Noel Stephen Paynter
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Air Commodore Noel Stephen "Peter" Paynter, (26 December 1898 – 16 March 1998) was a
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
officer who served as chief intelligence officer of
Bomber Command Bomber Command is an organisational military unit, generally subordinate to the air force of a country. The best known were in Britain and the United States. A Bomber Command is generally used for strategic bombing (although at times, e.g. during t ...
. Paynter was a senior member of the team that ran Bomber Command under its formidable commander-in-chief, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, throughout the last three years of the Second World War. His reports, as head of intelligence, lay behind many of the raids on German cities, which remain the subject of controversy. Paynter insisted to the end that reliable sources had led them to believe that the Nazis had hidden large munitions stores in such historic towns as
Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
; Hitler thought that the Allies would not attack them.


Family

Noel Stephen Paynter had been born in
Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...
where his father, Canon F S Paynter, was rector of Springfield. But the family has a long history in West Cornwall, with a coat of arms dating from the 16th century and a place in Burke's Landed Gentry. He married Barbara Grace, daughter of artist Fredereick Hans Haagensen of London. They had two children, Francis and Rosemary. His brother Charles Theodore Paynter (
Lieutenant A lieutenant ( , ; abbreviated Lt., Lt, LT, Lieut and similar) is a commissioned officer rank in the armed forces of many nations. The meaning of lieutenant differs in different militaries (see comparative military ranks), but it is often ...
, R.N.) was killed in when it was sunk in 1918 by
coastal artillery Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of ...
near
Zeebrugge Zeebrugge (, from: ''Brugge aan zee'' meaning "Bruges at Sea", french: Zeebruges) is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges, for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international port of Bruges-Zee ...
.http://users.qld.chariot.net.au/~caffin_da/paynter/theop01.htm


Military career

Paynter had been carefully chosen for the post in 1942 after spending the previous three years as head of
RAF Intelligence Intelligence services in the Royal Air Force are delivered by Officers of the Royal Air Force Intelligence Branch and Airmen from the Intelligence Analyst Trade and Intelligence Analyst (Voice) Trade. The specialisation has around 1,200 person ...
in the Middle East – for which he had been mentioned in dispatches. He was to establish a close working relationship with his new chief, reflected in a painting by Herbert Arnould Olivier, now hanging in the office of the C-in-C RAF Strike Command, which shows Harris sitting at his desk with Paynter leaning across it at a briefing session. His loyalty to Bomber Harris, however, was evidenced more dramatically after the war, when Paynter was director of intelligence at the Air Ministry. Incensed by the Attlee Government's refusal to give Harris a place in the victory celebrations, he resigned his commission in protest. His decision meant losing £100 from his annual pension – a more significant sacrifice then than it sounds today. He was soon found a new job, however, as a director of
MI5 The Security Service, also known as MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), G ...
, and remained a senior officer with the Security Service until retiring at the age of 62 in the early 1960s. Paynter acquired the nickname 'Peter' while at Haileybury — and was never known by any other name thereafter. He went from school to the
Royal Military College, Sandhurst The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infant ...
, from where he was commissioned briefly into the
Essex Regiment The Essex Regiment was a line infantry regiment of the British Army in existence from 1881 to 1958. The regiment served in many conflicts such as the Second Boer War and both World War I and World War II, serving with distinction in all three. ...
before being transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. Paynter served as a young pilot on the Western front in the later stages of the First World War, then took part in the expedition to Russia in the turmoil following the Bolshevik Revolution. He never forgot the atrocities which were being committed by both the Red and White Russian armies on hapless civilians. But he brought back a White Russian decoration: the
Order of Saint Anna The Imperial Order of Saint Anna (russian: Орден Святой Анны; also "Order of Saint Anne" or "Order of Saint Ann") was a Holstein ducal and then Russian imperial order of chivalry. It was established by Karl Friedrich, Duke of Hol ...
, awarded following a plane crash in which he dragged his co-pilot to safety. The First World War also left him with the legacy of two chunks of
shrapnel Shrapnel may refer to: Military * Shrapnel shell, explosive artillery munitions, generally for anti-personnel use * Shrapnel (fragment), a hard loose material Popular culture * ''Shrapnel'' (Radical Comics) * ''Shrapnel'', a game by Adam C ...
, which remained in his body until he died. Paynter spent much of the 1920s as a pilot in the
North-West Frontier Province The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP; ps, شمال لویدیځ سرحدي ولایت, ) was a Chief Commissioner's Province of British India, established on 9 November 1901 from the north-western districts of the Punjab Province. Followi ...
of
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. Then after four years at RAF Halton, he switched to air intelligence, a transfer of interest which was to shape the rest of his career. He went to
Malta Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies ...
in 1934, returned to the Directorate of Intelligence at the Air Ministry, then left for
Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the Capital city, capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, List of ...
in 1939. He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath after the war. On retiring from MI5 to his home in rural Buckinghamshire, Peter Paynter entered the public life of his adopted county. He became at various times chairman.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Paynter, Noel Stephen 1898 births 1998 deaths Aerial warfare pioneers Essex Regiment officers Companions of the Order of the Bath English aviators Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst People from Chelmsford Royal Flying Corps officers Royal Air Force officers Military personnel from Chelmsford