My wartime novel Bird’s Eye View is fact-based fiction about a prairie farm girl named Rose who becomes an aerial photo interpreter, inspired in part by the brilliant, beautiful Constance Babington Smith.
Welcome to Letters From Windermere, where I write about:
- HISTORY: mostly Western Canada history.
- WRITING: info about my writing journey.
- BOOKS: one book recommendation each month.
Letters From Windermere is free and will always remain free!
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The Big Switch
To all my subscribers . . . Letters From Windermere will switch to a new email delivery program next month. No action is necessary on your part, but please check your email Inbox, Junk or Spam mail folders on October 21, 2026 to make sure everything worked. Fingers crossed!
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Bird’s Eye View in Flight
My wartime novel Bird’s Eye View, due to be released again on November 10, 2026, is in many ways my favourite. Published in 2014, it was my FIRST novel, I did the MOST research for this book, it is the ONLY novel ever written about a woman in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and it describes the sacrifices made by ALL Canadians who were fighting for a common cause.
I know my Canadian history buffs will appreciate this novel, as will the romantics who can’t resist a good love story! (It still makes me cry every time I read it).
Bird’s Eye View is now available for preorder from any bookseller. Preorders give the book a boost during the first week it is released, hopefully onto the bestseller list.
This would make a great Christmas gift. Although it definitely falls into my “strong women” category, men also enjoy my research into wartime intelligence.
My new cover features the white cliffs of Dover, made famous by the Vera Lynn song.
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Is Bird’s Eye View the Same Book?
Bird’s Eye View is a brand new edition.
Based on the success of Finding Flora, my publisher decided that both my previous novels deserved a second chance.
(Wildwood was reissued in April 2026, and it is flying off the shelves.)
People who have already read the earlier books sometimes ask if they are a faithful repeat of the first edition. The answer is—not quite.
Wildwood is essentially the same book, but based on the feedback I received from readers over the last twelve years, I decided to change THREE small but important passages in Bird’s Eye View. I will be interested to see if anyone can identify those changes!
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My Inspiration for Bird’s Eye View
I was inspired by ALL the women who worked behind the scenes to support the fighting men. During my research, I interviewed both male and female veterans, and their stories can be found on my website by searching the index under Women at War.
A number of books have been released in the past few years about women doing interesting war work, but none, to my knowledge, about aerial photo interpreters. I think studying photos was far more interesting than breaking mathematical codes at Bletchley Park!
One of the best photo interpreters was a British woman named Constance Babington Smith. I’m sharing her story again in the hope that you will become just as intrigued by aerial photo interpretation as I am.
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The Woman With the X-Ray Eyes
Most people have never heard of Constance Babington Smith, but she is credited with finding, on an aerial photograph, the first jet-propelled weapon of mass destruction in history, invented by German scientists.
It was the V-1 flying bomb.
Her discovery set back the Nazi plans to annihilate Britain and hastened the end of the Second World War.
Constance was born October 15, 1912 into the British upper class, one of nine children of Sir Henry Babington Smith. She was brought up in an English country home and educated by governesses (picture Downton Abbey).
During the 1930s, she worked for a fashionable milliner that designed hats. Perhaps that explains the hat with an aircraft ornament! She wore it to the Royal Aeronautical Society’s garden party at Middlesex in May 1938.
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Constance Joins the War Effort
The stage was set for a life of idle luxury. But Constance had far too much intelligence and ambition for that.
When war broke out in 1939, she hastened to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. It didn’t take long before she was promoted to Section Officer, and asked to set up a new aircraft interpretation section for the RAF’s photographic reconnaissance unit.
In 1941 she moved with the unit to a mansion on the Thames River that during the war became RAF Medmenham. Read more here: Medmenham: Where the Magic Happened. (this gorgeous building is now a luxury hotel called Danesfield House Hotel, so posh that George and Amal Clooney had their wedding reception there!)
High-altitude reconnaissance Mosquitoes and Spitfires flew over the continent thousands of times, taking aerial photographs which were brought back here to be studied by interpreters.
They were looking for airports, railway stations, factories, and troop movements—anything that would help Bomber Command attack their most important targets.
Now, you may think this was simple. In fact, photo interpretation was a very intense business involving thousands of hours of experience, plus a sort of sixth sense.
Aerial photos were taken in pairs, a split second apart. When the two photos were placed under a stereoscope, the interpreter could see the terrain in three dimensions. Here is Constance, laboring over her stereoscope.
The interpreters were a clever bunch. Constance Babington Smith worked with geologists, mathematicians, botanists, mapmakers, and a host of others. They interpreted huge numbers of photographs. (For example, during the preparations for the Normandy landings, described in my novel, seven million prints a month were sent for interpretation!)
She even appeared briefly in a 1941 RAF propaganda film called Target For Tonight, about a bombing raid.
By 1943, Babington Smith was heading a department of eleven interpreters, searching for developments in German secret technology. Their attention was drawn to a place called Peenemünde, the site of a research station on the northern coast of Germany.
Read more here: My Visit to Peenemunde.
Aerial reconnaissance had indicated some unusual activity, and the interpreters at Medmenham were on high alert. But they didn’t even know what they were looking for.
One of their orders was to search for “anything queer.”
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Constance Finds the Elusive V-1
The interpreters still didn’t know what the Germans were up to until November 1943, when one photograph caused a sensation.
As Constance studied it through her stereoscope, she identified a launching ramp holding a tiny cruciform shape on rails, looking like a stunted aircraft.
It was a V-1 flying bomb, being prepared for a test flight.
Here is the actual photograph. Even with the helpful little white arrow pointing to the V-1 launching ramp, only the most skilled interpreter could have found it.
And this is what the deadly missile looks like at close quarters. The launching ramps were, of course, pointed straight towards London.
Her discovery, together with an exhaustive examination of thousands of photographs, proved that a flying bomb offensive was in the works.
The bombing of the launch sites had urgent priority, under the codename “Operation Crossbow.” By the end of 1943 Allied air forces had flattened all the launch sites detected in France.
But Hitler didn’t give up so easily. He was convinced that his jet-propelled weapons, known in German as “Vergeltungswaffen” or “Revenge” weapons, V-weapons for short, would win the war.
Secretly, the Germans continued to build more camouflaged launch sites. Shortly after the successful invasion of Europe in June 1944, Hitler unleashed his V-1 flying bomb assault on London, followed by the even more powerful V-2 rockets in September.
However, the V-weapon offensive never reached its full potential, thanks to the efforts of many people— including my much-admired Constance Babington Smith.
In a man’s world, she gave women a good name. And she did so with elegance. She wore her signature fragrance, Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue, to counteract the masculinity of her stark blue air force uniform.
Now I want to dab some of this French perfume (translation “The Blue Hour”) behind my ears, just because it will remind me of Constance Babington Smith.
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Constance Decorated
Because of her discovery, Constance was made an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire).
In the final stages of the Pacific war, she was transferred to the United States, interpreted photos there, and was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit.
This comic book hails her as a heroine, “The Girl Who Saved New York From Being Bombed.” It’s not much of an exaggeration, since future V-weapons were destined for New York and Halifax!
But by 1965, Babington Smith barely rated a minor role in this movie called Operation Crossbow. The film’s heroes (and this is pure fiction) were the double agents played by George Peppard and Sophia Loren, who went behind enemy lines to destroy the V-weapon launching sites.
Constance stayed in America for several years, worked as a researcher on Life magazine, and returned to England to settle in Cambridge. A prolific writing career followed, beginning with her own account of life at Medmenham called Evidence In Camera. I’m fortunate enough to own a copy!
She went on to write five biographies, including that of the flyer Amy Johnson. She never married, but in later years she fell in love with Greece, travelling there often and joining the Greek Orthodox Church.
Constance Babington Smith, who remained modest about her own part in the war, died in 2000 at the age of 87.
Rest in Peace, Constance Babington Smith.
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Coming Event
I will talk about my writing career and answer your questions at a special event hosted by Mulberry Bush Books in Qualicum Beach, B.C. from 2:30-4 p.m. on Tuesday, October 6. The event will be held on stage at the beautiful Berwick in downtown Qualicum, at 120 First Ave West.
Please note: Although everyone is welcome, tickets are free but seating is limited. To reserve your spot, visit Mulberry Bush Books or call the store at 250-752-9722. Books will be available to purchase, plus you may bring your own books to be signed.
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Book of the Month
To get you in the wartime mood, I recommend Pastoral, by Nevil Shute. This simple story is a hang-onto-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller, with a knee-melting romance. Royal Air Force bomber pilot Peter Marshall leads the most successful bombing crew at his airbase. Then he falls hopelessly in love with an attractive female officer who insists that duty should come first, with disastrous consequences.
I included this book in my own list of wartime fiction here: Best Wartime Fiction.
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Friends, I am down to the wire with my ranching novel, Grasslands, to be released in April 2027. The manuscript is now out of my hands, and it goes through various rounds of editing and design and distribution, all of which take time.
In the meantime, I have two events coming up in October, one in Qualicum Beach, B.C. and one in Diamond Valley, Alberta. Please check here for details: Coming Events.
All the very best from my house to yours, Elinor
