DETECTION FROM THE AIR

New Zealand Listener, Volume 39, Issue 988, 25 July 1958, Page 14

DETECTION FROM THE AIR

EVIDENCE IN CAMERA, by Constance Bab- — Smith; Chatto & English price 18/-. | NSPECTING the R.A.F.’s_ photographic interpretation unit in 1940, George VI raised a laugh when he detected on a shelf some big folders marked-Wild Plans. Except for the unit’s founder, a buccaneering Australian named Sidney Cotton, and the exploits of its pilots, this was perhaps the only wild thing about Britain’s wartime photographic intelligence. The R.A.F. proved both its own maxim that an aerial photograph is not a picture but a precise document, and a pre-war prophecy by Germany’s General von Fritsch that the side with the best photo-reconais-sance would win the war. As a W.A.A.F. interpreter, Miss Babington Smith worked with the unit from its early days, specialising first in aircraft intelligence, and later in V weapon detection. For the latter she earned (from Churchill) the sobriquet "Miss Peenemunde." But this is more than a _ personal account; it is a popular history of the odd and rather intellectual unit which kept our military leaders informed of such matters as Germany’s invasion plans, the whereabouts of the Tirpitz, the extent of bomb damage inflicted, and the ominous progress of secret weapon development. I would like to have seen more about the highly illegal operations of Sidney Cotton — inventor, incidentally, of the "Sidcot" flying suit-between Munich and the outbreak of war. They were of a kind which leads, often enough, to a grey stone wall at dawn. The story, however, is bigger than any single person, and the author has rightly resisted such excursions. The book is agreeably well written and free from the irritating footnotes common nowadays even in popular war records, but perhaps its greatest interest

lies with a profuse interleaving of the most telling of aerial photographs. We begin to see why the cold-war factions infringe each other’s air-space, and why President Eisenhower insists that aerial inspection is virtually foolproof. Even a bad putt on Burning Tree golf course could hardly escape detection from the

air.

A.S.

F.