Dangerous Cobwebs (11 February 1977)

Reference to the decoding activities at Bletchley Park has been made in the BBC’s series on “The Secret War.”  As a result, we are now clearer about what happened to our defence on the night Coventry was blitzed.  In particular, we know now that there was no question of Coventry having been deliberately left undefended in order that the enemy should not become aware we were cracking his codes.

The enemy was pinpointing his inland target towns at night by the radio beam system.  When our people discovered this, the answer was relatively simple.  We sent out signals of our own covering the same wavelengths.  These so interfered with the enemy’s signals that most of their pilots became confused.  They had to fall back on older, less effective means and the result was a random bombing of a general area instead of a blitz on a particular spot.  In our then general state of unpreparedness, this seems to have been the main protection of our inland towns rather than night fighters or ack-ack guns.

On the Coventry occasion, however, a fatal error was committed.  One of the enemy wavelengths was left uncovered.  Result:  disaster, almost irrespective of whether the town received adequate warning or not.

The latest story in the series at this time of writing has been about the degaussing of ships against magnetic mines.  Like the radio beams, the magnetic mine was another trick the enemy had up his sleeve and a very dangerous one.  The main answer, that of ringing ship’s hulls with cables carrying a counterforce, would seem crudely simple today, but it was not so obvious at the time until it was tested and found to work.

What I best remember about that affair was the hilarity when one newspaper was said to have come out with the heading:

Great Britain’s Naval Secret Girdle round the Queen Mary!

The Queen Mary rendered magnificent service during the war ferrying thousands of American troops across the Atlantic in quick time.  She was so fast and followed such unpredictable courses that she had no need of escorts.

This was a great advantage, the speed of a convoy being only that of its slowest ship.

Talking of secret weapons reminds me of a story that came out of Stoke Hammond maybe two years ago.  A man found an old solid shell in his garden and there was a suggestion, not his, that it might have been dropped from an enemy aircraft during the war.

What’s more, the RAF were reported to be coming to collect and examine it.

I did not see the object, but the printed description exactly fitted that of a perfectly ordinary solid anti-tank shell.  These missiles, fired from a special gun, were more penetrative than high explosive shells, which tended to bounce off armour before bursting.

However that might have been, I was tickled at the notion of an enemy aircraft bothering to come over poor old Stoke Hammond, dropping objects of that sort, presumably on the offchance of bonking the village constable or even the chairman of the parish council himself.

That reminds me of one secret air weapon that never was.  After Dunkirk and at the time of the Battle of Britain and the magnetic mines, ARP messages flowed thick and fast.  People were jumpy about what the enemy would be getting up to next.  I was in the ARP at the time and received the following message (I still have it, pasted in a scrapbook):

“Police station.  22/9/40.  Three reports received today of material like cobwebs dropped from aircraft.  This substance caused severe blisters on handling and should on no account be touched with the naked hands.  This information to be given to all ARP personnel.”

Dangerous cobwebs!  It takes some crediting in these comparatively carefree days of 1977.  But I don’t know whether the warning was ever rescinded, as I joined the army just a little later.  However, our control centre’s first warning of possible magnetic mines was received only four days earlier and they turned out to be only too real.