AERIAL INTELLIGENCE• 5ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE.A German pocket battleship that sought ref-
uge from the Royal Navy’s‘‘A’’ Forcein the harbor at Montevideo,
Uruguay, early in World War II. In what was to be one of the first
majordeceptionoperations of World War II, the Kriegsmarine had
been persuaded by the transmission of bogus wireless signals that a
much larger group of British ships was lying in wait for the Atlantic
raider to venture out of Uruguay’s neutral waters. The operation had
been masterminded by the localSecret Intelligence Servicehead of
station, Rex Millar, who also arranged for the British naval attache ́,
Captain Henry McCall, to make an ostensibly indiscreet telephone
call to Buenos Aires over a line known to be tapped by the enemy.
Convinced that theGraf Speestood no chance and was heavily out-
gunned, Captain Hans Langsdorff blew up his own ship in December
1939 on a direct order from Hitler and later committed suicide.
ADYE, SIR JOHN.Director ofGCHQfrom 1989 to 1996. Adye
joined the organization from Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1962. In
1972 he was posted to Washington, D.C., as the special United King-
dom liaison officer for two years.
AERIAL INTELLIGENCE.A key component of the British Intelli-
gence matrix, aerial observation originated in the ability to ‘‘see over
the other side of the hill’’ and to direct artillery using tethered,
manned hydrogen balloons and later developed into airborne recon-
naissance using biplanes equipped with wireless during World War I.
Prior to World War II, Sidney Cotton was employed by theSecret
Intelligence Serviceto fly photoreconnaissance flights along the Ma-
ginot Line for the French, and bothFred WinterbothamandCyril
Millsundertook clandestine missions over German territory.
In the postwar era, the Royal Aircraft Establishment participated
in an Anglo-American program of overflight or ‘‘ferret’’ penetrations
of Soviet airspace, intended to test radar defenses, provoke fighter
interceptions, and induce signal traffic for collection and analysis. In
addition to utilizing aircraft in the conventionalRoyal Air Forcefor
these assignments, collection of air samples—to detect the frequency
and composition of atmospheric nuclear tests—was conducted by
aircraft of the nationalized airline converted to carry special air fil-
ters.
In 1982 for theFalklandsconflict, aerial intelligence collection in