Just half an hour’s drive north of Bletchley Park, another Buckinghamshire estate became vital in the covert war effort. In part two of his article, James Hoare reveals how the ingenious engineers of Hanslope Park invented varied ways of eavesdropping on enemy agencies and new technology to protect Britain’s secrets.
On the wall of the officers’ mess at Hanslope Park was a simple framed inscription. It was a quote from William Shakespeare’s Henry V that summed up Secure Communication Unit 3’s (SCU 3) dark deeds in their secret war: “The King hath note of all that they intend, by interception which they dream not of.”
Their targets were the very highest level of German radio traffic: the Enigma-encrypted broadcasts of the Abwehr (military intelligence), the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence arm of the SS) and the RHSA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or Reich Main Security Office, the controlling body of the Gestapo). For the men at their headsets, the reality of the Radio Security Service (RSS – part of MI6 Section VIII) wasn’t quite as they had been promised when they had been encouraged to sign up for it, rather than be called up for Nat…
