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Revealed: Spy-Log of the ‘Lancer’ With a £10,000 per trip ‘spying bonus’ for the crew, gathering intelligence on Soviet Naval operations in the Barents Sea north-east of Norway was lucrative. But it was also hard and hazardous work for the Grimsby fishermen who sailed on the trawler Lancer. Lancer was launched in the summer of 1949 and made her maiden voyage to the Arctic Circle later that year. Between then and 1954, she undertook no fewer than 45 spying missions against the Soviet Northern fleet. This account of those missions was written by the Lancer’s radio operator, Al Bowles. The systematic recording of Soviet marine and aviation radio traffic and the photographing of Northern Fleet warships -- now that the government has been forced to admit that it went on -- will come as no surprise. But Bowles reveals for the first time that British naval intelligence officers regularly paddled ashore in kayaks from the edge of the 3-mile territorial waters limit to conceal custom-built radio receivers. According to his account, these were placed on the Russian mainland at key points all along the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, from west of the Murmansk port and naval base complex as far east as Cape Svyatoy Nos at the mouth of the White Sea. Hazardous return missions were undertaken by the Lancer to recover the magnetic tapes and bring them back for detailed analysis by an intelligence team based at Pitreavie in Scotland. The Lancer’s trawl net also proved useful. On her very first voyage, her crew managed to recover the fuselage of a crashed American reconnaissance aircraft. Its camera was intact and the processed film showed Russian submarines on exercise. In June 1950 a live 24ft Soviet torpedo was hauled up with the cod and haddock. ‘Don’t knock cargo,’ Naval Intelligence HQ messaged them – somewhat unnecessarily. On other occasions described by Al Bowles the Lancer carried Commander J G Brookes, a senior officer in RN Intelligence, who was a close friend and former wartime colleague of the ship’s buccaneering skipper, Jasper Pidgen. Both men had distinguished war records on minesweepers and covert operations and had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Pidgen remained a commander in the RN Reserve after the war, while Brookes was tasked to help set up and co-ordinate Operation Hornbeam - the British fishing fleet’s watch on the Soviet Northern Fleet. Such was the sensitivity of the activities of Hull- and Grimsby-based spy-trawlers that successive governments denied their existence for four decades. The Lancer’s string of successful spy missions ended in 1954 with a dramatic escape through mountainous seas from a Soviet Border Guards gunboat. The gunboat proved less seaworthy than the trawler and, as she rolled heavily, two of the Russian sailors were tragically lost overboard. The Soviet government protested about the incident and Pidgen had his license suspended for three months. Naval Intelligence ‘sweetened’ this slap on the wrist by giving him a free pass to the local race courses. Meanwhile, the sensitive spying equipment was removed from his ship before she was reassigned to routine fishing off Iceland. Pidgen was rewarded with a brand-new German-built trawler. Capable of 18 knots, the ‘Coldstreamer’ was specially fitted out for the Barents Sea and the cloak and dagger Cold War spy game. As OffMSG recently revealed, the Soviet authorities suspected all UK fishing trawlers and RN Fisheries Protection vessels of involvement in intelligence-gathering in the Barents Sea. That most of them did exactly that remained a closely-guarded secret to the British public until the mid-1990s. But the fact that certain selected vessels were used for highly-sensitive "close approach" operations of the kind Al Bowles describes has never been acknowledged. Operation Hornbeam was clearly worth every penny to Royal Naval Intelligence and to US Naval Intelligence, with whom it shared the harvest and probably much of the costs. The Lancer Log with Explanatory Notes Lancer Log: About the Source Journalists working the Gaul story believe that Al Bowles wrote his accounts of each mission back in Grimsby after each trip. To maintain such records on board the Lancer would have been reckless, should they have fallen into Russian hands. In compiling the account published here, Bowles may have added some detail – and after forty years may have added it in the wrong place. It is hard to believe that Bowles had any motive for falsifying such a record. We believe the story represents a remarkable and true account of an amazing and courageous enterprise by a resourceful group of men. Mingus OffTHE SHELF The Broxtowe Files Government to Bin £22,000 Abuse Report The Department of Health is about to cancel a controversial report into satanic child abuse. Written by psychiatrist Valery Sinason and Dr Rob Hale of the Portman Institute in London, the study was originally commissioned in 1996 but the two authors have consistently failed to deliver any credible account of their findings. Delivery was originally scheduled within six months, so the promised report is now over three years late. Three drafts have already been rejected and the latest rewrite has been sent out by the DoH for peer review. But sources close to the Department are saying it has already concluded that the report is just not worth publishing. 'Drugs Czar' in Porsche Scandal Back in the mists of time, long before he reached the dizzy heights of Britain’s ‘Drugs Czar’, Keith Hellawell was an Assistant Chief Constable at Humberside Police. On the first day of his appointment, the keen high-flyer decided to reconnoitre his new territory with a series of unannounced visits to the various divisional headquarters. The first snap visit was to Tower Grange Police Station in East Hull. Mr Hellawell drove his sleek, shiny black Porsche 911 sports coupé up to the main entrance, parked neatly on the yellow lines and strode confidently in through the door. "Oi! You! Get that car moved!" shouted the desk sergeant. "What? But I’m the…" spluttered the force’s sleek and shiny new ACC. "I don’t care if you’re the fucking Knight Rider! Get the bloody thing shifted!" And before any of you jump to inappropriate conclusions, it must be pointed out that Keith Hellawell’s ‘her indoors’ in not short of a bob or two, as they say in Hull. |
15 Nov 2000