Tower of London

On 1 September 1939, the day that Hitler invaded Poland, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to open his new unit, which would secretly bug the conversations of enemy prisoners-of-war. Two days later, on 3 September, Britain was at war with Nazi Germany. Kendrick's initial team of just six officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force were all working for His Majesty's Secret Service. This special spying operation worked out of a self-contained area of the Tower that could hold up to 120 prisoners at a time. They used rooms in the Old Hospital Block, the Salt Tower and Broad Arrow Tower, all of which had been fitted with the latest bugging devices. The first German prisoners to arrive in late September 1939 were mainly U-boat crew who spoke about how they had been captured and what secret codes the German Navy used in communication. The first German pilot to be brought to the Tower was Wilhelm Meyer, whose plane was shot down over the River Thames in November 1939. In the Tower, he was first interrogated and then placed in the Salt Tower with another prisoner, in a room where their conversations were recorded.