 | ||
 | | |
| | | | |
Part Nine
"One brainwave my father was proud of was the plastic explosive shaped like horse or cow dung. He described with relish that when the German Army in Italy began to wake up to the deception, he had them re-molded with a tyre track through them." Alistair Maskelyne
In this article we continue the assessment of Jasper Maskelyne's work for MI-9 and examine some of the strange devices and concealment methods used by the British SOE and the American OSS in the Second World War. As you may recall, in Part Seven, I questioned how far Jasper Maskelyne had been the actual originator of MI-9 devices such as the miniature button compasses or the silk maps. David Fisher's account in "The War Magician" ignored or overlooked the contribution of two important characters namely, Clayton Hutton and Charles Fraser-Smith. More of their unusual ideas will be considered in this article. "Official Secret", Clayton Hutton's own account, emphasizes that he was the prime mover behind many of these inventions. To meet the growing demand for these escape tools, Hutton painstakingly searched for skilled craftsmen who could accurately but discreetly manufacture them to his exacting specifications. For example, take the miniature compass : "Ordinary bar compasses, tunic button compasses, fly button compasses, collar stud compasses, 'threepenny-bit' compasses, every conceivable kind of miniature compass, first in thousands and later in millions came in a steadily increasing stream from the Old Kent factory as the war progressed." Frequently, Hutton would develop prototypes based on his own original ideas, but was also alert to other people's suggestions. For example, a friend realised that ordinary razor blades could be used as basic compasses : "It was undoubtedly a brilliant conception.Two of the most famous razor blade manufacturers in the country accepted our proposals without demur and magnetized their blades as a matter of course right through until the end of the war..." "Needless to say, we continued to produce our compasses in the factory. For one thing, they were more reliable than the magnetized razor blades; for another they were easier to conceal; then again they were altogether handier and less likely to attract attention than dangling oblongs of laminated steel." How useful were these concealed mini-compasses ? Hutton and Fraser-Smith present interesting anecdotal evidence to support their claim that such items proved to be very useful in enabling air crew to avoid capture and find escape routes from enemy territory. However, Alan Burgess' recent book , "The Longest Tunnel —The True Story of the Great Escape" (1990), describes how inmates frequently made their own compasses from makeshift material and were not necessarily dependent on MI-9's supplies. Indeed, the Official History of Stalag Luft 111 paid the following compliment : "The compass makers were so skilful at their work that the few real compasses brought in by newly shot-down air crew, and the small number smuggled in through secret channels, were quite superfluous. Five hundred were produced ready for the mass-escape in March 1944." Here, by the way, is the confined man's method for making a compass: 1/ Procure a magnet and keep stroking the razor blade in the same direction for several hours. 2/ Split the blade into thin segments. 3/ Melt fragments of plastic phonograph records and reshape into a suitable container to form a compass case. 4/ With a thread of hair, paint the points of the compass onto thin cardboard. 5/ Cut circles of glass from broken window panes. "Al (Hake) himself finally put together every compass. First he balanced the strip of razor blade on the point of a phonograph needle securely welded into the base of the bakelite case. Then he added the glass cover and sealed that in with a tiny drop of solder — we got those drops from the seals of every can of bully beef — and Al completed his masterpieces by stamping every one of them with the inscription 'Made in Stalag Luft III. Patent Pending' ." Sadly, Hake was one of the many who died in the brutal aftermath of the ' Great Escape'. Suffering from frostbite, he was captured a few days after the breakout and was ignominiously shot by the Nazis — a victim of Hitler's notorious reprisal against escaping POW's . Of the seventy-six men who 'escaped', only three successfully made the home run. Fifty of the escapees were executed. ___________________________________________________________________________ Another important and ingenious scheme co-ordinated by MI-9 was the smuggling of valuable items directly into the prison camps. From the outset, Hutton and his colleagues agreed never to tamper with Red Cross parcels, lest these genuine supplies were jeopardised. Instead, "We would hide our escape aids in parcels containing games, sports equipment, musical instruments, books and articles of clothing." Innocent looking items sent to entertain the POW's could be modified to contain hidden escape aids. This scheme, nicknamed Operation Post-box, was cleverly implemented. At first, only straightforward material was sent , to be followed by packages which , for the most part, were normal :"Somewhere, in a very small percentage of the total load, were concealed our escape devices. We employed a variety of hiding-places, carving out secret caches in the handles of table tennis bats, in chess men, and in the wooden frame of the board, in dominoes, in Indian clubs, in skittles, in cricket balls, in darts and in dart boards, in drum sticks and in the hammers of dulcimers." These ruses are quite fascinating. Hutton always seemed to come up with a new line of attack. For example, in one of his scams, he arranged for reading material to be sent to POW's — books whose covers had been rebound and now contained hidden maps and paper currency. Hutton also realised that gramophone records could be manufactured with a slight cavity in the centre section where the label was attached. Typically, he followed through with a cautionary subtlety : "in order not to offend the German taste in music, we carefully avoided reproducing the works of any Jewish composers, concentrating on Wagner and Beethoven" "Eventually the Germans tumbled to our trickery. Once the scheme was blown and we knew that the discs were being smashed on arrival at the camps by the enemy parcel censors, we abandoned that particular method of sending our maps and foreign currency." "The Germans found out what we were doing in every instance, but by the time they had blocked our pipeline, we'd already laid another. They were smart, but we were smarter." Clayton Hutton also describes how he invented an unusual escape pen, a fountain pen that contained a rubber ink bag with three partitions , one for brown dye, one for blue dye, and the third lowermost one for carrying normal ink. The dyes would be used by prisoners to change the colour of their uniforms so that they would resemble civilian dress. "I finished up by transforming it into a veritable escaping kit. The filling lever, the clip and the nib were all magnetised and would swing north when suspended on a piece of thread; one of our 'baby' compasses was inside the top of the cap and another lay under the bag of dyes, fitting snugly inside the barrel. There was even enough space below the bag for a few aspirin and benzedrine tablets. And my crowning achievement was to devise a dummy barrel, fractionally larger than the genuine article, so that one of my silk or paper maps could be secreted between the inner and outer cylinders." According to Fraser-Smith's memoirs, it was actually Fraser-Smith, at Clayton Hutton's request, who devised the special fountain pen or 'Q' pen. Fraser-Smith found a designer from a leading pen company who could modify the insides of their standard fountain pen. Fraser-Smith claims credit for shortening the rubber sac. "My idea had been to secrete a paper-thin map printed on the finest tissue in the aperture thus won from the sac." Another coup was producing a miniature wireless , the size of a cigarette packet, based on the latest technology from America. In the days before transistors, the technicians had to rely on miniature valves. Fraser-Smith claims he was closely involved in this project. A further snag was finding suitable long-lasting miniature batteries, so commonplace today, but a rarity in the 1940s. Hutton and Fraser-Smith also independently take credit for disguising a miniature camera (the famous Minox brand) as a cigarette lighter. Hutton described it glowingly (excuse the pun) as "a miracle of craftsmanship. It was even fitted with an extending viewfinder, which enabled the photographer to focus on his subject whilst still holding the flame to his cigarette." Charles Fraser-Smith's memoirs include many interesting examples of 'Q' gadgets, such as a special hairbrush with a secret cavity (similar to Maskelyne's shoe polish brush) and a special smoker's pipe with an asbestos lined bowl that could hide a compass and a map. He also designed maps printed on handkerchiefs with invisible ink. One version of the handkerchief became visible only after it had been urinated on. Further reading revealed to me that America had an equivalent organisation to MI-9 called MIS-X. Unfortunately, the official files on MIS-X were deliberately destroyed after the war. In 1990, Lloyd Shoemaker wrote a history of the organisation based on his own wartime experiences with MIS-X and on information he rediscovered in misplaced files. MIS-X copied many of MI-9's ideas but sometimes gave them an American spin, e.g. manufacturing special baseballs that contained hidden items. I found particularly interesting Shoemaker's secret meeting with the manager of the U.S. Playing Card Company in 1944. As many magicians realise, this famous company, based in Cincinnati, manufactures a range of playing cards , including the popular Bicycle design. Shoemaker brought along specimen silk maps that had been specially created by the John Waddington Company of England for MI-9. Interestingly, according to Shoemaker, the Waddington company was adept at this unusual printing technique because of previous experience making opera programs in silk for the Royal family. Shoemaker asked if the American company could print similar maps and insert them inside playing cards. The reconstructed response was as follows :"We print , in a block, fifty-two cards, two jokers, and two company logo cards. Without going through the entire process, let's just print your map on the interior side of a block. We can work up a soft adhesive that will let the card be peeled easily. We will run the block through the cutter in the normal fashion, and we can put a pull-away gummed sticker on the boxes with a number to correspond to the map number inside the box." These special sets of cards were then mailed by a roundabout route to American POW's. An unusual wartime document has been reprinted by H. Keith Melton which details secret weapons used by the American OSS during World War Two. Many of the items were provided by the British SOE. These unorthodox weapons included the En-Pen, a . 22 calibre pocket pen designed to be fired at close range. Other cunning 'Q' weapons were the .22 calibre cigarette, the pipe pistol, the cigar pistol, a reloadable Dart-Pen , and a longer range Air-Pen. I mention these unusual gadgets because they appear to be of similar design to the gimmicked fountain pen devised by Jasper Maskelyne. According to "Magic-Top Secret", Maskelyne's device could write like a normal pen but also contained a tear-gas shell. Maskelyne is also given credit for inventing a compact chrome coated chainsaw blade that could masquerade as part of a watch band or identity disc. He also devised inconspicuous ways of concealing special escape tools within clothing. Foot and Langley record that one of Maskelyne's devices was used by the British intelligence agent Nussbacher in Yugoslavia to effect a remarkable train escape.When the Budapest network was betrayed by an informer, Nussbacher was arrested as a Jew but managed to hide the fact that he had been parachuted in by the British. After time in a labour camp, he was eventually sent by cattle truck to a death camp: "Nussbacher had not been trained by Maskelyne for nothing. he had still got an escape file secreted about his clothing. With it he cut a panel out of his truck after dark and bolted, as did everybody else." In "Magic - Top Secret ", Maskelyne is further credited with inventing rice paper maps that could be eaten in an emergency. Fraser-Smith appears to have worked along similar lines: "I could supply a completely edible paper, tough but palatable, so that a suspect or accosted agent could make a meal of his notes, swallowing them after a few quick bites. Rice paper made this possible..." Fraser-Smith also claims there was a second method (which magicians would be familiar with):"We developed a flash paper which when ignited simply disappeared without trace. No smoke or ash. I believe the secret was to implant magnesium in the paper's fabric, but exactly how it was done and what other ingredients were used I have no idea. What I do know is that we supplied literally tons of both rice and flash papers during the war." Hutton also devised a wonderful utility escape knife for MI-9. Foot and Langley describe it as "Hutton's masterpiece...based on the ordinary boy's pocket knife, but elaborated: besides a strong blade and a screwdriver it included three saws, a lock-forcing tool, and a small but efficient wire-cutter." The SOE also produced an ingenious Lockpick Knife which looked like an ordinary penknife but held five lockpicking tools. Houdini, I believe, carried a similar utility knife at the turn of the century. The same wartime document includes details of ' explosive coal ' which Maskelyne is said to have worked with. (The Germans also experimented with this trick. A group of German spies, caught entering the American mainland by boat , were found to be smuggling in bombs camouflaged as coal. ) In Chapter Ten of "Trojan Horses", Private Chuck Jones recounts his strange experiences as a sabotage specialist. Originally recruited because of his alleged expertise at plastery, Jones conveniently forgot to tell his superiors that he was really a painter by trade, not a plasterer. Improvising wildly , Private Jones quickly read up on the basics of plastering in, of all places, an Alexandrian library. This only took him so far. An army instructor then took him over the fundamentals. Having reached a satisfactory standard, Jones was given his first task : to manufacture fake coal containing deadly explosives. Jones learned how to make up two halves of a plaster mould and then pour liquid explosive inside. As a final touch he painted the plaster matt black. He later learned that the plaster shell would last longer if isinglass, a type of gelatine, were added. One of Jones' resistance contacts worked at a German fuel depot in Greece, but was subjected to a careful search on entering. Jones developed a special device — a replica workman's hammer, made from papier maché, reinforced with a metal ruler, and packed with plastic explosive and a timer pencil. The workman simply left the replica hammer inside the depot. The fuel dump was subsequently destroyed. Another contact worked as a cleaner in a German military base. Jones produced an opaque light bulb filled with explosive and lead shot. The detonator was triggered when the victim turned the light on. Jones also worked on fake railway joints or 'fishplates' , primed to derail enemy trains. Stranger than all of the above was explosive excrement — when the shit really could hit the fan ! Jones' speciality was fake donkey and camel excrement : "I realised that if anyone is driving for hours in the desert it gets so bloody monotonous, if he sees a pile of dung ahead, he'll drive through it — just for something different. So I came to the conclusion that if we made dummy dung and put in a tyrebuster, a small charge with a metal pin in, we could blow the whole bloody wheel off a German vehicle." In a separate reference, I came across another unusual character , Carleton Coon , an eccentric anthropologist, trained by the SOE and employed as an agent for the OSS. Coon was famous for his disappearing donkey act : "A compliant and unsuspecting donkey would be loaded with a timing device and a whopping seventy-five pounds of the new plastic explosive, "composition C'. A child would tether this trojan horse to the nearest tent full of German officers and then quietly slip away. At the preordained moment, donkey, tent, and the Wermacht's best and brightest would all disappear in a thunderous explosion and terrible flash of light. Or so it was hoped." One of Coon's first missions was to examine and collect samples of rocks from the roads in French Morocco, as part of a plan to plant camouflaged explosives in case of a German invasion. "We discovered that there were very few stones along the roads, but that mule turds were to be found in great abundance." These turds were "large enough for our purpose, uniform in size, and fat and greenish brown." Coon returned to Tangiers with these unusual samples which were carefully sent to England by priority diplomatic mail."We took care to explain that the full, rich horse dung of the British countryside would not do in Morocco; it was the more watery, smaller-bunned mule type that would pass there without suspicion." The technicians manufactured plastic replicas matching the North African turds. This , dare I say , anal-retentive attention to detail is impressive. | |||||
| |||||
_______________________________________________________________________ Although the evidence from other sources indicate that both Hutton and Fraser-Smith played important roles, and although the record may not be clear on who first invented what, it seems reasonable to conclude that Jasper Maskleyne , along with many unsung heroes, was closely involved with MI- 9. A simple comparison of the texts indicate that Fisher's references to the spy devices developed by Jasper Maskelyne ( "The War Magician", pages 139 -141) have been largely taken from the earlier publication ("Magic - Top Secret", pages 146 - 149). Given the existence of the independent material discussed in this article, I would happily concede that "Magic-Top Secret", in some sections , contains interesting gems of information that are not merely the product of a ghostwriter's fantasy. For example, the earlier book refers to such classic items as miniature compasses, hidden hacksaws, edible maps, tiny radio sets, booby-trapped rats, and explosive coal.
The final words in this article are taken from Alistair Maskelyne's most recent letter: After serving with the NZSCo in 1944 and 1945, Alistair returned to London after the war. "My return coincided with that of my father. He had arrived with a large quantity of semi secret materials from the far east. The hall of our house in Kensington was crowded with three or four large war department boxes, containing all manner of things such are described in the various books about evasion and escape. There were almost bales of silk maps, pocket sized radios, long before the advent of the transistor : these things had miniature valves, the type only seen by me before in our radar installation at sea. There were small arms, I remember Beretta hand guns, and cameras, upon which I gloated. Although the destination of this material was the War Office, or one of its divisions, my father had a fairly cavalier attitude to its disposal, and he invited me to take my choice of the cameras. I could hardly refuse, although I was well aware all this was Government property. Eventually, I selected a German Contax 2, with an F2 Sonnar lens. I retain a picture of myself with this camera around my neck, taken in Sydney harbour, as we sailed in from England..."
| |||||
| |||||
| |||||
| | | | | |