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of Fréjus-Saint-Raphaël aerodrome and beach; and radio-location stations south of Morlaix in Brittany. Names of the German naval staff at Toulon were provided, together with Axis units and the principal radio installations at the Toulon naval base as well as details of torpedoes used in German motor torpedo boats. A Jade agent provided details of damage at the U-boat base in Bordeaux during a daylight raid on 17 May. From the early summer onwards there were increasing numbers of reports on coastal defences, not only along the Mediterranean, but also along the English Channel, the Atlantic in Brittany and south to the Spanish frontier. In July and August reports were received on German troop movements in France; aircraft production; ‘danger areas’ in Brittany; German-occupied aerodromes; the manufacture of propellers; the movement of troops to Italy and the Italian-occupied zone in south-eastern France; and German air order of battle in Poland. At the end of June there was a report on the state of work at shipyards in Bordeaux, Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, Saint-Malo, Le Havre, Rouen and Dunkirk. There was also intelligence about telecommunications - buried cables at Lorient, details of lines between Rouen and Cherbourg and a repeater station at Le Mans.

From the autumn of 1943 reports about German rocket weapons came with increasing frequency from Dunderdale’s P.5 networks. The Germans had, in fact, been developing two V-weapons: the V-1, a pilotless jet-propelled plane launched from a ramp; and the V-2, which was a longer-range rocket. Both carried about a ton of explosive. SIS played a major role in providing intelligence about these programmes. In 1940 the Service had passed on vague reports of German experiments with long-range weapons, but it was not until late 1942 onwards that more specific information began to be received. Elgar, the Danish engineer who was able to travel in Germany, provided three reports about a new rocket weapon between December 1942 and March 1943. Another source reported in January and February 1943 that a factory had been built at Peenemünde to manufacture a rocket, and a third source in February reported that a rocket with a ten-ton warhead and a range of a hundred kilometres had been developed there. During March Broadway acquired a much more detailed report from ‘a most reliable and expert source which has provided most valuable information over a long period’. The report, which described a series of rocket trials, drew on information provided by forced labourers from Luxembourg who had been drafted to work at Peenemünde. Further information came through Switzerland. As recalled by one SIS officer, the SIS station in Berne received from a Luxembourger ‘a very dirty ragged sketch plan of some big contrivance being constructed by the Germans at an island call[ed] Peenemuende sometime in 1943. This filthy sketch plan seemed to make little sense and it referred to a launching of a “pilotless aeroplane” which had a range of 250 kilometres.’ The head of station, Fanny Vanden Heuvel, was away at the time and his assistants decided ‘to telegraph the most we could make out of this piece of paper. When Fanny returned he chided us for being such fools as to believe such nonsense, and said we would undoubtedly get a rocket from Dansey for wasting cypher groups!’ But Broadway’s reaction was quite the opposite: Berne was congratulated for ‘most valuable information’ and told ‘that anything further on this subject should always be telegraphed “Most Immediate”’. Corroborative information about the installations at Peenemünde from Polish sources and RAF photographic intelligence enabled an extremely detailed plan of the facility to be prepared and used for an Allied air raid on 17-18 August 1943 which so badly damaged the site that the weapons programme was put back by at least two months and the Germans had to disperse both the experimental facility and the manufacturing side to other locations across the Reich.16

SIS agents also helped to pinpoint V-1 and V-2 launching sites in France. The most outstanding