Elinor Florence, Author

Bestselling Historial Fiction Author

The Woman With the X-Ray Eyes

The aerial photo interpreter who made the biggest impact in the Second World War was the brilliant, beautiful Constance Babington Smith.

(My wartime novel Bird’s Eye View is fact-based fiction about an aerial photo interpreter.)

Collage of two wartime photos, one portrait of smiling dark-haired Constance Babington Smith in an air force uniform, and the other an aerial photo of a bombed research station.

Constance Babington Smith is well-known in some circles, although most people have never heard of her. But she is credited with finding, on an aerial photograph, the V-1 flying bomb.

Her discovery set back the Nazi plans to annihilate Britain — followed by North America — with the first jet-propelled weapon of mass destruction in history.

Here’s a short history of her fascinating life.

Constance was born on October 15, 1912 into the British upper class, one of nine children of Sir Henry Babington Smith and his wife Lady Elizabeth. (One of her ancestors was Lord Elgin, who “acquired” – some would say stole — the Parthenon marbles.)

Constance was brought up in an English country home and educated by governesses and tutors (I’m picturing Downton Abbey here) and even sent to live with a French family at Versailles.

During the 1930s, she led a busy social life in London and worked for Vogue magazine, and a fashionable milliner. Perhaps that explains the hat with an aircraft ornament!

The photograph below was taken at an Aerodrome Garden Party on May 8, 1938. The caption reads: “A fashionably dressed crowd saw some of Britain’s latest war planes side by side with fast civil liners and pioneer machines, at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s garden party on the Great West Aerodrome at Hammondsworth, Middlesex. A unique and appropriate hat fashion, with aeroplane ornament, was worn by Miss Constance Babington Smith.”

Attractive dark-haired Constance Babington Smith dressed in a fur coat and a dark hat adorned with a miniature aircraft, standing outdoors in a crowd of people.

 

Babington Smith Makes Her Mark

The stage was set for a life of idle luxury. But Constance had far too much intelligence and ambition for that.

Drawn by the aviation craze of the 1930s, she began writing articles in Aeroplane magazine. And 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 Babington Smith, 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. (It is so posh that George Clooney had his wedding reception there!)

White stone mansion, the former RAF Medmenham, now Danesfield House Hotel, with bay windows and crenellated roofline, standing amidst an array of landscaped shrubs and trees.

Her brother Bernard Babington Smith, a mathematician, was already working there, interpreting night photographs.

No problem, she explained, was regarded as too difficult to solve; the interpreters set out to detect every secret a photograph might contain.

Here she is, laboring over a stereoscope. 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.

Close-up photo of Constance Babington Smith in her air force uniform shirtsleeves, bent over her stereoscope studying an aerial photograph.

The interpreters were a clever bunch. Constance Babington Smith worked with geologists, geographers, archaeologists, mathematicians, explorers, botanists, mapmakers and a host of others who interpreted huge numbers of photographs. (For example, during the preparations for the Normandy landings, seven million prints a month were sent for interpretation!)

She even appeared, very briefly and without credit, in a 1941 RAF film called Target For Tonight about a bombing raid. This is a still photo taken from the documentary.

Blurry still shot from a wartime documentary shows aerial photo interpreter Constance Babington Smith seated at a desk, smiling up at a man in an air force uniform standing beside her.

By 1943, Babington Smith was heading a department of eleven, analyzing photographs taken by high-altitude reconnaissance Mosquitoes and Spitfires, searching for developments in German secret technology.

Early that year, 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 there, and the interpreters at Medmenham were on high alert. But the photographs were baffling, and they didn’t even know what they were looking for.

One of their orders was to search for “anything queer.”

The interpreters still didn’t know exactly what the Germans were up to until November 1943, when a reconnaissance aircraft returned with a photograph that caused a sensation.

As Babington Smith 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.

Now, you may think this was a simple discovery. In fact, photo interpretation was a very intense business involving many thousands of hours of study and experience, not to mention a sort of sixth sense.

Here is the actual photograph as seen by Constance Babington Smith. Even with the helpful little white arrow pointing to the V-1 launching ramp bearing a flying bomb, nobody except the most skilled and dedicated interpreter could have found it.

Wartime aerial photograph of the research station at Peenemunde, Germany with a white arrow pointing at a tiny miniature aircraft, a V-1 bomb, sitting on the ground.

And this is what the deadly missile looks like at close quarters. The launching ramps were, of course, pointed straight towards London.

Color photo of a V-1 flying bomb sitting on a green metal launching ramp, trees on both sides, pointing into the distance.

Her discovery, together with an exhaustive examination of thousands of photographs of possible launch sites, proved that a flying bomb offensive was in the works.

The bombing of the launch sites had urgent priority, under the codename “Operation Crossbow.” Constance Babington Smith provided photographic material to assist targeting by Bomber Command, and by the end of 1943 Allied air forces had flattened all the launch sites detected in France.

But Hitler didn’t give up that easily. He was convinced that his 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, and shortly after D-Day in June 1944, Hitler unleashed his V-1 flying bomb assault on London. The V-2 rockets began to fall on London 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’s one of the women who give women a good name. And she did so with grace and elegance.

Frank Whittle, the inventor of the jet engine, toured RAF Medmenham and was quite enamoured by this unusual officer. Constance learned later that Whittle was subjected to much teasing about her, especially when he asked about the name of the perfume she always wore — Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue.

Crystal bottle of perfume marked L'Heure Blue sits on a table beside an elaborately decorated black and gold box with the label Guerlain.

She wore the fragrance, she said, 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. Here’s a photo of her in her section room, holding a slide rule. 

Woman with dark hair pulled into a bun, Constance Babington Smith, wearing an air force uniform, standing beside her desk studying a metal instrument in her hands.

This photo was taken from the book Women of Intelligence, by Christine Halsall, published in 2012. It’s an excellent non-fiction account of the hundreds of women interpreters who worked at RAF Medmenham.

Women of Intelligence: Winning the Second World War With Photographs, by Christine Halsall, book cover shows image of woman in blue air force uniform studying aerial photographs with a magnifying glass.

And here’s another photo of Constance Babington Smith, taken around the same time.

Slender smiling Constance Babington Smith with dark hair pulled back in a bun wearing an air force uniform stands at a table covered with aerial photographs and a stereoscope.

This photo was taken from the book Spies in the Sky, by Taylor Downing, published in 2011. It’s an overview of the Allied aerial reconnaissance during the war, both in the air and on the ground. (Both authors attribute many of their photos to The Medmenham Collection).

Spies in the Sky by Taylor Downing book cover bears image of five people in air force uniforms, two men and three women, bent over a table looking at maps, with three aircraft flying over the red title against a green background.

After her discovery, Constance Babington Smith was mentioned in dispatches and made an MBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in Britain.

But the war dragged on. She was transferred to the United States in 1945, where she performed photo interpretation during the final stage of the Pacific war. There she was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit.

I found this comic book hailing her as a heroine of the day, “The Girl Who Saved New York From Being Bombed.” It’s not even much of an exaggeration, since the V-weapons were destined for New York and other North American targets.

Colorful comic book page titled The Girl Who Saved New York From Being Bombed shows cartoon images of Constance Babington Smith showing aerial photos to men in uniform.

Colorful comic book page from The Girl Who Saved New York From Being Bombed shows cartoon images of Constance Babington Smith shows the bombing of Peenemunde amid much smoke and flame.

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.

Dramatic movie poster shows illustration of George Peppard hanging over Sophia Loren's shoulder amid a backdrop of orange searchlights and red explosions with the title Operacion Crossbow.

Constance stayed in America for several years, working 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.

After writing Evidence in Camera, she went on to research and write a book on test flying, and then five biographies, including that of the flyer Amy Johnson.

She never married, but in her later years she fell in love with Greece, travelling there frequently and joining the Greek Orthodox Church at the age of 60.

Never forgetting the part played by the Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft — and the huge debt owed to the men who made those dangerous, unarmed flights to take the photographs — Babington Smith was a founder of the Mosquito Memorial Appeal Fund, which preserved the prototype Mosquito at Salisbury Hall, St. Albans.

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.

Evidence in Camera by Constance Babington Smith, book cover has black and white photo of the author showing an aerial photograph to an unidentified male figure in the background, the title in white text against red background.

About Elinor Florence<br>

Letters From Windermere

I’m a lover of history and all things vintage. My passion for the past is reflected in my novels, my collections, my travels, my home on Lake Windermere, and the monthly letter that I have been sending to my dear followers for the past eleven years. You are warmly invited to join my list. I don’t ask for anything but your email address. However, you are welcome to tell me something about yourself because I love hearing from my readers.
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Lest We Forget

While researching my wartime novel Bird’s Eye View, I interviewed people who lived through the greatest conflict the world has ever known, both on the home front and overseas.
I uncovered some truly inspirational stories, indexed here by subject.
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