Air Spy (Signed )

New York ,Harper Brothers. 1957. 1st edition. Very good two-tone cloth covers. Fair but worn pictorial dust jacket. Internally very good. Photo ills.

Exceptionally inscribed and signed by the author to Claude Wavell on the front free end paper.

Imagine a postcard-sized photograph, taken from thousands of feet in altitude, would you be able to see a little aircraft, let alone recognise which type? This is exactly what Constance Babington Smith did during the Second World War.

When war broke out, she was commissioned as a Section Officer in the WAAF, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. She was asked to set up an aircraft interpretation section. Her section became part of the Central Interpretation Unit, which was based at RAF Medmenham, not far from London. Constance, or ‘Babs’ as she was informally called, was entrusted with the responsibility of searching for secret weapons.

Work done by L Section, Constance’s team provided an enormous contribution to the war effort. They spotted new aircraft types, often still prototypes, followed their whereabouts throughout Germany, monitored their development and predicted when they would reach operational status.

British aerial reconnaissance of southern Germany at this time was mainly carried out by de Havilland Mosquito PR IV and PR VIII aircraft of No. 540 Squadron RAF from RAF Benson, Oxfordshire.^[6] The photographs were sent for assessment to the Central Interpretation Unit at Danesfield House, a 'large pseudo-Tudor mansion' near Medmenham, Buckinghamshire, 24 km (15 mi) from Benson.At the beginning of June 1943, Squadron Leader Claude Wavell, head of G Section (Radar & Radio) at Medmenham, noticed stacks of ribbed metalwork lying outside the relocated Zeppelin shed in recent 'covers' of Friedrichshafen. The pattern of the stacks had changed between photographic sorties, implying activity, and Wavell identified the metalwork as parts for the distinctive 7.3 m (24 ft) lattice reflector dishes of Giant Würzburg radar (Würzburg-Riese) sets.