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Comment: 2000 Greenhill Books. Hardcover with dj. Light scuffing and toning/discoloration to dj. Binding is tight. Text is clean. ISBN: 9781853673986. Ready to ship.
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Patrick Beesly
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Very Special Intelligence Hardcover – June 1, 2000

by Patrick Beesley (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 27 ratings
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Operational Intelligence Centre was the nerve centre of the British Admiralty in World War II, dedicated to collecting, analyzing and disseminating information from every possible source which could throw light on the intentions and movements of German naval and maritime forces. OIC labored tirelessly, despite early disappointments, to supply the Navy and RAF with the intelligence that would enable them to defeat Hitler and his admirals. Patrick Beesly, an insider drawing on considerable personal knowledge, reveals, in full, the compelling story of OIC. He throws light on dramatic episodes such as the hunt for the Bismarck; the tragedy of Convoy PQ17; the long war against the U-boats; and on many other significant events critical to the course of the war. Very Special Intelligence, here presented with a new Introduction which sets the work in context and takes account of new research, is the fascinating story of an organization which contributed so much to Allied success.
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  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Greenhill Books
  4. Publication date
    June 1, 2000
  5. ISBN-10
    1853673986
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1853673986
  7. See all details
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4.5 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Metallurgist
    5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and recommended to serious students of WWII
    Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2013
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    This book details the work of the Operational Intelligence Center (OIC) of the British Admiralty during WWII. It was written by one of the members of this group and contains a lot of anecdotes pertaining to what went on there during the war. It is not, however, an anecdote book, rather it is a very serious study of the operation of this organization and its impact on WWII.

    The OIC was responsible for coordinating the information gathered by many different sources - the codebreaking efforts of Bletchley Park, the results of direction finding analysis of German transmission, and even the messages from spies in occupied France and from intelligence obtained from neutral Sweden. This information was then forwarded along with the OIC analysis of what was learned. The book discusses the operation of this unit, the personnel who served in it as well as the impact of its findings, which included the engagements with German surface ships and most importantly with their U-boats.

    This book filled in the gap between the work at Bletchley Park and the actions of the Allied Navies in combating the German Navy. While over first published in 1977 (the particular edition reviewed here is the 2006 reprint of this 1977 book). This new edition also contains a 20 page Afterwards by Ralph Erskine that discusses the Enigma machine and methods used to decrypt messages sent on it. It also contains a brief discussion of the German codebreaking of British messages, American contributions to the codebreaking efforts and a discussion of German reviews of the security of the Enigma machine and their conclusion that it was secure, when it was not.

    I recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in the history of WWII, particularly in regards to the naval war against Germany and to those interested in the Enigma machine and in codebreaking.
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  • TC
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great history and Essential reading for Naval Officers and Intelligence Professionals
    Reviewed in the United States on January 22, 2017
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    Essential reading for every Naval Intelligence Professional! Beasley's book is a timeless explanation of the art of operational intelligence and is still relevant today.
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  • Arkansaw Traveler
    5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely a Top Book -- Should be on the Shelf of all CIA Personnel
    Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2009
    I stumbled onto this book by accident while researching the "Channel Dash" by the German ships contained at Brest. Wow! This book describes in detail the Operational Intelligence Centre of the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty (British) in World War II and exceeded my highest expectations.

    The predecessors to OIC from World War I are developed initially (everyone knows about "Blinker Hall" and the Zimmermann Telegram), as well as the formation of the centre with its fits and starts. Then comes the meat -- reading the German naval code used on the Enigma machines and interpreting this intelligence (or lack thereof) for effective action in naval operations.

    I was struck by several things. First that the crypto personnel needed to work closely with operations so the right questions could be asked and the intelligence interpreted properly, secondly that the information needed to be properly evaluated and trusted, and thirdly that there had to be a small, gifted group of dedicated professionals entrusted with making this all work instead of relying on a large bureaucracy with ossified rules and procedures. An additional point might be that wartime is vastly different from peacetime and those individuals used to running a bureaucracy in peacetime are probably of limited use in a fast paced, risk-taking wartime operation.

    I am reminded of the old rule that if one computer programmer can write a program in one day, then two programmers will take three days to write the program, and three programmers together will probably never get it done. All true, and very applicable to intelligence operations.

    Bureaucracies exist to provide employment, spread the risk, and appear to do the job without actually doing much. That gets people killed in wartime. In the case of the British OIC, a very small group of individuals, maybe slightly weird but very good at what they did, carried the load and performed brilliantly. By comparison, today's CIA bureaucracy couldn't find a haystack in a small pasture with only one haystack. The report would go through seven levels and confirmation would be required at each level so each officer could show he was doing his job. By the time the report gets to the person needing it, the cattle would have eaten all the hay.

    Read Robert Steele's fine review to flesh out the lessons of this book, but like him I was struck by the applicability of this story to the present day.

    The duel between Doenitz and his B.Dienst and the OIC was frankly exciting. It took some time for the British to pull it all together, and the British operational failures in the Norwegian campaign pointed up the need for a closer relationship between intelligence gathering, interpretation and operations. Ultra was not the end-all that some have proported it to be -- especially when the time was critical and decrypts had to wait on breaking the new keys. At those times negative intelligence was critical followed by inspired guessing based on an individual's "feel" of his opponent. At times, this was very much a poker game and it was necessary to play the opponent's cards and not your own. Lastly, integration of bits and pieces of intelligence was needed, some by operatives keeping watch on the ships at Brest (for example), radio direction-finding, traffic volume, and many other often minute indications of what the enemy was doing.

    The point was also made that the Americans turned down the assistance by the British in forming anti-submarine procedures. That was a reference to Admiral King, of course, a well-known Anglo-phobe. In part I must rise to his defense. Throughout the war British officers as a class looked down at their American counterparts as rich, bumbling amateurs -- an attitude that went over poorly on King and others. As a result, cooperation as well as learning from British experience lagged, and the American East Coast became a killing ground for aggressive German submarine captains during 1942. But both sides were at fault, as they would be later in the land operations when Montgomery in particular treated Americans with contempt and disdain.

    In short, this is an important work, not only for historians of naval and intelligence operations in World War II, but as a example of how to do it right (finally). Of course, the OIC was not perfect, but even its failures are instructive. On top of that, the book is frankly exciting to read, and author Beesly does a superlative job in telling his story.

    Highly recommended.
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Edward B. Crutchley
    5.0 out of 5 stars A competition of wits and resources
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 1, 2014
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    This is a gripping and tortuous insider account of how a combination of talent, organisation and improving resources arrived at anticipating German navy moves during the WW2. It inevitably largely focuses on the 6-year Battle of the Atlantic and the struggle against the U-Boats and occasional sorties of equally deadly battleships. The book precedes most of what has been written on Ultra, but usefully talks extensively of how the information gleaned was used. Vital convoys dangerously travelled between the USA and Britain at a rate of one every two days, and others to Russia. In a competition of wits and resources, the man in charge of U-boat tracking, Godfrey Winn, developed the ability to read Admiral Donitz’s mind. As the U-boat population grew to several hundred, half of which might be operational at any one time, and in part supported for fuel and armament by underwater ‘Milch Cows’, a centralised operations room underneath the Admiralty sifted through a combination of radar direction tracking, secret reports of departures from German naval bases, code-breaking from Bletchley Park, and information from the Canadians and Americans, in order to see the picture. By grouping often vague and sometimes contradictory pieces of information from different sources, German moves became increasingly visible and predictable, but the pressure was relentless and marred by as many failures as successes. It reached a climax in March 1943 when 95 ships were lost, one grouped convoy losing 21 ships out of 100 to a forty U-boat Wolf Pack. The hidden struggle between cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park and B. Dienst met a close shave when the Germans changed from 3 to 4 rotors on their Enigma machines in March 1943, but the outage was fortunately short-lived. Allied successes thereafter increased, and for a while Donitz even gave up attacking convoys. New developments included German acoustic torpedoes (derogatorily referred to as Gnats), ‘Foxer’ devices towed by Allied ships in order to counter them, pressure-sensitive (oyster) mines developed by both sides, and Allied 10 cm radar capable of spotting small objects on the surface, and in the later stages, German introduction of snorkels and high-speed submarines. By the end of 1943 less than a quarter of U-Boat commanders were expected to last a year, and over the entire war German submariners suffered 28,000 casualties out of an effective of 39,000. The war of attrition gradually favoured the Allies, the Americans created their 10th Fleet (an organisational move rather than materiel), Iceland and the Azores counted among important staging posts. Terrific reading.
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  • Kittycare
    2.0 out of 5 stars Disgusting condition
    Reviewed in Canada on June 6, 2022
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    Double broken bind, dried food stuck to pages and falling out of pages. Cover like a public hand rail.
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  • M. Oon
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Very Special Book written by an insider
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 17, 2017
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    A very special book. This book gives the insights to how the british intelligence applied information from the various sources. Very little has been said about this. There has been more emphasis in the History books on the Decrypting Unit at Bletchley. Without the application of the information from Bletchley, this decrypted information would have been useless. The book is written from a participant in the intelligence unit. Therefore, you can vouch for the authenticity of the information.
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  • Ymaohyd
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 8, 2015
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    hard going but fascinating
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  • jim
    4.0 out of 5 stars participant reality
    Reviewed in Canada on October 20, 2006
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    This book was written in 1977 by a paticipant in the British Navy's Operational Intelligence Center during WW2.

    Aditional information and commentary was done in 2000. The book is about the gathering of all source intelligence and how it was used.

    It involves personalities more than technical detail and provides a good background on the intelligence of naval warfare in the Atlantic ocean.

    I feel it was well balanced and down to earth.

    eight pages of pictures included
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