The Spy Who Raised Me Podcast
The Spy Who Raised Me Podcast
1950s posting to Hong Kong and Labuan
In this episode Iain Craigie talks to daughter, Jane Craigie, about his posting to Hong Kong with a secondment to Labuan. It was in the late 1950s, so WWII was still fresh in minds and diplomacy. Iain’s bases were Direction Finding (DF) Stations - rudimentary huts using HF radio. His Hong Kong posting was near the Chinese border. The conversation will take you through the importance of DF stations, how they were connected, the British intelligence interest in, and the secrecy of the Chinese; and the ‘fun’ these young RAF men had aged early 20s. Iain’s lucky still to be with us - one of their pranks was setting light to old WWII munitions’ dumps left behind by the Japanese on Labuan.
*please excuse the slight outages in audio - one of the dual mics I’ve been using has a fault. Must buy some new ones - any recommendations for an iPhone?
Thank you so much for listening, Jane Craigie
Welcome to the spy who raised me podcast conversations between a daughter and her father. Yes, you've guessed it, he was a spy. Hi, I'm Jane Craigie, and I'm here with my dad Ian Craigie. He had a career in intelligence. And as a family, we've always dined out on the fact that our dad as a spy. And as I've got older, I've just been completely mesmerised by some of the stories that he's told, told us, and it just seemed fitting to record it to podcast to share it with people to dad in the last podcast, we talked about your early career training, learning about surveillance at Bowman Hall UK. And your your first international posting was to the far east to Hong Kong and to LeBron again. In the early six, did you tell us a little bit about why those two locations were so important?
Unknown:Yes. I mean for the young for a young Airforce man going to Hong Kong I mean, that was the Far East and I had a rural upbringing. Very very exciting to be going to a place like a Comic Con. It was mystical it was full of stories and zones and arrived in Hong Kong absolutely amazed at the congestion and the bustle and so on and Chinese people and and the way they conduct themselves and so lovely people but just totally different. And it was it was exciting. I have to say that we It took us a week or two to get used to the whole thing. And we had to travel quite a bit by land rovers. Whoo hoo burst of Hong Kong to get to work and to do to find out, you know, basically what we had to do for the next years. And the villages I can remember very primitive, there were very high walls and very, very close then societies live within them. And it was fascinating to be driven through that especially going on at night to see places that the worst and that was that was one of the enduring memories of Hong Kong the smells and the people and the conditions were surviving and very, very interesting.
Unknown:And so you you talked about driving to work and you drove your your place of work was a direction finding Stay close, it was close to the Chinese border. And what is a direction find a direction
Unknown:finding station is, is a means of taking a bear going on, on target, so that if someone has has an hf which is high frequency radio facilities, then in a direction finding station, it's possible to set and with the technology that they have is to is to measure the angle that that the the signal is coming from. And with three or four of those similar stations, then it's possible to pinpoint the, the exact location of the die and that was that was a case with China so interested in so interested in China and emerging power, very secretive, very closed in by their geography very very popular list with with, with probably at that time the highest population of any country and to such an extent that of course, the little bit later after the, in the 60s and the 70s they had to try and limit the population but but their, their initial their initial targets were of of getting enough space for all the people that we had in China. And that was not easy. So they, they assumed this mantle of secrecy and they started invading bits of bits of land and, and jewellery and Mongolia and katzie in Tibet, which they are always interested to expand and so on which they've done remarkably diner or such. secretive politically and strategically. And economically, there was so much interest in what was going on. And this was really the first concerted effort that allies and other countries had and organised to be able to ventilate and see what was actually happening in China. And to this day, even it's, it's quite secretive. Although it is opening up, as has the size of the country, they have annexed so many different countries and on the borders main, you must always remember in a country like that with Himalayas and other geographical features, it's not easy to accommodate such a large population. But going back to the time that I was in the Air Force, a lot of countries during Australia we used to work with some Australian Air Force at the Hackers out there for security because it was still a quota to best use time but a lot of demonstrations and so
Unknown:and so you were how close to the Chinese border phone call?
Unknown:Yeah, we were, we were a few miles from the Chinese border. But the actual situation of the of the facility the DF that action finding heart was quite scary because it was surrounded by paddy fields which at certain times of the year, were flooded for planting rice and there was a catwalk that stretched from a little central rest Rest House thing we had which is within probably a few hundred metre, but in the dark we used to have to used to have to get a torch and walk along this catwalk with water underneath your feet, sometimes over the catwalk and had creates and different types of snakes, so you had to be very vigilant, walking along and avoiding the snakes. And we discovered that there some of the fire extinguishers that they had the time with carbon tetrachloride. If you squatted the the CTC, carbon tetrachloride at the snakes, they inhale the fumes and they slow down to the point where you could always pick them up without me. That was quite fun, but you had to be very careful. And of course, once you got into this facility, it was
Unknown:it was it wouldn't have
Unknown:hurt on stilts and you were there by yourself. It was possible for the paddy fields, the farmers who were who were farming fields to keep in along the catwalk. Look through the clear the glass window. And it was quite It was quite intimidating. We had there was one one guy who's come quite frequently the bad teeth a huge smile and he would look through the the window at three o'clock in the morning and flap his hands around pretty dang close it was it yes it was it was quite don't and not not hf station as China developed as a rapid race rate. The the hf facility wasn't required to some extent and I believe it's now it closed about 20 years ago.
Unknown:But at that time, it was vital for you collecting data and intelligence on on Chinese movements were vital. And you were saying that that you were positioned in this wooden hut on stilts. I should imagine young a bunch of young guys living in a resting house close to the to their with one another age 20 something you also had quite a lot of fun.
Unknown:Yeah, there were lots of things happening. And it was, I mean, in general terms, a bunch of young Air Force personnel, they would get up to all sorts of objects. And some of them would creep out the middle of the night with funny masks on and they would suddenly leap up at the windows and screeching, screeching and so on. So we got used to that, but it was the result of all sorts of things that that happened there.
Unknown:Did you get involved with the locals Did you get to know the local farmers
Unknown:we we got involved the local farmers who most of the time were using water buffalo to to plough the paddy fields And, and they used to plod along and they had a peculiar way of whistling to control the water buffaloes. Which whistle to go left whistle to go right very much like sheepdog trials and in the UK. So we learned how to how to whistle so that if they were supposed to go left we knew the whistle to go right so we used to a group of us go out and start in the paddy field farmers used to get so angry because they would have a water buffalo or to careering around the field going in the wrong direction. So we didn't do that too often, but but it was fun at the time.
Unknown:So Dad, you then spent some time in labuan on detachment from your posting in Hong Kong. Could you tell us a little bit about why you were there and why it was of such strategic importance to government?
Unknown:Yes, it was. It was small island. We're situated very close to Borneo Brunei in fact nearest and dearest area and in Borneo to lab one and there was interest by by various countries, including the allies of the situation and Borneo and Brunei in particular, where oil had been explored and they had began to to drill for oil and it became a very, very wealthy part of the world, but our interest was making sure that their supplies of oil we had some control over agreements with the Brunei and the then the Indonesian government. So that that was the main factor but the the direction finding facility there was really connected to that the Japanese had had annexed various parts of the If Indonesia and lab one was one of them, and there was evidence and very small island, it's it's really quite, quite small and in terms of the size of Borneo, but there, there were signs of the invasion by the Japanese. And the
Unknown:was that during the second
Unknown:world, Second World War and they had left masses of equipment and ammunition all over the island, some of it secrete it, some of it, some of it not. And that's a match of interest historical interest. That is where the Japanese High Command stained the papers for surrenders. There's no beautiful monument on the beach in lab, one that commemorate that tiny and you were telling me earlier that that you had quite a lot of fun With the munitions that were left behind by the Japanese and I'm surprised to hear that you're still here after that can you tell me a little bit about that? For sure that was that was young young Air Force people getting up to mischief but we found that there that the surrounds around the DF at the direction phoning he was partially in the jungle but but open enough to to inhibit the targets. And we found that there were piles of ammunition and guns at their level in various states of for repair answer. So what we used to do for a bit of fun weekends was collect Assange munition and we will get little bundles of it later bonfire, and then at the appropriate time checking this ammunition run like hell today. cover behind the tree is legit and fun to see. And afterwards you could see some of the trees that had caught the ammunition you know as a silly thing to do but it was very
Unknown:surprised that you're survived.
Unknown:Well, it was it was that was one of the dangers and and lab one but the other one was wildlife and it was just a proliferation of sharks and and turn off the off the coast and one of the sandy bays that we used to frequent. We used to use some of the the tanks of fuel tanks that that the aircraft were using because it's very strategic at the time for American aircraft come in and British aircraft come in. Probably as opposed to the oil industry, but also surveillance to see what was happening and Such China season so enemy this. At that time, I'm going to sharks and, and sea snakes and we used to convert these these cigar shaped wing tanks and to rafts so we'd have to have these in a few boards in the middle and we used to we used to British snorkels on and then paddler way across the roof there was a corollary and I can remember one occasion when when one of my colleagues from Scotland effect Tesco, and we were we were flapping a boat and you had three flippers and so if you got entered the water, the coral snakes used to come straight out but you're no no you could, you could defend yourself was to was to flap your slippers fast as you could and they would come to tear and go back but we were doing this one Day in and my friend garden was was he was very good swimmer and he was flapping about in the water but doing okay, and this Hammerhead came out and only about 10 feet from him and it did a sort of roll and it's huge extended head came up while up Dan Gordon got so so panicked that he started dropping in what whatsoever had to go and pull him out. It reminded me of it many years afterwards and you saved my life but anyway, that was that was one of the interesting things of being in a place like that
Unknown:jungle I mean, it's amazing jungle and
Unknown:the species that were there because it was isolated. And and much population was very small. It was Yeah, interesting times
Unknown:Yeah, and and the direction finding stations. They weren't just so you Were you were based in them in lab one and in in Hong Kong, but they were also really important in the UK a number of direction foundations, and one in particular that you mentioned in the last podcast Scarborough. So tell me a little bit about that.
Unknown:Yes, Scott Scarborough was was created that action finding facility was created a long long time ago because of interest and the Germans German High Command and so on. And it was set up on Yorkshire coast great close to the to the sea on a short distance away. And the prime purpose of that was to was to direct find out what was sailing and coming close to Britain like the submarines that were blowing their way up and down the coast and all sorts of different different Shipping destroyers, battleships and so on. And that in conjunction with other sites around the UK gave an extended baseline which allowed us to pinpoint the position of some of the targets and it became very, very effective in and for the allies, American and the British and some of the European countries to keep it keep some sort of track on what was happening. And of course, it meant that our ships could go in and depth charge and so on if they knew the exact position of submarine. The Bismarck was was one of the one of the targets and that was that was very much to do with the effort that Scott scara pretend detecting It's positioning exact position and feeding that into the various authorities. And of course it was it was torpedoed Bismarck was torpedoed which disappeared yes towards the end of the war. And that was I think that was headquarters at the time. The naval High Command so that was that was a fantastic thing to happen. point of view for the well being of the allies. It was huge Straub, but yes, no interesting.
Unknown:So Scarborough was responsible for finding the Bismarck was it?
Unknown:Yes, it was, it was Scarborough's work. Identifying that it was transmissions were from the Bismarck.
Unknown:the sinking of the Bismarck was a really important point in the Second World War, and it was all down to scabra.
Unknown:It was all down to skyrun in cooperation with other directors. binding sites and but they were instrumental in recognising that it was the transmissions that they were monitoring emanated from the Bismarck, and also helped the other stations who were listening to and measuring the the point in the compass and all of those things meant that the Allies knew exactly the position of Bismarck and they destroyed it. And it's sad
Unknown:and this news about Scarborough and the location the direction finding station, which was located at a little farm called Croft spa, only came to light in November of 2019 gc HQ released this information at its hundredth year anniversary, and it's just incredible that this, these stations that were so such as so much a part of your early career and using the technology that we had back in the 1960s and early that that they were just so important for for national secure I
Unknown:literally am in their little garden shed but the size of a guy with four, four area masts, which were not very, not very thick, not very big. So they escaped attention but they got so the local people got so used to them being there, and they were so low profile anyway that they just they landed in the background.
Unknown:absolutely fascinating. Well, if you ever needed any testament to the importance of intelligence and keeping me safe, these directional finding sample so thank you ever so much that was so interesting. There's so much more that we'll be covering over the future podcasts. And I think it's time for your lunch because have kept you here for an hour and I'm sure that people are going to be listening to this podcast will be ready to go and have a break themselves. And but we're gonna come back next, the next podcast podcast Put cast.
Unknown:And we'll talk about the the move that dad then made
Unknown:to another country. So, if you join us next time, we'd be very glad to have you. And thank you very much again that Transcribed by https://otter.ai