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provided better results than ever before. By the end of 1938 clandestine photographs were being taken of Italian bases and airfields. The Air Ministry paid for a second Lockheed and assistance was given by the RAF Experimental Establishment at Farnborough. Cotton proceeded round Europe, flying at very high altitudes over Germany and Italy, photographing large numbers of airfields and other military intelligence targets. Indeed, so successful was he that by mid-1939 there was a bottleneck in the production of this material through a shortage of trained photographic interpreters. Shortly after the outbreak of war Cotton’s organisation was taken over by the Air Ministry, but SIS could claim with some justification to have been the initiator of modern high-altitude, high-speed photo-reconnaissance. 39

PART FOUR

THE IMPACT OF WAR

10

Keeping afloat

The diary of the Section VIII officer John Darwin for 1 September 1939 recounts how the news of war was received by SIS: ‘Gambier rang up 7 [a.m]. German troops over the frontier 6.30. Our 77077 (Code Germans invade Poland) worked v. well. F.O. showed “masterly inactivity”.’ On Sunday 3 September: ‘War on Germany declared 11 a.m. B.S.T. [British Summer Time]. Usual row with F.O. asking us to transmit reams of unnecessary messages. 11.15 Air Raid warning - Staff arrived in basement & teleprinters going in 3 mins. Very satisfactory & encouraging. C.S.S. in very good heart.’1 The declaration of war does not, however, appear to have struck very momentously at the Service’s bureaucratic processes. On 4 September an officer in the Registry proposed sending out a message seeking to standardise the size of ‘source slips’ attached to reports,2 and the first circular to all stations issued from the Chief after war had been declared laid down that ‘applications for the supply of office furniture, office stationery, safes, etc.’ should henceforth be addressed to the Accountant Officer.3

In keeping with the plans for the evacuation of government departments from the capital on the outbreak of war, a substantial part of the headquarters staff and Section VIII (Communications) moved to the War Station at Bletchley Park, whither the Government Code and Cypher School had gone in August. To facilitate the penetration of Germany, Dansey and most of his Z Organisation moved to Switzerland. As both the Service and GC&CS expanded rapidly in the early months of the war, and with Bletchley Park ‘bursting at the seams’, other outstations were established. Section VIII moved from Bletchley to Whaddon Hall, about five miles away. Section V and the Registry were subsequently transferred to St Albans. When the expected German air raids did not materialise (and ironically before the London blitz began), there was a drift back, so that by March 1940 the main body of headquarters staff had returned to central London. Even so, significant parts of SIS remained dispersed, bringing bureaucratic and logistical problems for the rest of the war.

Change at the top

The sixty-six-year-old Sinclair, who had been suffering from cancer of the spleen, was taken into hospital in late October. He demonstrated stylish sangfroid to the very end. On the morning of 4 November he sent a message to a friend saying: ‘First bulletin: Nearly dead.’ So he was, for he died later that day.4 ‘Life has been made even more bloody by the death of our beloved CSS,’ wrote John Darwin. ‘He died at 4.30 pm. He is quite definitely irreplaceable. There will never be anyone like him.’ It had been clear for a while that his days were numbered, and there were evidently concerns within the Service about the succession. On the day Sinclair died, Malcolm Woollcombe, head of the Political Section, which dealt most closely with the Foreign Office, saw the Permanent Under-Secretary, Sir Alexander Cadogan, ‘to protest about idea of anyone being brought in from outside to succeed “C”’. There is no evidence Woollcombe had any particular outside individual in mind. He may, however, have pressed the case for Menzies, Sinclair’s de facto deputy