Operation Jungle was a programme by the British

Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intellige ...

(MI6) early in the Cold War from 1949 to 1955 for the

clandestine Clandestine may refer to: * Secrecy, the practice of hiding information from certain individuals or groups, perhaps while sharing it with other individuals * Clandestine operation, a secret intelligence or military activity Music and entertainme ...

insertion of intelligence and resistance agents into

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

and the Baltic states. The agents were mostly Polish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian exiles who had been trained in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and Sweden and were to link up with the anti-Soviet resistance against the communist governments (the

cursed soldiers The "cursed soldiers" (also known as "doomed soldiers", "accursed soldiers" or "damned soldiers"; pl, żołnierze wyklęci) or "indomitable soldiers" ( pl, żołnierze niezłomni) is a term applied to a variety of anti-Soviet and anti-communist ...

, the

Forest Brothers The Guerrilla war in the Baltic states was an armed struggle which was waged by the Latvian, Lithuanian, and Estonian partisans, called the Forest Brothers (also: the "Brothers of the Wood" and the "Forest Friars"; et, metsavennad, lv, mež ...

). The naval operations of the programme were carried out by German crew-members of the

German Mine Sweeping Administration The German Mine Sweeping Administration (GMSA) was an organisation formed by the Allies from former crews and vessels of the Nazi Germany's ''Kriegsmarine'' for the purpose of mine sweeping after the Second World War, predominantly in the North Sea ...

under the control of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against ...

. The American-sponsored Gehlen Organization also got involved in the draft of agents from Eastern Europe. However, the MGB penetrated the network and captured or turned most of the agents.

History

In the late 1940s MI6 established a special center in

Chelsea Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to: Places Australia * Chelsea, Victoria Canada * Chelsea, Nova Scotia * Chelsea, Quebec United Kingdom * Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames ** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...

, London, to train agents to be sent to the Baltic states. The operation was codenamed "Jungle" and led by Henry Carr, director of the Northern European Department of MI6, and Baltic section head Alexander McKibbin. The Estonian group was led by

Alfons Rebane Alfons Vilhelm Robert Rebane, known simply as Alfons Rebane (24 June 1908 – 8 March 1976) was an Estonian military commander. He was the most highly decorated Estonian military officer during World War II, serving in various Wehrmacht and Waffe ...

, who had also served as a

Waffen-SS The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...

''Standartenführer'' during Estonia's occupation by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, the Latvian group led by former Luftwaffe officer Rūdolfs Silarājs and the Lithuanian group led by history professor Stasys Žymantas. The Gehlen Organization, an intelligence agency established by American occupation authorities in West Germany in 1946 and manned by former members of the Wehrmacht's '' Fremde Heere Ost'' (Foreign Armies East), also recruited agents from East European émigré organizations for the operations. The agents were transported under the cover of the " British Baltic Fishery Protection Service" (BBFPS), a cover organization launched from British-occupied Germany, using a converted former World War II

E-boat E-boat was the Western Allies' designation for the fast attack craft (German: ''Schnellboot'', or ''S-Boot'', meaning "fast boat") of the Kriegsmarine during World War II; ''E-boat'' could refer to a patrol craft from an armed motorboat to a lar ...

. Royal Navy Commander Anthony Courtney had earlier been struck by the potential capabilities of former E-boat hulls, and John Harvey-Jones of the Naval Intelligence Division was put in charge of the project and discovered that the Royal Navy still had two E-boats, P5230 and P5208. They were sent to

Portsmouth Portsmouth ( ) is a port and city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. The city of Portsmouth has been a unitary authority since 1 April 1997 and is administered by Portsmouth City Council. Portsmouth is the most dens ...

where one of them was modified to reduce its weight and increase its power. To preserve deniability, a former German E-boat captain, Hans-Helmut Klose, and a German crew from the German Mine Sweeping Administration were recruited to man the E-boat. Agents were inserted into

Saaremaa Saaremaa is the largest island in Estonia, measuring . The main island of Saare County, it is located in the Baltic Sea, south of Hiiumaa island and west of Muhu island, and belongs to the West Estonian Archipelago. The capital of the isla ...

, Estonia, Užava and

Ventspils Ventspils (; german: Windau, ; see other names) is a state city in northwestern Latvia in the historical Courland region of Latvia, and is the sixth largest city in the country. At the beginning of 2020, Ventspils had a population of 33,906. It ...

, Latvia, Palanga, Lithuania and

Ustka Ustka (pronounced ; csb, Ùskô; german: Stolpmünde) is a spa town in the Middle Pomerania region of northern Poland with 17,100 inhabitants (2001). It is part of Słupsk County in Pomeranian Voivodeship. It is located on the Slovincian Coast o ...

, typically via Bornholm,

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...

, where the final

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

signal In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The '' IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing' ...

was given from

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

for the boats to enter the

territorial waters The term territorial waters is sometimes used informally to refer to any area of water over which a sovereign state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the territorial sea, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone, and potent ...

claimed by the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. The boats proceeded to their destinations, typically several miles offshore, under cover of darkness and met with shore parties in

dinghies A dinghy is a type of small boat, often carried or towed by a larger vessel for use as a tender. Utility dinghies are usually rowboats or have an outboard motor. Some are rigged for sailing but they differ from sailing dinghies, which ...

' returning agents were received at some of these rendezvous.

Phases

The operation evolved into a number of phases. The first transport of agents occurred in May 1949, with six agents boarding the boat at

Kiel Kiel () is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 246,243 (2021). Kiel lies approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the southeast of the Jutland ...

. The vessel was manned by Klose and a German crew. The British officers on board, Lieutenant Commanders Harvey-Jones and Shaw, handed over the command of the boat to Swedish officers in Simrishamn, Southern Sweden. The German crew then proceeded via the cover of

Öland Öland (, ; ; sometimes written ''Øland'' in other Scandinavian languages, and often ''Oland'' internationally; la, Oelandia) is the second-largest Swedish island and the smallest of the traditional provinces of Sweden. Öland has an area ...

Island, then east to Palanga, north of

Klaipėda Klaipėda (; ; german: Memel; pl, Kłajpeda; russian: Клайпеда; sgs, Klaipieda) is a city in Lithuania on the Baltic Sea coast. The capital of the eponymous county, it is the third largest city and the only major seaport in Lithuania ...

, arriving around 10:30pm. Within 300m of shore the six agents disembarked in a rubber dingy and made their way to shore. The boat returned to Gosport, picking up the British officers at Simrishamn and refueling at Borkum. Following the success of the initial operation, MI6 followed up with several more improvised landings via rubber dingy. Two agents were landed at

on 1 November 1949; three agents landed south of Ventspils on April 12, 1950 and two agents in December at Palanga. In late 1950, British Naval Intelligence and MI6 created a more permanent organisation with Klose hiring a crew of 14 sailors and basing the boat at Hamburg-Finkenwerder. The "British Baltic Fishery Protection Service" was thus invented as a credible cover story given the harassment of West German fishermen by the Soviets. The operation evolved with a secondary task of visual and electronic reconnaissance of the Baltic coast from

in Estonia to

Rügen Rügen (; la, Rugia, ) is Germany's largest island. It is located off the Pomeranian coast in the Baltic Sea and belongs to the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The "gateway" to Rügen island is the Hanseatic city of Stralsund, where ...

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

. For this purpose the boat was re-fitted with additional fuel tanks for extended range and an extensive antenna suite and American equipment for

COMINT Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

and

ELINT Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

. During this phase, four landings were performed between 1951 and 1952 with 16 agents inserted and five agents retrieved. In August 1952, a second E-boat was put into service as a refuelling and supply vessel and consort for the

SIGINT Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

operations, under the command of Lieutenant E. G. Müller, a former executive officer who served under Klose during World War II. Eight Polish agents were inserted during this period using sea-borne balloons. During the period 1954-55, three new German-built motorboats of the ''Silbermöwe'' class replaced the old E-boats. They were christened ''Silvergull'' (German name ''Silbermöwe,'' commanded by H. H. Klose), ''Stormgull'' (German name ''Sturmmöwe,'' commanded by E. G . Müller) and ''Wild Swan'' (German name ''Wildschwan'', commanded by D. Ehrhardt). They were built at the

Lürssen Lürssen (or Lürssen Werft) is a German shipyard with headquarters in Bremen-Vegesack and shipbuilding facilities in Lemwerder, Berne and Bremen-Fähr-Lobbendorf. Lürssen designs and constructs yachts, naval ships and special vessels. Tradi ...

dockyard in Bremen-Vegesack for the West German Border Police, but under the pretense that the boats exceeded the speed allowed by the treaty of Potsdam, French and British authorities confiscated the vessels for Klose's missions. In February 1955, during a SIGINT sweep from Brüsterort to

Liepāja Liepāja (; liv, Līepõ; see other names) is a state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest-city in the Kurzeme Region and the third-largest city in the country after Riga and Daugavpils. It is an important ice-f ...

, there was a 15-minute engagement off Klaipėda with a Soviet patrol boat; Ehrhardt's ''Wild Swan ''was fired on by the Soviets but the German boat slipped away at top speed.

Operation compromised

The operation was severely compromised by

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

counter-intelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or ot ...

, primarily through information provided by the British "

Cambridge Five The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted ...

". In the extensive counter-operation "Lursen-S" (named for

, the manufacturer of the E-boats), the MGB/

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

captured or killed nearly every one of the 42 Baltic agents inserted into the field. Many of them were turned as double agents who infiltrated and significantly weakened the Baltic resistance. One of the agents sent to Estonia and captured by the KGB, Mart Männik, wrote an autobiography ''A Tangled Web: A British Spy in Estonia,'' which was published after his death and has been translated into English. The book gives an account of his experiences throughout and after the unsuccessful operation. MI6 suspended the operation in 1955 due to the increasing loss of agents and suspicions that the operation was compromised. The last mission was a landing on Saaremaa in April 1955. While the overall MI6 operation in Courland is regarded as a fiasco, Klose missions are considered successful, as far as the

and the naval aspects of his incursions are concerned. The motorboats were handed over to the new

German Navy The German Navy (, ) is the navy of Germany and part of the unified ''Bundeswehr'' (Federal Defense), the German Armed Forces. The German Navy was originally known as the ''Bundesmarine'' (Federal Navy) from 1956 to 1995, when ''Deutsche Mari ...

in 1956.

Notes

References

* Hess, Sigurd. ''The British Baltic Fishery Protection Service (BBFPS) and the Clandestine Operations of Hans Helmut Klose 1949-1956.''

Journal of Intelligence History The ''Journal of Intelligence History'' is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal covering the history of espionage. It was established in 2001 and is the official journal of the International Intelligence History Association. The journal is p ...

vol. 1, no. 2 (Winter 2001
abstract

British Military Powerboat Trust, (2004)
Operation Jungle: the failed British SIS mission in the Baltic states 1945 - 56 from latvianhistory.com
* (In Lithunaian)

Arvydas Anušauskas Arvydas Anušauskas (born 29 September 1963) is a Lithuanian politician and historian. He focuses on the history of the interwar Lithuanian secret services, KGB actions in Lithuania, and Soviet repressions in Lithuania. As a member of the Homel ...

. ''Užmirštas desantas. Slaptos Šaltojo karo istorijos'' (''The Forgotten Landing Operation. Secret Stories of the Cold War''). Lietuvos rašytojų sąjungos leidykla: Vilnius. 2019. {{DEFAULTSORT:Jungle, Operation Cold War

Jungle A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''ja� ...

Soviet Union–United Kingdom relations NKVD KGB Occupation of the Baltic states Soviet Union–Sweden relations Naval history of Germany Military operations involving Germany Military operations involving the United Kingdom Soviet Union–West Germany relations Maritime incidents in 1955 Signals intelligence Cold War military history of Germany Cold War military history of the United Kingdom Clandestine operations Polish People's Republic Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic

History

Phases

Operation compromised

See also

Notes

References