Throughout the Second World War German intelligence had deployed wireless teams throughout occupied Europe. Agents had even been deployed to mainland Britain to spy on British military activity. The monitoring and reporting of their wireless transmissions was to fall to a small, secretive and largely unknown unit manned almost exclusively by volunteers.
The Voluntary Interceptors (VI) as they became known would spend hours every day at home monitoring the short wavelengths for often faint and difficult to copy signals transmitted by these German secret intelligence services. This unit was to become known as the Radio Security Service (RSS) and it was to be at the core of the signals intelligence production effort at Bletchley and the insights into German military tactical and strategic planning.
Without interceptors like the RSS, Bletchley would not have existed. Their story has never truly been written and RADIO WAR focuses on the secret world of wireless espionage and includes firsthand accounts from the surviving veterans of the unit. Its existence was only made public 35 years after WWII ended, shortly after Bletchley Park’s secrets were exposed. Patrick Reilly, the Assistant to Head of MI6 Stewart Menzies, was to say of the RSS....’a team of brilliance unparalleled anywhere in the intelligence machine.’
This untold WWII story of clandestine work against the German Intelligence Services is to be published in the summer of 2019.
Operation OVERLORD, the opening up of an Allied second front by the invasion of the Normandy beaches in June 1944 was the largest military invasion of all time, but it was preceded by years of industrial scale intelligence collection and dangerous clandestine reconnaissance missions off the French coast.
The stories of the intelligence and reconnaissance missions behind D-Day go back to 1940, and are told for the first time in Vanguard. It is being published by Unicorn Publishing Group (UPG) and due for release in May 2019.
It will be complimented by a foreword from General Sir Gordon Messenger KCB DSO* OBE ADC as the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, and the first Four-star Royal Marine General since 1977. He said the book was a ‘….meticulous and outstanding piece of research throwing light on the intelligence and reconnaissance missions which were to significantly shape the final outcome of D-Day.’
One of the smallest and most bizarre WWII special forces units designed for covert seaborne reconnaissance missions was used to great effect in Burma. It was one of the most highly decorated units in the Far East.
The unit is having its story told in NEPTUNE’S MAVERICKS, due for publication in 2024.