Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service by Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby Read Free Book Online Page A

burlesque accounts of ‘intelligence’ operations recently given to the world by more than one distinguished writer.
    Here, in brief, are some of the results we owed to the unremitting vigilance, enterprise, skill, and courage of our secret service naval agents, who worked silently and patiently during those critical pre-war years.
    The gist of the epoch-making German fleet Law Amendment Act of 1912, which foreshadowed a huge increase in the combative strength of the High Seas Fleet, was communicated to Whitehall weeks before the bill itself was tabled in the Reichstag.
    The admiralty was supplied with ample information about:
The German mobilisation plans;
The emergency war measures that were to take effect as soon as the ‘ Mobilmachung ’ signal was flashed to Kiel and Wilhelmshaven;
The war stations of the High Seas Fleet and the special arrangements made for passing heavy ships through the Kiel Canal in a much shorter time than we had been led to believe was possible;
The distribution of light squadrons, destroyers and submarines immediately after the declaration of war;
The plans for reinforcing minesweeping flotillas and coastal patrols, afloat and ashore;
The worldwide network of intelligence and coaling facilities that German consuls and other agents abroad had established in anticipation of operations by German commerce raiders.
    Readers of Lord Jellicoe’s volume, The Grand Fleet , will recall many passages that suggest we were utterly surprised by theabnormal powers of resistance displayed by German battleships and cruisers at Jutland and in earlier encounters, and not less by the high quality of their gunnery, ammunition, optical instruments, torpedoes, mines, and other equipment. Yet the archives of the naval intelligence division must contain documentary evidence to prove that all these German ‘secrets’ had been uncovered and reported by British agents long before the war.
    The massive armour and extensive underwater protection of the German dreadnoughts were well known to the British Admiralty, which had received particulars and diagrams of practically every ship that Admiral Scheer commanded at Jutland. These had been secured by our agents years beforehand, and it was not their fault if the admiralty had neglected to produce armour-piercing shells capable of piercing the sides and decks of the German ships and detonating with full force inside.
    An accurate description of the shell that the Germans used with deadly effect at Jutland was in the hands of the admiralty as far back as 1911, together with an account of its performance against armoured targets on the Krupp proving-ground at Meppen and specially constructed target ships at sea.
    At or about the same date, drawings and details were furnished of the latest torpedoes in production at the government factory of Friedrichsort, near Kiel – these being the weapons by which the U-boats were destined to sink millions of tonnes of shipping.
    All essential particulars of the German naval mine, which, though simple, was extraordinarily reliable and destructive, were contained in our pre-war ID files, yet in spite of this information we ourselves clung to an obsolete and inefficient type of mine for nearly two years after the outbreak of war.
    Almost the only vital secret our agents failed to unearth was the manner in which the German Navy would be employed in a war with Great Britain. It is just as well that this remained hidden from us, for had it been otherwise we should have been completely deceived.
    To elucidate this seeming paradox it is necessary to recall the singular state of affairs that existed in the German naval administration in August 1914.
    Grand Admiral von Tirpitz had then served seventeen years as Secretary of State for the Navy. The High Seas Fleet was virtually his own creation. It had been built and organised in strict conformity with his own strategical theories, and, as we know from his own writing, he never doubted for a moment