大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/大象传媒 Radio Nottingham on behalf of Pat Finn with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My father Mr Francis Joseph Finn, whose call sign was G6UF, had been a radio ham since 1920. At the out break of WW2 the Post Office confiscated all his radio gear including his transmitter and receiver. Unable to join the armed forces due to being in a reserved occupation, he was a coke ovens shift foreman making coke and gas for the steelworks of Rotherham and Sheffield, he was asked to join the radio branch of counter-intelligence. He carried out this unpaid work for five years outside his normal working hours at the coke ovens. As children we were never allowed into his radio room, it was the sitting room, as it was always locked and the curtains closed. I cannot remember the curtains ever being open during the war, top-secret stuff.
He would listen to radio signals on the short waves. These radio signals always in Morse code were written down on special message pads. The radio signals were a series of short batches of letters and numbers all jumbled up and making no sense. The person transmitting these radio signals would then change frequency, send another short batch of letters and numbers and then switch frequency again. This would be done several times so the person intercepting would only receive part of the message. These messages were then sent to Barnet in Hertfordshire for de-coding. Most of the radio signals were from our own armed forces.
The only known important radio interception my father had with counter-intelligence was from a German spy operating from a hotel cellar in Killiney, just outside Dublin on the East Coast of Ireland. When my father鈥檚 intercepted message was decoded, counter-intelligence realised its importance. This spy was transmitting messages to a German submarine in the Irish Sea. He was caught, imprisoned in the Tower of London before being tired and hung.
My father was presented a certificate for his contribution.

Memo. In 1952, to celebrate their silver wedding, my parents went on a Wallis Arnold tour to Ireland. By coincidence they stopped at the same hotel where the German spy was caught. They were unaware of this until the guide showing the guests around told them the story of a spy and pointed out the cellar from where he had been operating. The time and dates were one and the same.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.