BOOK REVIEW Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945 by David Hebditch Reviewed by Philip Cala-Lazar, K9PL EDITOR’S NOTE: The following book has been suggested as interesting reading or as a useful resource. The following review does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by RCA. We welcome suggestions and recommendations from RCA’s members regarding books to share with RCA’s membership. The scope can include technical, regulatory, or other subjects. We encourage you to send your suggestions to David Bart at jbart1964@gmail.com for publication in a future issue of the Proceedings.
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avid Hebditch’s Covert Radio Agents, 19391945: Signals From Behind Enemy Lines, enthralls with its account of the men and women who, while deployed behind enemy lines, daily risked their lives to collect enemy intelligence. That intelligence played an essential role in formulating Allied tactical and strategic war plans. Comprised of civilian volunteers and active military, covert radio agents served under the aegis of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), Special Operations Executive (SOE), and America’s Office of Security Services (OSS). The agents were of many nationalities, British, American, Norwegian, Australian, French and more, united in common cause, they gave themselves to great acts of bravery and selflessness, often unto torture and death. Postwar, their undercover operations remained largely unknown owing to stringent secrecy acts that outlasted the war and the lives of many agents by decades. Covert Radio Agents, 1939-1945 is a riveting, informative and engaging book. It is profusely illustrated with photographs, maps, original documents, diagrams and the author’s drawings. Hebditch covers the panoply of covert radio agents from their recruitment, to their training, deployment in enemy territory and, notably, detailed descriptions of the radio gear supplied. Those radios ranged from Britain’s tiny, “cigarette case-size” Biscuit radio receiver and the Soviet’s compact, modular Tensor/Tenzor, to Norway’s home brew Olga, through the Paraset(s) and various Type A & B sets, to Australia’s Coastwatchers’ AWA 3BZ Teleradio, that “weighed 168 kg (379 lbs) including generator and batteries that required 12 to 16 porters to transport.” Of especial interest is 56-page Chapter 8, “Technical Briefings.” The chapter comprises four “tutorials”: “...radios and how they worked; ...how enemy radio
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intelligence could monitor and locate transmissions; ...the use of Morse code and the format of messages and ...how messages were encrypted by the agent and the home station to make them difficult as possible for the enemy to read.” Armchair adventurers will also find in this chapter a diagram for clandestinely setting up a SOE Type A Mark I radio, indoor antenna and counterpoise, and vicariously experience parachuting behind enemy lines aboard a specially equipped bomber or STOL Westland Lysander aircraft. The author suggests some readers may want to first read Chapter 8 to bolster their knowledge of the book’s subject matter. Truly, the chapter’s radio and Morse code tutorials would have made a robust Novice Class study guide with its inclusion of radio theory, antennas, propagation, Morse technique and history, and procedural- and Q-codes. SOE agents trained at schools located in Great Britain and Canada. The SOE and sister agencies sought candidates possessing special abilities, particularly valued were amateur radio operators with 20-wpm, or better, Morse skills and fluency in a foreign language. “Twenty words per minute was the minimum expected of a specialist W/T [wireless telegraphy] operator, and most could achieve 25 wpm.” Following deployment, agents were required to locate as secure a base of operations as possible; erect an antenna; meet receiving and transmission schedules; encrypt and decrypt messages; contact, when necessary, other agents; recruit and train trustworthy locals as agents; all the while trying to evade capture, interrogation, torture, imprisonment and death by keeping a low profile and transmissions brief and few as possible. Once settled they frequently moved at a moment’s notice when neighbors or the authorities became too curious. Then repeat the process of locating and setting up a new base. This peripatetic lifestyle was common to both urban and sparsely populated areas where agents shifted position when
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