Jack Blackburn at The Times in London
offer a piece that reveals the orders issued to the WWII British intelligence
group 30 Assault Unit for the D- Day invasion by Royal Navy Commander Ian
Fleming, the future creator of James Bond (seen in the above photo at Royal
Naval Intelligence HQ).
You can read the
piece via the below link or the below text:
Revealed: Ian Fleming’s orders to D-Day spies (thetimes.com)
When troops
landed on D-Day, some had an ulterior mission. Most were aimed at liberating
nearby settlements but GCHQ has uncovered orders issued by the creator of 007
to a covert commando.
The listening service’s historians have found and released the
orders that Ian Fleming — who would go on to write the James Bond thrillers —
signed and issued to 30 Assault Unit, the covert unit he established to conduct
intelligence operations during the Second World War.
In a highly detailed briefing, Fleming directed the
men to go to various locations in France and elsewhere to find
“items of immediate operational importance in the prosecution of the war
against Germany”. These items included material relating to the Enigma code.
There was also a note about “new weapons or devices” that the Germans might have been developing. The desired intelligence items are listed as sufficiently important that they justified special operations and casualties.
The documents are testament
to the thoroughness of British intelligence-gathering. At some points, the men
are directed to individual rooms or even objects where the sensitive material
was expected to be found.
For instance, one document tells the men: “It is reported that
the secret books are kept in a light metal chest in an office in the [U-boat]
pens: the door is marked only with the name ‘Oberschreibersmaat Fritz Frank’
without reference to his employment.”
In the Second World War, the role of 30AU (or Number 30
Commando) was to go ahead of the Allied forces and then behind enemy lines.
Throughout the conflict, they performed vital work in different theatres of war
in securing Nazi codebooks, ciphers and battle orders.
On D-Day,
they landed on Juno and Utah beaches and proceeded inland; five were killed and
20 were wounded near Sainte-Mère-Église. It had been known that one of their
targets was a radar station at Douvres-la-Délivrande, which held out for 11
days. The commandos were also charged with examining suspected V1 rocket sites.
However, it now appears that they may have had many more targets.
The documents, marked “Top Secret” and
“Bigot” (British invasion of German occupied territories), say that the men are
to gather “All code books, cyphers and documents relating to signals, radar and
communications: the ‘spools’ [wheels], junction boxes and indications of
settings used in connection with the German ‘ENIGMA’ cyphering machines.”
The targets are listed in numerous French sea and river ports,
such as Nantes, Bordeaux, Boulogne and Dunkirk, as well as targets in other
countries along the north European coast. How far they got with this
list is not clear. It is known that they took part in the liberation of
Cherbourg in June before racing toward the ports at Rennes and Brest in August.
They then executed a series of operations in Le Havre and Dieppe. All those
places appear on the list, and perhaps yielded vital intelligence for later in
the war.
Whether the intelligence was as pinpoint accurate as it appeared
remains to be seen, and it seems that Fleming and his colleagues had their
doubts. They said the intelligence should be graded no higher than C, making it
fairly reliable. The report is dated April 15, 1944, but there was a hope that
corroboration would occur during the invasion
“Interrogation of prisoners in the field and up-to-date aerial photographs will probably be the only reliable cross-checks,” it said.
Note: You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine
piece on Ian Fleming and the 30 Assault Unit via the below link:
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