162
destined for the Far East or the Persian Gulf resumed using the Suez Canal
route instead of sailing round the Cape of Good Hope. In response, pred-
atory German and Japanese submarines based in the Indian Ocean shifted
most of their operations northwards from the Mozambique Channel to
the Arabian Sea. At this far limit of their range from any Axis port, enemy
submariners who ventured westwards past Hormuz into the Persian Gulf
were generally viewed by CICI and the senior naval officer (SNOPG) with
extreme malice. It was assumed that such long-range missions were prob-
ably bent on wreaking infrastructural havoc in the Shatt al-Arab or on
landing enemy agents, arms, and supplies somewhere along the northern
Gulf coast, primarily to supply the pro-German Qashgai tribe of south-
western Persia.^29 Therefore, with no security officer (SO) or political
adviser (PA) stationed at Bandar Abbas, the vice-consul at Bushire,
T.E. Rogers, was urgently despatched to look into the situation at Jask.^30
With the aid of two Royal Indian Navy patrol ships,^31 sometimes swim-
ming ashore alone through shark-infested waters if the surf was too high
for a navy whaler to negotiate, the athletic Rogers investigated the situa-
tion enthusiastically for a couple of months in late 1942. He came to the
conclusion that, while there were undoubtedly some dubious personalities
in the locality, who might well have been smugglers, slavers, or even enemy
agents, nothing subversive could be attributed to them or to the curious
flashing lights that he had indeed observed near Jask.^32
By 22 December, in response to Rogers’s findings, the decision had
been made in Baghdad to send a special quasi-mercenary force of two
British officers, five British ORs, and 21 ‘mixed’ (Kurdish and Armenian)
ORs in early January 1943 to obtain information about and ‘eliminate
Germans or other Axis subjects’ on the Gulf coast.^33 This covert com-
mando unit, known as Force KALPAK, was in fact a highly trained guer-
rilla squad raised and trained personally by Terence Bruce Mitford
(D/H.45) of SOE to fight against any German forces that might enter the
Taurus Mountains in an attempt to invade the Middle East.^34
In February 1943, probably after receiving interim situation reports
from Mitford in the field, Wood and Dawson-Shepherd released a detailed
security paper outlining the historical Japanese interest in the region, spe-
cifically in the salt mines at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and in the estab-
lishment of a submarine base for operations against Gulf shipping,
especially oil tankers outbound from Abadan. It was clear that the Japanese
had reconnoitred the area and were continuing to do so, but that no
offensive U-boat operations were being conducted. The most interesting