NAZI SECRETS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 September 1941, Page 6

NAZI SECRETS

PROBED BY ROYAL AIR FORCE PATROLS AT WORK. EVERY MOVE WATCHED. Though little is said in the official report's of work they do, the patrols of the Royal Air Force, carried on day after day in every kind of weather, supply the striking units of sea, land and air with the information to make their successes possible. Every move of the Germans is noted: troop concentrations, naval distributions, the shift of industries to socalled safe areas, fluctuations of traffic —all arc observed, frequently photographed and speedily reported. The R.A.F. patrols probe Germany’s secrets and many carefully guarded by the enemy have been revealed by expertly examined photographs. A pin-point may indicate the presence of new defences: a shadow may give a vital clue. When the Tirpitz, sister battleship to the Bismarck, was under construction its whereabouts were disclosed by a photograph in which nothing of the ship appeared except the reflection in the water of her superstructure. The , rest was hidden by dark shadow, but I it was known that 1 the reflected detail { could belong to no other ship. German efforts to hide the movement of the battered Scharnhorst from Brest were elaborate. Camouflage netting was spread over the vessel’s berth and to provide convincing shadows of the proper length two merchant ships were put in her place. But the patrols uncovered the secret —the shadows were just not right—and the Scharnhorst was- promptly discovered at sea. After she had been bombed at La Palaice, 250 miles- down the coast, the Germans were glad to sneak her back to the more heavily protected docks of Brest. The eyes of the R.A.F. found the Alt-

marck; they found the Bismarck before she left Norwegian waters on her last cruise; they spotted a pocketbattleship off the coast of Norway trying to sneak into the North Sea, and Beaufort torpedo boinbers scored at least one hit, and perhaps two, before she scrambled back to shelter. New aerodromes along the occupied coast are visited regularly and every indication of change in the scene is ! carefully examined. Only trained ob- | servers can detect the minute changes ■ \ which have taken place between re1 connaissance flights. Thus a photo- 1

graph which shows a few small white rings on the ground may mean that posts have recently been erected to carry cables for telephones or electricity. These cables may indicate the presence of large bodies” of troops. A certain loop in a railway line may mean that a battery of the heaviest guns, which run on railway lines, has been installed. Entire industrial areas have been mapped by aerial photogiaphs and it is possible to estimate the output from*these places by means of further pictures. Air-raid damage is measured through the. work of the R.A.F. patrols. From I a» pin point on a photograph, representing a hole in, a roof, the .extent of the damage within an industrial bulletin 0 ’ can be estimated and later confirmed by what subsequent patrol cameras discover. .It is through the accumulation of evidence from day-to-day patrols, examined by expert eyes, that vital inioimauion is gained and enemy secrets are uncovered. In other theatres of ie war similar patrols are working

and their harvest flows through appropriate channels to the central points to be sifted, co-ordinated and “referred for action.” . Behind all operations —sea, land or air—there 'is a mass of accumulated, information. It is carefully guarded, for it is essential that the enemy should not discover how much is known about him. Thus little of the discoveries made by the R.A.F. patrols reaches the public; thus every little while the public and the enemy are amazed by some apparently fortuitous circumstance leading to an Allied success. And the civilian soon begins to realise that outside the group of leaders to whom this information is available there is more wild guessing than sound forecasting.