Oslo Report - Divulging The Report and The Author

Divulging The Report and The Author

On February 12, 1947, Jones gave an invited talk to the Royal United Service Institution that publicly revealed for the first time the existence and importance of the Oslo Report.

It told us that the Germans had two kinds of radar equipment, that large rockets were being developed, that there was an important experimental establishment at Peenemünde and that rocket-driven glider bombs were being tried there. There was also other information—so much of it in fact that many people argued that it must be a plant by the Germans, because no one man could possibly have known all of the developments that the report described. But as the War progressed and one development after another actually appeared, it was obvious that the report was largely correct; and in the few dull moments of the War I used to look up the Oslo report to see what should be coming along next.

This part of his talk caught the eye of the press and it was widely publicized. He revealed some of the Report's contents, holding back many details to test anyone claiming authorship. But neither Henry Cobden Turner nor Mayer heard of the talk at the time.

By chance, both Turner and Jones were on the same voyage of the Queen Mary in 1953, and one evening, they sat at the same dinner table. They found much in common and Jones invited Turner to a dinner at his London club. On December 15, 1953 the dinner was arranged, during which one of Jones's friends, Professor Frederick Norman of King's College London, excitedly shouts "Oslo!!". Turner and Norman privately tell Jones over after-dinner drinks that Turner had heard from his old German friend, Hans Ferdinand Mayer, at the beginning of the war in a letter written from Oslo. Upon learning of Mayer's background and position at Siemens, Jones decided to open a correspondence with Mayer using Turner as a middleman.

Jones and Mayer met at a 1955 radar conference in Munich and had dinner with Turner at Mayer's house. Jones quickly determined that Mayer had indeed written the Oslo Report. They agreed that immediately divulging who had written the Oslo Report would serve no purpose and both agreed to silence. They continued to exchange letters, with Mayer providing more details about how he wrote it. Jones decided to write a book about his wartime scientific intelligence work for MI6, but it did not appear until 1978. In it, he discussed how he used the Oslo Report, but did not reveal the author.

Inevitably, the question will be asked regarding my own ideas about the identity of the Oslo author. I believe that I know, but the way in which the identity was revealed to me was so extraordinary that it may well not be credited. In any event, it belongs to a later period, and the denouement must wait until then.

Mayer died in 1980 without being publicly acknowledged as the author. Jones's sequel, published in 1989, revealed the author's identity.