Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War with Air Photos Read Online Free
Author: Christine Halsall
relatively low altitude, could be remarkably good and enabled commanders to see their own and the enemy’s trench patterns, barbed-wire entanglements, weapons pits and much else. Aircraft design, range and capability gradually improved as manufacturers strove to provide the RFC with machines that could fly high and fast enough to escape German aircraft, while also providing a stable platform from which photographs could be taken.
When the first RFC Photographic Section was set up in France in January 1915, Lieutenant Moore-Brabazon was appointed to command it, with Flight Sergeant Victor Laws, a young photographer who took every available opportunity to ascend in airship, balloon, kite or aircraft to take photographs, as a member of the new unit. These two men, with the active support of more senior officers, largely established the principles and practice of aerial reconnaissance and photographic interpretation. Alongside the progress made in aircraft, Laws worked with camera manufacturers to improve design and establish the introduction of film, which replaced glass plates over time.
In Palestine, Lieutenant Hugh Hamshaw Thomas pioneered the use of air photographs and stereoscopy to produce the first maps of desert areas. He also set down many of the procedures that formed the principles of photographic interpretation in two world wars. Both he and Laws returned to serve with distinction in the RAF during the Second World War and Victor Laws’ daughter, Millicent, joined the WAAF in 1939 to serve in photographic intelligence.
By 1917 the massive casualty losses on the Western Front had resulted in acute shortages of manpower. The authorities, albeit reluctantly, decided to set up women’s forces to replace men with female recruits – but only in carrying out clerical or domestic duties. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) were formed in 1917 and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was established in 1918. All three services were disbanded shortly after the Armistice, by which time more than 100,000 women had served in uniform. Although none had worked in photographic intelligence, two women who served in different capacities during the Great War were to join up again in the Second World War and serve as photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham.
A First World War BE2c biplane with a C-type plate camera fitted to the fuselage.
One was Dorothy Garrod, who was born in 1892, the only daughter of a distinguished medical family. She entered Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1913 where she read history and graduated three years later, although without a degree as the University of Cambridge did not award degrees to women at that time. By 1916 two of her three brothers had died of wounds on the Western Front and the third was to die in the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic. From 1916–19 Dorothy was a worker in the Catholic Women’s League huts in northern France and the Rhineland, nursing wounded troops and refugees. The death of all her brothers convinced her to pursue an academic career herself. In the years between the wars, she studied archaeology, led several pioneering expeditions to Iraq and then went to Palestine, where in the Mount Carmel cave deposits she found the first evidence of Neanderthal people outside Europe. In 1933 she took up the post of director of studies in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge. 5
Charlotte Ogilvy, later to be Lady Charlotte Bonham Carter, was born a year after Dorothy Garrod and her initial service in the First World War was in the Voluntary Aid Detachment when she worked as a nurse. She was then employed in the Foreign Office where at one stage she was seconded to the infant MI5 and involved in tracking Lenin as he crossed Germany before the Russian Revolution. She was also on the secretariat of the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919. 6
Although photographic intelligence was recognised as indispensable by the end of
When the first RFC Photographic Section was set up in France in January 1915, Lieutenant Moore-Brabazon was appointed to command it, with Flight Sergeant Victor Laws, a young photographer who took every available opportunity to ascend in airship, balloon, kite or aircraft to take photographs, as a member of the new unit. These two men, with the active support of more senior officers, largely established the principles and practice of aerial reconnaissance and photographic interpretation. Alongside the progress made in aircraft, Laws worked with camera manufacturers to improve design and establish the introduction of film, which replaced glass plates over time.
In Palestine, Lieutenant Hugh Hamshaw Thomas pioneered the use of air photographs and stereoscopy to produce the first maps of desert areas. He also set down many of the procedures that formed the principles of photographic interpretation in two world wars. Both he and Laws returned to serve with distinction in the RAF during the Second World War and Victor Laws’ daughter, Millicent, joined the WAAF in 1939 to serve in photographic intelligence.
By 1917 the massive casualty losses on the Western Front had resulted in acute shortages of manpower. The authorities, albeit reluctantly, decided to set up women’s forces to replace men with female recruits – but only in carrying out clerical or domestic duties. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) were formed in 1917 and the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) was established in 1918. All three services were disbanded shortly after the Armistice, by which time more than 100,000 women had served in uniform. Although none had worked in photographic intelligence, two women who served in different capacities during the Great War were to join up again in the Second World War and serve as photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham.
A First World War BE2c biplane with a C-type plate camera fitted to the fuselage.
One was Dorothy Garrod, who was born in 1892, the only daughter of a distinguished medical family. She entered Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1913 where she read history and graduated three years later, although without a degree as the University of Cambridge did not award degrees to women at that time. By 1916 two of her three brothers had died of wounds on the Western Front and the third was to die in the 1919 Spanish flu pandemic. From 1916–19 Dorothy was a worker in the Catholic Women’s League huts in northern France and the Rhineland, nursing wounded troops and refugees. The death of all her brothers convinced her to pursue an academic career herself. In the years between the wars, she studied archaeology, led several pioneering expeditions to Iraq and then went to Palestine, where in the Mount Carmel cave deposits she found the first evidence of Neanderthal people outside Europe. In 1933 she took up the post of director of studies in archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge. 5
Charlotte Ogilvy, later to be Lady Charlotte Bonham Carter, was born a year after Dorothy Garrod and her initial service in the First World War was in the Voluntary Aid Detachment when she worked as a nurse. She was then employed in the Foreign Office where at one stage she was seconded to the infant MI5 and involved in tracking Lenin as he crossed Germany before the Russian Revolution. She was also on the secretariat of the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919. 6
Although photographic intelligence was recognised as indispensable by the end of
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