The Hornet's Sting (50 page)
Read The Hornet's Sting Online
Authors: Mark Ryan
Tags: #World War; 1939-1945 - Secret Service - Denmark, #Sneum; Thomas, #World War II, #Political Freedom & Security, #True Crime, #World War; 1939-1945, #Underground Movements, #General, #Denmark - History - German Occupation; 1940-1945, #Spies - Denmark, #Secret Service, #World War; 1939-1945 - Underground Movements - Denkamrk, #Political Science, #Denmark, #Biography & Autobiography, #Military, #Spies, #Intelligence, #Biography, #History
Even for Christiansen, who was on Bornholm in an official capacity, the environment would almost cost him his life. But to go into this highly sensitive area with no connections on the inside would surely prove fatal. So Tommy waited to see if he would be handed a suicide mission.
Just before midnight on 9 August 1943, Pilot Officer Sigfred Johannes Christophersen underwent another pre-flight briefing at the large air base of 12 Pilot Advanced Flying Unit in Grantham, Lincolnshire.
With 137 hours of flying time already under his belt since joining the RAF more than a year earlier, a weary Christophersen was about to take to the skies again in a Mark I Blenheim, serial number K7050. This time he would face the added challenge of night-flying. Sigfred knew his long hours in the versatile Blenheim had prepared him for a future in the cockpit of either a night-fighter or a bomber. His advanced course was nearly at an end, and soon it would be time for real action.
Christophersen probably harbored mixed feelings about the prospect of aerial combat. Even before teaming up with Sneum in 1941, he had seemed to dread the idea of running the gauntlet of German flak and night-fighters with an Allied squadron over occupied Europe. Indeed, he had told Sneum before their mission that he considered it safer to return to Denmark as an agent than to fly for the RAF, the path chosen by most pro-Allied Danish pilots. Now, though, the spying option no longer existed.
Though Sigfred had hardly covered himself in glory while on active service for SIS, and had even been accused of cowardice by Sneum, he had still shown more bravery during the war than many men. With the help of his late brother Thorbjoern, he had also led Sneum to the genius of Duus Hansen. Now he was on the point of proving to the British and to himself that he still had the stomach to fight the Nazis. He was in the final stages of training for a new chapter in his war, and he had conquered the worst of his fears.
By 1.30 a.m. on 10 August, a confused Christophersen was flying over the fields of Lincolnshire, trying to follow a flare-path which would guide him back to the airfield. Due to elaborate defense measures, this wasn’t as easy as it might have been. Decoy airfields (called ‘Q sites’) had been built all over Lincolnshire to fool the enemy into dropping bombs on worthless targets. Although they looked inviting, the runways were lethally short, if they existed at all. And they certainly weren’t built to accommodate a Blenheim, especially if the pilot wrongly thought he had plenty of time to taxi to a halt.
It is not known whether Christophersen suffered added complications, such as engine trouble. Since little was left of plane or pilot by 1.36 a.m., a thorough examination was ruled out. His Blenheim had crashed into fields near Bottersford, by the Great North Road, a kilometer to the east of Allington. On impact, the plane had exploded into flames. Although an ambulance was called at 1.47 a.m., Flying Officer Small and Flight Sergeant Cox must have known when they saw the fire that their dash to the crash site was futile. Their examination of Sigfred’s charred body concluded that death had been instantaneous due to multiple injuries and burns. His remains were taken to the station mortuary at Grantham.
The following day, Squadron Leader Frigurson-Sibson commenced his investigation into the accident. He believed that Christophersen’s fatal error had been to lose sight of the flare-path. Sigfred had attempted his landing close enough to the genuine airfield to suggest that he had mistaken one of the Q sites for the real thing. What had been designed to fool the Germans had apparently been responsible for the death of one of the RAF’s own advanced trainees.
Perhaps, back in 1941, Sigfred Christophersen had foreseen his own fate. In death, he had proved that his dread of joining the RAF had been well founded.
There is no evidence to suggest that the accident was suspicious. When Anita Christophersen was informed of the tragedy, however, it wasn’t long before Sigfred’s heartbroken widow suggested that Tommy Sneum might be behind it. She had no evidence to back up her claims, though. So, despite her protestations, Christophersen’s death was accepted as a terrible but all-too-common accident in the rush to prepare pilots for aerial combat. Sigfred was buried at Grantham cemetery, Lincolnshire.
Predictably, Sneum was less than devastated when John Christmas Moeller told him that his old spy partner was dead. And he wasn’t about to pretend he was unhappy. He was more sorrfor some of the other Danes who wouldn’t see the end of the war. Of the five men who had taken part in epic walks across the Oeresund from Denmark to Sweden in 1942, Sneum was now the only one left alive.
O
N 22 AUGUST a rocket bearing the serial number ‘V83’ crashed into a turnip field on the Danish island of Bornholm, having been fired from Peenemunde on the German coast. Lieutenant Commander Hasager Christiansen was quickly alerted and managed to take several photographs before the Germans arrived on the scene. He had one reel developed at a photographic shop on Bornholm itself, and sent prints to a new member of the Princes group, Lieutenant Commander Poul Moerch of Danish Naval Intelligence. Another, undeveloped reel of film was smuggled out of Bornholm at the same time.
Soon Duus Hansen was sending a message to Ronnie Turnbull in Stockholm, asking the Scot to let ‘Hannibal’ (in other words, SIS) know about the precious images, and to get back to him as soon as possible with details of where he should deliver them. Turnbull seized his chance to take control and ensure that SOE, rather than SIS, gained the credit for an extraordinary intelligence coup. ‘It wasn’t a question of “stealing SIS’s thunder”, as one historian claimed,’ insisted Ronnie. Even so, he replied to Duus Hansen like this:
You enclose a message to Hannibal in which you mention different telegrams about collaboration and coordination of plans. As a matter of fact these messages did not come from Hannibal, which is our intelligence organization [SIS], but from the operational people [SOE]. I wonder how it was you thought they came from Hannibal, since new intelligence questionnaires from Hannibal have always been prefixed Hannibal and other communications about our operations from my headquarters are still referred to as London. My headquarters are prepared to guarantee absolute full secrecy of your special messages to my headquarters undeveloped. I entirely agree that such matters are so all-embracing and secret that it is necessary to take strictest precautions to the end.
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 beng 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 to do was get out fighting, and I couldn’t do that while I remained with Christmas Moeller. So I left London in late 1943. Christmas Moeller had found me a place at Plymouth, where the British were forming a Danish Section of their Royal Navy. I was given the honor of being the very first to join. My serial number was D-DANE-X-1.
I thought that if I got into the navy then one day I would be flying again, even though the British told me that it wouldn’t happen. They were worried that if I got shot down in ed survived someone might recognize me and then I would be tortured by the Germans and end up telling them everything I knew, which was plenty. So I became a commando instructor in Plymouth, but that turned out to be a load of rubbish. They weren’t even using live ammunition on key training exercises, and I got very angry about that. How could they ever learn properly if they weren’t exposed to realistic conditions?
I enjoyed my leave more, because I got to drive a truck and there were pretty girls all over the place, out on the road just like I was. You’d drive all day alongside them, listen to something nice on the radio, check into the same hotel and eat together. After that I’d say: ‘What about going up?’ and they’d say, ‘Well, OK.’ Look, I was good in bed and I knew women liked me. That was just a fact. But it didn’t make me entirely happy because what I really wanted to do was fly.
One day Tommy took a break from his amorous routine and returned to London to help a Danish naval colleague who felt he was owed some money by the British. On the way out of the Danish Legation, he came face to face with one of the men he blamed most for having him imprisoned and grounded—Captain Volle Gyth. Sneum refused to shake the hand of the Prince, who himself had escaped to Sweden after the German crackdown. When asked to explain his rudeness, Tommy stated bluntly: ‘You people are traitors and you had me locked up. I think you had better come to lunch right now and tell me why.’ Trying to maintain his composure, Gyth politely declined that ominous invitation, and one for dinner. Then Tommy asked a question which must have sounded menacing in its simplicity: ‘Are you home later?’
‘You don’t know where I’m staying,’ laughed an increasingly nervous Gyth, who had been given an SOE safe-house while he tried to persuade the sceptical British to support Danish Intelligence in exile. ‘And I can’t give you my address because it’s confidential, since my mission here is of a somewhat secretive nature.’