Free Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service by Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby

transmitted to Paris and Brussels, for it was obvious that the ‘Berthas’ had been built for no other purpose than the battering down of the frontier defences of Germany’s neighbours.
    How such a portentous but purely military secret came to be penetrated by a naval agent is a curious story, now told for the first time.
    A few prefatory remarks may be offered about the ‘Fat Berthas’ and other heavy artillery that the German general staff, as they fondly believed, had prepared unknown to the outer world. As far back as 1900, espionage reports on the newly constructed fortresses of Liège and Namur in Belgium, and of Verdun, Toul, and Belfort in France, in the building of which ferro-concrete and stout armour plating had been largely used, led the German general staff to overhaul its siege artillery. As the heaviest gun then available was the 8.2-inch howitzer, which was considered to be ineffective against the new defences, an order was placed with Krupps for several batteries of 12-inch ‘mortars’ (to employ the official designation, i.e. ‘ Mörser ’), the existence of which was kept a close secret. Ten years later, when the German staff had fully made up its mind to adopt the Schlieffen plan of invading France via Belgium, and it therefore became necessary to ensure the speedy reduction of Liège and Namur, lest, by holding up the German hosts, they should cause the whole scheme to go awry,Krupps were invited to submit specifications for the heaviest howitzers it was feasible to transport by road.
    Designs prepared by Professor Rausenberger, of Krupps’ ordnance staff, for a 16.5-inch (42-cm) howitzer were approved, and production began forthwith. In 1912 four of these monster guns were completed. They were housed in a building at Essen that was guarded day and night, and, save by the men who had built them and the crews selected to work them, their existence remained practically unknown outside the Ministry of War in Berlin.
    They were indeed formidable engines of destruction, hurling an armour-piercing explosive shell of 1,980 lb at a range of nearly 7 miles. Descending from the blue at a steep angle, these thunderbolts crashed irresistibly through the thickest, concrete, bomb proofs and the toughest armour plate.
    Each howitzer was moved to the scene of action by four tractors, hitched to trucks containing, respectively, the gun itself, the carriage, an assembly crane, and the crew. The terrible effects of their fire on the forts at Liège has been vividly described by eyewitnesses. But with the reduction of the Belgian strongholds their usefulness was at an end. In November 1914, they arrived on the Western Front, where they were soon found to be of no value against the entrenched positions that were the only targets in view. A few months later they were withdrawn.
    So much for the ‘Fat Berthas’ themselves. To this day, as we have said, it is widely believed that they took the Allies completely by surprise, whereas, in truth, their existence was discovered nearly a year before the war, and fairly complete details of them were given in an intelligence report transmitted to London in the autumn of 1913.
    From the practical point of view, no doubt, the information was not of much use. The British War Office had long known of the German plan to strike at France through Belgium, though the French authorities continued to turn a blind eye to the most positive evidence on this point. Belgium, even if apprised of the new German howitzers, would have had no time to reinforce the defences of Liège on the necessary scale. So there was nothing to be done but await the blow, which duly fell.
    Nevertheless, the story of the discovery of this secret deserves inclusion because of the singular and dramatic features it presents.
    In the late summer of 1913 an agent of our naval secret service, whom we will call Brown, was in Hanover, where he had several German acquaintances. He had, of course, perfectly good reasons