During the
second world war the Special Operations
Executive (SOE) had several Stations assisting their work. We are
all familiar with Station X at Bletchley
Park, however
there were two Stations here in Hertfordshire. Station XII, at
Aston House, was the so called “dirty tricks” department of the
SOE. Station XII was later joined in its endeavours in 1941 by
Station IX at The Frythe near Welwyn.
(The Frythe is the large house that can
be seen to the left of the A1(M) when
driving from Hatfield to Welwyn.)
Aston House was
sadly demolished in the 1960s and replaced by housing and a golf
course. Little remains of the original structures. The layout of
the Station can be seen in the map below.
Station
XII’s particular expertise was
specialist explosives. They made their wares for the Resistance,
Commandos, SAS and SBS. The explosives used for the
Bruneval and St
Nizaire raids and the
attack on the
Telemark heavy water plant were
made here. A few of their specialist items can be seen below.
Booby
trap. When placed in the soil vertically and
subsequently trodden on, the bullet was fired upwards.
Exploding
Coal. Intended to be used by the enemy in furnaces and
trains
Limpet
Mine. Attached to ships below the water line by
magnets
Pencil Time Fuse. Used
for delayed detonations
Time
Delay Fuse. Variable delay up to 5 days achieved by
slowly dissolving cellulose by chemicals
Tyrebuster.
Can be disguised as stones rocks, animal
droppings etc.
Secret
Message Container. You can use your own imagination on
this item!
Station IX at The
Frythe became the design arm of the
operation. The Frythe produced a number
of “wel” products. These included
-
The Welrod - a silenced pistol used by
the resistance in Denmark after the German invasion (and rumoured
still to be in use today).
-
The Welbike - a collapsible 98cc motor
cycle with a top speed 30 mph and a range of 90 miles; it could be
dropped together with its paratrooper rider. Some 4000 were
manufactured in Birmingham by the Excelsior Motorcycle Company and,
although used in the Arnheim campaign
and the Normandy landings, most were exported to the USA after the
war. The Corgi Scooter was also developed from it, 27,000 of these
being manufactured between 1947 and 1954.
-
The Welman - a 20 ft one-man submarine
with a top speed of just over 2 knots and a range of 33 miles - it
had a delayed action, 425 pound charge of
Torpex explosive in the bow. The
massive water tank used to test it was built into The
Frythe's terraces and was still there
in the 1970s. About a hundred of these midget submarines were
built, by the Morris car company in Oxford, and used by the Special
Boat Service - but they weren't very successful. On a failed attack
on the floating dock in Bergen, one was captured by the Germans and
developed into the Biber craft.
-
The Welfreighter - a small submarine
freighter could carry up to a ton of supplies to agents.
-
The Welgun - a compact, lightweight 9mm
submachine gun, intended for use by airborne troops. It was
manufactured by BSA, but never replaced the
Sten gun.
So, next time you
see Mr Bond being equipped by Q, contemplate on the fact that some
of the predecessors to those sophisticated gadgets were pioneered
near Stevenage and Welwyn. That’s something you don’t see everyday
– a sentence with both the words “sophisticated” and “Stevenage” in
it!
The cache is hidden
in woods North of the Magazine Area. GPS
accuracy not good under trees, but shouldn’t be too hard to
find.
For further
reading
: Aston House, Station 12, SOE’s
Secret Centre by Des Turner ISBN: 0-7509-4277-0
Whilst here you might like to
vist a
waymark to Captain Edmund Barker
Van Koughnet, a hero of the Nile
Expedition or the
waymarked war memorial.