943) with his operation at the de Havilland works. Here on the night of 29 January camouflage experts made suitable arrangements for us, and aerial photographs gave a convincing picture of a considerable explosion. Reports from ZIGZAG and notices in the press seemed to convince the Germans of the success of the operation..." The double agent ZigZag certainly existed and the de Havilland operation appears to be authentic. However, it is not clear that Maskelyne himself was one of the camouflage experts involved in this deception exercise. It is unlikely that Maskelyne was able to arrange a transfer back to England so quickly after El Alamein (November 1942). The de Havilland plant operation receives no mention in "Magic-Top Secret". It is more likely that Maskelyne remained in the Mediterranean and Italian theatre throughout 1943. Maskelyne's so-called masterpiece of camouflage appears to be yet another example of wishful misattribution. Truth has again been zig-zagged.
FIREPROOF PASTE During his posting to the Middle East, Jasper Maskelyne evidently tried to devise an inexpensive low-tech form of fireproof paste. His experiments are recorded in both "Magic - Top Secret" and "The War Magician". Indeed, "Magic Top-Secret" includes a dramatic full page photograph with the following caption: "Magician's Fire Trick: Major Maskelyne with his head through the wing of a blazing bomber loaded with petrol." A reference to fire-resistant paste also occurs in the much earlier book attributed to Jasper Maskelyne, "White Magic" , an allegedly ghost-written account of the Maskelyne dynasty which may have been compiled by the same writer who later wrote "Magic-Top Secret": During the First World War,“...there came a request from the Admiralty seeking the secret of our fire-immunity. The formula we use is one whose details have never been divulged to the world, so I cannot publish it now....When my father told our secret formula to the Admiralty chemists, they tested it thoroughly and were astounded at its efficacy. It was finally served out to the naval gunners. When these men had pasted up their hands and faces with the preparation, they found they could fire the great guns incredibly quickly, undamaged either by the flames from the breech or the almost red-hot metal itself.” "Magic-Top Secret" is similarly coy about the secret formula: "An illusionist is about to walk on and perform a fire trick, putting a red-hot poker into his mouth and closing his lips on the glowing metal. You look for a deception, but there is none. The poker is really red-hot and he will really put it into his mouth and lick it. The secret is that the inside of his mouth, and his lips, are first coated with a secret fire-resisting paste. I will not tell you exactly how this paste is made up, because I do not want children to try to manufacture it and then perhaps do themselves an injury. it costs only a few pence a gallon. In great heat, the paste crusts, sealing its own surface. For three or four minutes, until the layer of paste has been vaporised away, the skin of the wearer is protected from the hottest flame or from injury when in contact with red-hot metal." Fisher 's account of the firepaste incident is closely based on "Magic-Top Secret" : "His father had supplied such a cream, or paste, to the Admiralty back in '16 to protect ships' gunners of the Grand Fleet from searing flashbacks. This time , he believed, it could be used in airplanes to give crew and passengers a vital few minutes' protection from fire..." "The paste itself was similar to that used by carnival fire-eaters. It was a mixture of ordinary carbolic soap, asbestos powder or common whitening, water, and a few minor but absolutely essential ingredients. The result was a thick white paste that crusted under intense heat, thus providing complete protection from fire until it vaporised, usually after three or four minutes." During the test, the man in the asbestos clothing, who was meant to rescue Maskelyne if things went wrong, was himself overwhelmed by the intense heat and had to be assisted by Maskelyne. Alistair Maskelyne remembers receiving a letter from his father about this incident : "At the time of the Western desert campaign I and my family were continually kept informed by letter from my father about his unusual Army exploits. Pictures were received of the tank and truck camouflage rouses. His very brave demonstration of the old stage fire-resistant cream, when he walked into stacks of straw soaked in av-gas and set alight, while covered in sacking plastered with the cream, and then had to rescue the accompanying asbestos suited fire officer who was there to protect him , was an engrossing subject for a teenaged son." As an outsider to such stage secrets, I was surprised that such a simple formula could provide sufficient protection. How could the fragile crust resist the penetrating power of radiated heat? Perhaps someone with a better understanding of chemistry could enlighten me on this point. Presumably, such a concoction would now be deemed carcinogenic. Direct contact with even white asbestos is apparently dangerous to long term health. Nevertheless, from the photographic evidence, the paste seems to have been very effective, even though temporary. James Randi in his recent history of Conjuring (1992) has challenged the accuracy of an earlier formula given for fire acts: "An interesting book titled White Magic was written by Jasper Maskelyne who proved himself somewhat naive on some matters.... Describing a fire-eating act (he called it "fire-swallowing") he declared that in order to do it "the tongue is coated with powdered sugar and soap before the performance , when it becomes perfectly insensible to heat." Don't try it. It's not only very very nasty tasting, but it doesn't work and don't use the formula that Jasper gave for climbing up a ladder of sharp swords. "The secret is really simple. The performer first bathes his feet in strong alum solution , to which zinc sulphate is added...They will then resist almost any cutting edge." The mind boggles at such naivety, especially from someone who should know better. Much better." Randi is not aware that "White Magic" may have been ghost-written. His criticisms probably reveal the limited knowledge of the ghost-writer rather than of Jasper Maskelyne himself. It should be noted that Randi makes no comment on the more significant formula which made up the fire-resistant paste.
SIGHTINGS
David Smiley , a war combatant who worked for the SOE, published his own memoirs in 1994 entitled "Irregular Regular". Between January 1st and April 11th , 1943, he was based at SOE headquarters in Cairo, receiving specialised training in preparation for a covert mission to Albania. Of great interest is his reference to Jasper Maskelyne: "We did a final course in escaping which was taught by Captain Jasper Maskelyne, a peace-time conjuror. He equipped us with various silk maps for sewing into our clothes and a number of magnetic items which would all point north - such as compasses in buttons, pencil clips and even magnetic fly buttons. We also carried gold sovereigns sewn into our trouser turn-ups and our badges of rank were specially made of 24-carat gold." After months of surviving the unpredictable perils of Albania, Smiley was anxious to return to safer territory. Taking refuge in a cave near the sea, a hiding place "infested with lice and goat droppings", Smiley survived by eating meat from a dead mule and by drinking rainwater. He persevered with his nightime signalling and was eventually picked up by a British Motor Torpedo boat in November 1943 and shipped across the Adriatic to Bari. "Here a personal disaster overtook me. While I was soaking in a carbolic bath, some bright spark removed all my clothes and burnt them. I was furious, for I was devoted to my tailor-made corduroy trousers, which furthermore had sovereigns sewn into the turn-ups, and my uniform jacket was riddled with sewn-in maps and other escaping kit. Even my Household Cavalry captain's stars were made of 24-carat gold."
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