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MI9
MI9, the British Directorate of Military Intelligence Section 9, was a secret department of the War Office between 1939 and 1945. During World War II it had two principal tasks: assisting in the escape of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) held by the Axis countries, especially Nazi Germany; and helping Allied military personnel, especially downed airmen, evade capture after they were shot down or trapped behind enemy lines in Axis-occupied countries. During World War II, about 35,000 Allied military personnel, many helped by MI9, escaped POW camps or evaded capture and made their way to Allied or neutral countries after being trapped behind enemy lines. The best-known activity of MI9 was creating and supporting escape and evasion lines, especially in France and Belgium, which helped 5,000 downed British, American and other Allied airmen evade capture and return to duty. The usual routes of escape from occupied Europe were either south to Switzerland or to southern France and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Hutton
Christopher William Clayton Hutton (16 November 1893 – 3 September 1965) was a British soldier, airman, journalist and inventor. Hutton is best known for his Second World War service with MI9, a secret branch of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence (United Kingdom), Directorate of Military Intelligence.Hutton, Clayton. ''Official Secret - The remarkable story of escape aids, their invention, production and the sequel.'' Max Parrish, London, 1960.Hutton pp. 1-12 From the end of 1939 until 1943, Hutton worked in MI9 under Norman Crockatt. MI9 was created to design and distribute escape and evasion aids for Allied servicemen, and to help servicemen return to Allied territory after escaping. Hutton's team identified suitable manufacturers for escape and evasion equipment and devised methods by which such aids could be sent to prisoner of war camps. Many prisoners' escapes were assisted by MI9's silk maps and other escape and evasion equipment. Hutton's wartime escape ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Escape And Evasion Lines (World War II)
Escape and evasion lines in World War II helped people escape European countries occupied by Nazi Germany. The focus of most escape lines in Western Europe was assisting American, British, Canadian and other Allied airmen shot down over occupied Europe to evade capture and escape to neutral Spain or Sweden from where they could return to the United Kingdom. A distinction is sometimes made between "escapers" (soldiers and airmen who had been captured by the Germans and escaped) and "evaders" (soldiers and airmen in enemy territory who evaded capture). Most of those helped by escape lines were evaders. Some escape and evasion lines such as the Shelbourne or Burgundy Lines were created by the Allies specifically to assist their soldiers and airmen stranded in German-occupied territory. Others were the product of a combination of allied military personnel and local citizens in occupied territory, such as the Pat O'Leary Line. Some escape lines were created and operated by civilians a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airey Neave
Lieutenant Colonel Airey Middleton Sheffield Neave, () (23 January 1916 – 30 March 1979) was a British soldier, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) from 1953 until his assassination in 1979. During the Second World War he was the first British prisoner-of-war to succeed in escaping from Oflag IV-C at Colditz Castle, and later worked for MI9. After the war he served with the International Military Tribunal at the Nuremberg trials. He later became Conservative MP for Abingdon. Neave was assassinated in a car bomb attack at the House of Commons. The Irish National Liberation Army claimed responsibility. Early life Neave was the son of Sheffield Airey Neave CMG, OBE (1879–1961), an entomologist, who lived at Ingatestone, Essex, and his wife Dorothy, the daughter of Arthur Thomson Middleton. His father was the grandson of Sheffield Neave, the third son of Sir Thomas Neave, 2nd Baronet (see Neave baronets). The family came to prominence as merchants in the W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Langley
Lieutenant-Colonel James Maydon Langley (12 March 1916 – 10 April 1983) was an officer in the British Army, who served during World War II. Wounded and captured at the battle of Dunkirk in mid-1940, he later returned to Britain and served in MI9. Biography Langley was born in Wolverhampton, the son of Francis Oswald Langley (1884–1947), a stipendiary magistrate, recorder and chancellor. He was educated at Uppingham School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Having served as a cadet under officer in the Uppingham School Contingent of the Junior Division of the Officers' Training Corps, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards (Supplementary Reserve) on 4 July 1936, and promoted to lieutenant on 4 July 1939. Langley was mobilised on 24 August 1939 to serve in the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, part of the 7th Infantry Brigade (Guards) of the 3rd Infantry Division, then commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Lionel Bootle-Wilbraham, in the British Expedit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MI19
MI19 was a section of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. During the Second World War it was responsible for obtaining information from enemy prisoners of war. It was originally created in December 1940 as MI9a, a sub-section of MI9. A year later, in December 1941, it became an independent organisation, though still closely associated with its parent. MI19 had Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centres (CSDIC) at Beaconsfield, Wilton Park, and Latimer, as well as a number overseas. Beginning in 1940, MI19 recorded conversations between German officers held comfortably at Trent Park in North London; many important secrets were learned from that effort. MI19 operated an interrogation centre in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, commanded by Lt. Col. Alexander Scotland OBE, known as the " London Cage". It was a subject of persistent reports of torture by the prisoners confined there, which included war crimes suspects from the SS a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive (SOE) was a British organisation formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe and to aid local Resistance during World War II, resistance movements during World War II. SOE personnel operated in all territories occupied or attacked by the Axis powers, except where demarcation lines were agreed upon with Britain's principal Allies of World War II, Allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. SOE made use of neutral territory on occasion, or made plans and preparations in case neutral countries were attacked by the Axis. The organisation directly employed or controlled more than 13,000 people, of whom 3,200 were women. Both men and women served as agents in Axis-occupied countries. The organisation was dissolved in 1946. A memorial to those who served in SOE was unveiled in 1996 on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Queen Mother, and in 2009 on t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Directorate Of Military Intelligence (United Kingdom)
The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) was a department of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, British War Office. Over its lifetime the Directorate underwent a number of organisational changes, absorbing and shedding sections over time. History The first instance of an organisation which would later become the DMI was the Department of Topography & Statistics, formed by Major Thomas Best Jervis, late of the Bombay Engineer Group, Bombay Engineer Corps, in 1854 in the early stages of the Crimean War. In 1873 the Intelligence Branch was created within the Quartermaster General's Department with an initial staff of seven officers. Initially the Intelligence Branch was solely concerned with collecting intelligence, but under the leadership of Henry Brackenbury, a protege of influential Adjutant-General Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, Lord Wolseley, it was increasingly concerned with planning. However, despite these steps towards a nascent general ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northumberland Avenue
Northumberland Avenue is a street in the City of Westminster, Central London, running from Trafalgar Square in the west to the Thames Embankment in the east. The road was built on the site of Northumberland House, the London home of the House of Percy, Percy family, the Duke of Northumberland, Dukes of Northumberland between 1874 and 1876, and on part of the parallel Northumberland Street, London, Northumberland Street. When built, the street was designed for luxury accommodation, including the seven-storey Grand Hotel, the Victoria and the Metropole. The Playhouse Theatre opened in 1882 and became a significant venue in London. From the 1930s onwards, properties were used less for hotels and more for British Government departments, including the War Office and Air Ministry, later the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence. The street has been commemorated in the ''Sherlock Holmes'' novels including ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'', and is a square on the Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Warfare Executive
During World War II, the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of countries occupied or allied with Nazi Germany. History The Executive was formed in August 1941, reporting to the Foreign Office. The staff came mostly from SO1, which had been until then the propaganda arm of the Special Operations Executive. The organisation was governed by a committee initially comprising Anthony Eden (Foreign Secretary), Brendan Bracken (Minister of Information) and Hugh Dalton (Minister of Economic Warfare), together with officials Rex Leeper and Dallas Brooks, and Robert Bruce Lockhart as chairman (and later Director General). Roundell Palmer (the future 3rd Earl of Selbourne) later replaced Dalton when he was moved to become President of the Board of Trade. Ivone Kirkpatrick, an advisor to the BBC and formerly a diplomat in Berl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claude Dansey
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks Dansey, KCMG (10 September 1876 – 11 June 1947), also known as Colonel Z, Haywood, Uncle Claude, and codenamed Z, was the assistant chief of the Secret Intelligence Service known as ACSS, of the British intelligence agency commonly known as MI6, and a member of the London Controlling Section. He began his career in intelligence in 1900, and remained active until his death. Early life Dansey was born in 1876 at 14 Cromwell Place, Kensington, the second of nine children and eldest son of Captain (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Edward Mashiter Dansey, an officer in the 1st Life Guards, and his wife, the Hon. Eleanor Dansey, daughter of Robert Gifford, 2nd Baron Gifford.M. R. D. Foot"Dansey, Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks" ''The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (online ed., Oxford University Press, 2008). Retrieved 24 July 2021. He attended Wellington College until 1891, and then a private school in Bruges. At the age of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshire to the east, Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, and Oxfordshire to the west. The largest settlement is the city of Milton Keynes, and the county town is Aylesbury. The county has an area of and had a population of 840,138 at the 2021 census. ''plus'' Besides Milton Keynes, which is in the north-east, the largest settlements are in the southern half of the county and include Aylesbury, High Wycombe, and Chesham. For Local government in England, local government purposes Buckinghamshire comprises two Unitary authorities of England, unitary authorities, Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes City Council. The Historic counties of England, historic county had slightly different borders, and included the towns of S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield ( ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, northwest of central London and southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High Wycombe. The town is adjacent to the Chiltern Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and has Georgian architecture, Georgian, neo-Georgian style (Great Britain), neo-Georgian and Tudor Revival architecture, Tudor revival high street architecture, known as the Old Town. It is known for the Bekonscot, first model village in the world and the National Film and Television School. Beaconsfield was Britain's richest town (based on an average house price of £684,474) in 2008. In 2011, it had the highest proportion in the UK of £1 million-plus homes for sale (at 47%, compared to 3.5% nationally). History and description The parish comprises Beaconsfield town and land mainly given over arable land. Some beech forest remains to supply an established beech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
