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Great Escapes: The story of MI9’s Second World War escape and evasion maps. Barbara Bond
Читать онлайн.Название Great Escapes: The story of MI9’s Second World War escape and evasion maps
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780008165062
Автор произведения Barbara Bond
Издательство HarperCollins
Your proposed sheet lines do not (I have noticed this on previous layouts of yours) take into consideration existing map series sheet lines, printing sizes or fabric sizes. . . . Production is much simpler if we stick to graticule sheet lines as opposed to your, rather vague, rectangulars.
He might also have added that the practice must have greatly increased the production costs. The point appears to have been disregarded by MI9 who continued with arbitrary sheet lines and numbering systems, exemplified by [Series 43], [Series 44] and [Series FGS].
MAPS BASED ON BARTHOLOMEW MAPPING (AND OTHER MAPS WITH SIMILAR SHEET NUMBERS)
As Christopher Clayton Hutton indicated in his book, Official Secret, MI9 initially worked in isolation from the military map-makers and chose rather to approach commercial map publishing firms directly for help. As previously described, Hutton had contacted the firm of John Bartholomew & Son Ltd in Edinburgh at the suggestion of Geographia in London. It was Ian Bartholomew, the Managing Director, who gave Hutton his first lesson in map-making. Hutton himself indicated that ‘thanks to the assiduities of the managing director and his staff . . . I learned all there was to know about maps’. Hutton was given copies of many of Bartholomew’s own maps of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, which then formed the basis of MI9’s initial escape and evasion map production programme. The waiving of all copyright charges for the duration of the war was a considerable financial gesture from Bartholomew since MI9 went on to produce in excess of 300,000 copies of the maps (details of the print runs are given in Appendix 1).
The maps are readily identifiable as using Bartholomew mapping since they are identical, in specification, colour and font style, to the company’s maps of the time. They are generally small-scale (1:1,000,000 or smaller), produced in three colours (red, black and grey/green) and without elevation detail. A few of the maps carry confirmation of their source since they clearly show the Bartholomew job order number relating to the original paper map along the neat edge of the silk map. The alpha-numeric code A40 which appears in the northwest corner of some copies of sheet F was very much a Bartholomew practice. The company introduced this code in the early part of the twentieth century, mostly on their half inch-scale mapping. The formula is a letter (either A, for January–June or B, for July–December) followed by a two-digit number representing the year of printing, so A40 indicates that the original paper version of this map was printed between January and June 1940.
Sheet K3, printed on rayon, was based on Bartholomew mapping, primarily showing northwest Africa.
Summary of Bartholomew series used by MI9
◊ 59 sheets identified with similar numbering
◊ 44 sheets based on Bartholomew maps
◊ 15 sheets use a similar numbering system but not based on Bartholomew mapping
◊ Coverage includes: Europe, Russia, Turkey, Middle East, North and East Africa, Scandinavia, South East Asia
◊ Scales: detailed maps 1:16,000 to 1:600,000 and regional maps 1:1,000,000 to 1:6,000,000
◊ Print dates identified: 7 January 1942 to 9 August 1943
◊ Printed on: tissue, silk, paper, man-made fibre (MMF), rag lithographic paper, bank paper
◊ Bartholomew-based sheets printed largely in three colours: black, red, grey/green
◊ Copies printed: 348,570
For full details of the maps, see Appendix 1.
The existence of a direct link between MI9 and Bartholomew is shown in a company memorandum dated 3 August 1940 from Ian Bartholomew to the company’s London office, on the subject of ‘Captain Clayton Hutton’ indicating that a letter had been received from him thanking them for the prompt attention in sending the plates MI9 had requested. Hutton’s original letter is not in the file. The memorandum indicates that Bartholomew not only handed over printed paper copies of the maps but also provided printing plates for their on-going reproduction. Further confirmation is contained in the first version of Hutton’s memoirs to be published (under a pseudonym) by the inclusion of black and white photographs of two silk maps which can be readily identified as sheets A and C in the MI9 inventory. The link between MI9 and Bartholomew is also confirmed by the existence in a contemporary Air Ministry file of a printed copy of a map which was identifiable as sheet A/Germany carrying a clear imprint of the Bartholomew company.
MI9 added to the maps what passed for a rather crude sheet identification system in the form of an upper case alphabet letter, often in conjunction with an Arabic number (for example C, H2, K3). However, even this practice was not consistent as the same numbering system was also applied to some sheets which were clearly not based on the Bartholomew small-scale maps. The largescale sheet of the port of Danzig (A4) at approximately 1:16,000, the large-scale map of Schaffhausen (A6) and the medium scale sheets of Italy (J5 and J6 at 1:275,000, J7 and J8 at 1:110,000) are six such examples. Sheet A4 Danzig appears to be an amalgam of the detail from a British Admiralty chart with additional ground intelligence added in the form of intelligence annotations. (This particular map will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 7.) Sheet A6 of Schaffhausen is based on large-scale, native German and Swiss topographic maps of the border area and sheets J5, J6, J7 and J8 appear to be based on large-scale, native Italian topographic maps. For the purposes of this study, however, they have been identified as one series based on the similarity of the sheet numbering system. Certainly it appears that the first small-scale map of the area was identified with a single alphabet letter, such as A, and that any subsequent map produced which was located in the same geographic area was numbered A1, A2, etc. in sequence. To prove that this was, indeed, the approach adopted would assume that, since sheets J5 to J8 all provided large-scale coverage of the Italian area, sheet J should be a small-scale sheet of Italy. This cannot, however, be proved conclusively, since no copy of sheet J has yet been found and no mention of it appears in the record.
Due to the nature of the fabrics used, the ink often bled completely through to the reverse of the sheet, as shown here with Bartholomew sheet A. Many of the maps were still printed on both sides however, making it very difficult for the escapers to decipher the detail.
Details from a selection of Bartholomew maps showing their symbology, level of detail, density of place names and scale information. They also show the problems for the user caused by show-through from the map printed on the other side of the fabric.
A further map included in this series (but which had no identifying letter) was a General Map of Ireland, produced in two sheets, printed back-to-back. This was almost certainly the map mentioned in the records as ‘Shamrock’, 500 copies being printed on fabric on 16 February 1942. There was apparently