The Ultra Spy

London: Macmillan, 1989. Second Printing. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. [6], 258 pages. Illustrations. Index. Some page discoloration. Includes chapters on First Chance; Second Chance; Far East; Australasia; Yeomanry; Royal Flying Corps; Prisoner of war; Oxford; Farming; Africa; Secret Service; Rosenberg; Hitler; The People and the Generals; High-Level Espionage; The Showdown; Detente; Erich Koch; Strength Through joy; Exposure; Spy Plane; The Ultra Plan; The Battles of France and Britain; The Mediterranean; Italy; Overture; Overlord; Victory; The End of the War and After; and Index. Winterbotham's life spans the whole of this century, and he has been involved in some of its most dramatic and dangerous moments. Frederick William Winterbotham CBE (16 April 1897 - 28 January 1990) was a British Royal Air Force officer (latterly a Group Captain) who during World War II supervised the distribution of Ultra intelligence. His book The Ultra Secret was the first popular account of Ultra to be published in Britain. In 1916 he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and became a fighter pilot. He was shot down and captured on 13 July 1917, in Passchendaele, and spent the rest of the war in Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp. After the war, Winterbotham began the process of building up an intelligence service for the RAF. His job was to gather information on the development of military aviation in hostile or potentially hostile countries. He recruited agents, and filed and analyzed their reports. In 1938, Winterbotham recruited Sidney Cotton to carry out some very successful aerial reconnaissance over Italy and Germany in 1939-40 in a private Lockheed 12A aircraft. In 1974, Winterbotham's book, The Ultra Secret, was published. This was the first book in English about Ultra, and it explained what Ultra was, and revealed Winterbotham's role, particularly with regard to the dissemination and use of Ultra. There had been mentions of Enigma decryption in earlier books by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk, Ladislas Farago and Gustave Bertrand. However, Winterbotham's book was the first extensive account of the uses to which the massive volumes of Enigma-derived intelligence were put by the Allies, on the western and eastern European fronts, in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and perhaps most crucially, in the Battle of the Atlantic. Winterbotham is well-known for his bestselling books The Ultra Secret and The Nazi Connection, which revealed the secret of the Ultra decrypts for the first time. He was Churchill's personal liaison with Bletchley Park, the country house where the Enigma codes were decrypted, and was at Churchill's right hand during some of the most important secret decisions of World War II. His autobiography contains many cameos of important figures of the time, as well as eye-witness accounts of historic events. His is a charming and delightful story.