Few people had a career that spanned two world wars and which involved some of the most dramatic and dangerous moments of the 20th century. Group Captain Frederick Winterbotham CBE, however, was one of them.
Following the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914, a young Frederick, then still just 17 years old and only freshly back from a trip around the world, enlisted in the ranks of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars Yeomanry. Soon, though, Winterbotham's thoughts turned in a new direction - and a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps followed. Having gained his pilot's 'Wings', Winterbotham was posted to 29 Squadron, then on the Western Front in France, in April 1917.
Early in 1930, Winterbotham rejoined the Air Staff with the official duties of a liaison officer; unofficially he was to operate an Air Department in Britain's Secret Service. It was in this role that, in the 1930s, he made a number of visits to Germany where he undertook a valuable intelligence and high-level espionage role among many of the top Nazis - meetings that he reveals here in dramatic detail. These encounters included Hitler himself.
During the war Winterbotham was based at Bletchley Park and reported directly to the head of MI6, Sir Hugh Sinclair, as well as his successor, Sir Stewart Menzies. He was subsequently appointed as the organisation's deputy and tasked with safeguarding the distribution and use of top secret intelligence throughout the Allied forces, which included the Enigma and Ultra transcripts. So important was this work, that Winterbotham would often report information they contained directly, and personally, to Winston Churchill.
Winterbotham remained an unsung war hero, because the cracking of Enigma was considered so secret it was not revealed for some thirty years after the war, when he published his best-selling book The Ultra Secret. This autobiography is the story of one man's remarkable service to his nation through two world wars.
