The Hornet's Sting_ The Amazing Untold Story of World War II Spy Thomas Sneum - Mark Ryan [156]
Duus Hansen duly sent the films to Turnbull, who was able to say later:
In the end it was me, it was my office, that was able to send over the V1 intelligence, of course obtained by the people with whom I had insisted we must have good relations, which was Danish Intelligence. I sent the films on to Britain undeveloped. That was of supreme importance to the war effort and in London it was quickly distributed to the correct people.
Just how grateful those people—including R.V. Jones of British Scientific Intelligence—were could be gathered from the congratulatory message Duus Hansen received from SOE on 27 August: ‘Please tell Bannock [Hasager Christiansen and his colleagues on Bornholm] that Hannibal is delighted with the vast amount of intelligence material that they have been able to send. It is greatly appreciated by all departments concerned.’
In his book Most Secret War, R.V. Jones correctly hailed Hasager Christiansen as the true hero of the hour, particularly since he was arrested by the Germans and tortured for months before being rescued and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Indeed, it will be recalled that Christiansen’s name followed immediately after Tommy Sneum’s in the dedication Jones penned to the great spies of the Second World War. Jones revealed that he received ‘three independent sets of copies’ of Christiansen’s photos, ‘and it seemed that someone was determined that the information should reach us.’
One of those determined men was Duus Hansen, and his importance as intermediary and coordinator in securing and delivering the V-rocket intelligence which saved many lives in London cannot be overestimated. At the same time, it should be remembered who recruited Duus Hansen for the British in the first place—Tommy Sneum.
What happened next is more widely known, and well put by the historian E. H. Cookridge in his book Inside SOE:
On this occasion rivalry in London was forgotten and the vital information from Denmark was shared by all the secret departments and submitted to Churchill and the Allied Chiefs of Staff. German V-1 rocket operations began in June 1944, but Hitler’s plan to ‘plaster London with 5,000 V-rockets every day’ was never fulfilled. RAF and American aircraft carried out the famous raids on Peenemunde; on August 18 the heaviest Anglo-American raid ever concentrated on a single target almost completely destroyed the research station. Many thousand V-1 and V-2 rockets had been manufactured and were launched, but the elimination of Peenemunde, together with the heavy bombing of Bornholm and the French and Dutch rocket ramps, broke the back of Hitler’s vengeful offensive.
In a sense, though, the most crucial element in the defense of Britain against the V-rockets had been accomplished a year before that raid, at the end of August 1943. Perhaps by coincidence, perhaps not, Tommy was stood down in early September: ‘One day Mitchell came to me and told me that I wasn’t going back to Denmark after all. He said there was no need since the Germans had taken a more heavy-handed control of everything in the country on 29 August, because suddenly there was open hostility. Every Dane was prepared to be a spy and the political climate had changed completely.’
Had the German crackdown been the real reason, or had Sneum been on stand-by in case Duus Hansen, Danish Intelligence and Hasager Christiansen had failed to deliver the required intelligence? If the latter is true, it is possible that Tommy’s recruitment of Duus Hansen had ultimately saved his own life. The success of the Danish spy ring in satisfying British requests for V-rocket secrets simply made it unnecessary to send in a second agent.
All Tommy knew was that he was going nowhere. It was the final straw:
Knauer and Christmas Moeller told me that I had been doing nothing but boozing and shagging, but at least I could say that I had been doing a useful job in the office. But what I really wanted