Rodger Winn
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| Sir Charles Rodger Noel Winn[1] | |
|---|---|
| 22 December 1903 – 4 June 1972 | |
| Place of birth | Kings Norton, Staffordshire |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Service/branch | Naval Intelligence Division, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve |
| Rank | Captain |
| Commands held | Director, Submarine Tracking Room, Admiralty |
| Battles/wars | World War II - Atlantic |
| Awards | PC (1965) Kt (1959) CB (12 Jun 1947) OBE (1 Jan) 1943 LM (17 Jul 1945) |
| Other work | Junior Counsel to the Treasury (Common Law) (1954-1959) Judge of High Court of Justice, Queen's Bench Division (1959-1965 Lord Justice of Appeal (1965-1971) Lord Chancellor's Law Reform Committee (1963-) Criminal Law Revision Committee (1964-) Chairman, Permanent Security Committee (1964-1971) Committee on Personal Injury Litigation (1966-1968) Governor of St Thomas' Hospital and Chairman of Council of Medical School (1965-1970) |
Sir Charles Rodger Noel Winn (1903–1972) was a British judge and Royal Navy intelligence officer who led the tracking of German U-boat operations during World War II.
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[edit] Early life
Winn suffered from polio as a child, leaving him with crippled legs and stooped posture. Notwithstanding his disability, he obtained degrees at Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He was called to the Bar in 1928.
[edit] War service
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Winn volunteered for service as an interrogator of German prisoners. But soon he was assigned to the Admiralty's Submarine Tracking Room (part of the Operational Intelligence Centre - OIC), though still a civilian. Though new to the naval environment, he quickly came to understand U-boat tactics, and could frequently predict their actions. As a result, he was promoted to command the Tracking Room, as a temporary Commander in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. It is a measure of his ability that he received this rank and position without formal naval officer training, which was unprecedented at the time, and that he displaced his former superior. Winn's advancement was no surprise to his colleagues and he extended his influence within OIC.
During the German attacks on shipping off the U.S. coast, Winn was sent to the U.S. to put the British case. His arguments and expertise proved effective and he finally persuaded Admiral Ernest King (the formidable USN commander in chief) to implement a convoy system. [2]
Winn was a keen student of ULTRA intelligence. From ULTRA and his observations of U-boat movements, he deduced that German codebreakers had cracked the BAMS (British and Allied Merchant Shipping) code used by the Admiralty for convoy operations. In 1943 he finally persuaded the Admiralty to make the necessary revisions to BAMS. After the war, captured records showed that the German Navy's Beobachter Dienst (Observation Service) had been reading BAMS since the start of the war. [3]
In 1944, the Germans equipped the U-boats with snorkels, so that they could operate without surfacing. It was still extremely difficult for a U-boat to navigate without surfacing. But U-boats operating in the dangerous waters south of Ireland managed anyway. Winn guessed that they were using their depth sounders to locate and fix on a particular conical seamount. He arranged for a double agent to send a bogus message, warning the Germans of a new British minefield "where [the U-boats] go to fix their position." The Germans soon declared a zone 60 miles square, prohibited to U-boats and centered on that seamount. [4]
Winn's war-time work was crucial to the Allied success in the Second Battle of the Atlantic. Without this success, Britain might have been forced out of the war.
By the war's end, Winn attained the rank of Captain. His reputation and influence extended to the United States, where his Tracking Room was the model for a similar facility. He received an OBE in 1943, and the American Legion of Merit in 1945.
[edit] Post-war career
Winn returned to the Bar after the war. He became a judge in 1959. In 1965, he became a Lord Justice of Appeal, sitting on Britain's highest court other than the House of Lords. He also served on several important official and legal committees.
Rodger Winn died on 4th June, 1972.
[edit] References
- ^ Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) Officers 1939-1945. Retrieved on 2007-09-02.
- ^ Gannon, Michael (1991). Operation Drumbeat. New York: Harper Collins. ISBN 0-06-092088-2.
- ^ Kahn, David. The Codebreakers.
- ^ Montagu, Ewen (1978). Beyond Top Secret Ultra. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, pp.173-177. ISBN 0-698-10882-3.
