Bücher von Bernard O'Connor

In 1843, an Oxford University professor reported to British academics and agriculturalists on a deposit of phosphorite he had visited in Logrosan, Extremadura, Spain. A mineral much in demand by manure manufacturers, once crushed, it was dissolved in sulphuric acid to produce superphosphate, the world's first artifical chemical manure. Once the railway between Madrid and Lisbon was constructed in the 1860s, the industry took off. Although competition from cheaper overseas phosphates caused many of the phosphate companies to go out of business in the 1890s, demand from Spanish superphosphate manufacturers ensured the industry's survival until the mid-1900s. Today, with the assistance of EU funding, a number of these mines have been developed as tourist attractions as part of Spain's geo-mining heritage. Bernard O'Connor and Leyre Solano's book investigates the origins, development and eventual decline of the Spanish phosphate industry.

Following a cliff collapse in Felixstowe in 1842 that revealed of fossils deposit which Charles Darwin's Cambridge tutor thought resembled prehistoric droppings, a new industry developed to exploit them. Rev. John Henslow thought they were coprolites, fossilised dinosaur dung, similar to those discovered at Lyme Regis. As animal and human droppings were being used as a manure on the fields, chemical analysis of the Felixstowe fossils showed them to be rich in phosphate, a mineral essential for plant growth, Suffolk manure manufacturers bought these fossils, ground them to a powder and dissolved them in sulphuric acid to make superphosphate, the world's first artificial chemical manure. It was a lucrative business and demand for the Suffolk fossils increased.When a similar bed was found in Burwell was tested and found to have a higher phosphate content, the industry spread to Cambridgeshire, expanded into Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. Manure manufacturers across the country wanted coprolites.Open cast mining in pits down to 60 feet in places led to tens of thousands of acres being dug. During these operations, the 'coprolite' diggers uncovered numerous articles of archaeological interest, mostly grave sites but also hidden hoards. Some diggers 'pocketed' the finds and sold them on the market as there was a huge interest amongst Victorian archaeologists and antiquarians. Sometimes the landowner claimed the finds and kept them in their drawing room cabinet. Professors and students of archaeology were interested in the finds and published academic papers in their journals. Whilst some finds were donated to the country's new University museums, others were purchased by their curators. One digger made enough from selling his 'finds' to buy himself a pub.Bernard O'Connor, who has researched the geological, historical, economic and social impact of the fossil diggings, has compiled accounts of the archaeological discoveries across Southern England, illustrating them with images from contemporary journals.

Shortly after the start of the Second World War, the British Admiralty compulsorily purchased land near Ditton Priors, Shropshire, to store armaments. Using the Cleobury Mortimer and Ditton Priors Light Railway, thousands of tons of shells and high explosives were brought by train to be assembled and stored in specially-built magazines protected by 'batter mounds'. Every weekday, up to thirty buses brought in several hundred men and women from surrounding villages and towns and took them back after work. They all signed the Official Secrets Act. To avoid fires, no smoking and no newspapers were allowed on site, Eating sweets was forbidden as the acetic acid was said to be corrosive. There were no electric lights or heating in the magazines and laboratories. Trolleys laden with ammunition were hauled by small tractors from a railway siding. Trucks carried crates of assembled armaments to naval docks around Britain until, twenty years after the end of the war, the Depot became surplus to the Navy's requirement. Employees were transferred to other depots or accepted redundancy. Arrangements to sell the land back to the original owners were cancelled when the British government allowed the American Army to store 22,000 tons of their armaments. Legal disputes followed. Questions were raised in parliament. When the Americans moved out in 1967, most of the land was sold to its original owners. In the 1980s there was a scare when it was claimed that the Russians had allocated two nuclear weapons to target Ditton Priors. Today, part of the Depot has become an industrial estate. The rest is hidden by trees and gradually becoming overgrown by vegetation.Bernard O'Connor's documentary history of the Royal Naval Armament Depot in Ditton Priors uses accounts and illustrations found in local history books, newspapers, government and the construction company's correspondence, websites and interviews with local people who remembered working there.

During the Second World War, Mrs Rochford of The Old Manor House, Little Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, took in a number of male lodgers. Exactly how much she, her family, and other villagers knew about these lodgers is unknown but local gossip was that that they were spies.Who was in contact with her about their arrival and departure is unknown, as is how much she was paid for providing them with full board and lodging. Four lodgers, all men, arrived and departed by car with curtains over the rear windows, sometimes driven by an attractive FANY, a young woman from the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. Locals might also have noticed men arriving at the house on bicycles or in cars, staying for much of the day and then leaving. Several were attracted to the housekeeper's niece who met them in the Five Horseshoes public house.The lodgers would have been seen on walks around the village and in the pub. Maybe they went to the Sunday service in St Andrew's Church. Some would have been seen shopping in Hertford and Ware. Three of the men were Belgian and spoke little English. The other was British and acted as their interpreter.Who were these men? Who were their visitors? Why were they staying at the Old Manor House in Little Berkhamsted? What did they do there? Where did they go to, sometimes for several days, sometimes for several weeks before returning? What had they been doing before they arrived and what did they do after they left?Bernard O'Connor, author of many books on the Special Operations Executive, a top-secret clandestine warfare organisation during the Second World War, has researched the men's stories and provides a detailed documentary history of three Belgian's involvement in secret operations.

In August 1942, a young man arrived at the British Consulate in San Sebastian, northern Spain, claiming to be Kurt Konig, a German deserter. After preliminary questioning, his onward travel to Britain was arranged. Further questioning in London followed to determine whether he was a German spy. He convinced most, but not all of his interrogators and was sent for training by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a top-secret clandestine organisation. The SOE's plan was to provide him with sabotage material and parachute him back into Germany to establish a resistance network in Bremen. Not wanting the other 'students' of different nationalities who were being trained as organisers, wireless operators, couriers, weapons instructors, saboteurs and assassins to know that Britain was training a German,, he was provided with a new identity as a Czech refugee.Konig received paramilitary, parachute and clandestine warfare training and, provided with forged papers, a Luftwaffe uniform, a revolver, ammunition, 'sweets and toys' (SOE's term for sabotage equipment), various pills and plenty of money, he was sent back to Germany in February 1943.Within a few months, he managed to return to Britain and provide a detailed account of his activities. Whilst some in the intelligence services queried his bona fides, he was trained for a second mission.Infiltrated back into Germany in July 1943 to sabotage railways along the Rhine vallley, he completed his mission, returned to Britain and volunteered for a third in January 1944.Using Konig's personnel files and mission papers found in the National Archives in Kew, Bernard O'Connor, author of many books on the SOE, has researched Konig's story and provides a detailed documentary history of his involvement in secret operations and insight into the day-to-day workings of the intelligence service and conditions in wartime Germany.

At the beginning of the English Civil War, the Royalist Army in Shropshire needed cannons and cannonballs. King Charles I's master of ordnance would have liaised with Sir Charles Smyth, the owner of land in Bouldon, a small hamlet about 10 km north-northeast of Ludlow Castle, for a charcoal iron furnace to be constructed on the bank above Pye brook.Ironstone was already being worked on the upper slopes of the Brown Clee and supplied to furnaces on the River Stour near Bridgnorth. Woodland on the lower slopes of the Clee Hills was being coppiced for the charcoal used to heat the iron. Local limestone quarries supplied the flux which helped separate the iron from the waste rock. Water was available from the brooks that drained the Clee Hills.A charcoal iron furnace was constructed in Bouldon which manufactured cannons and cannonballs for Ludlow and Bridgnorth castles. Later it produced pig iron which was reputed to be the best in Britain. Although the furnace changed hands several times, it provided wealth for its owners for over 150 years and stimulated the local economy by employing local men not just in the furnace but also in the casting shed, in the bell pit mines on the Clee Hills, the owners of packhorses and donkeys used to carry the ironstone and cordwood to the furnace site, the 'charkers' who made the charcoal, cartwrights, wheelwrights, carpenters, carters, horse owners, blacksmiths, forgers, accountants and others.Bernard O'Connor provides a detailed and illustrated account of an important part of Corvedale's industrial history.

As a result of a secret agreement between Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party and Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), and Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister, signed in Moscow in September 1941, the intelligence agencies of both countries agreed to work together. To be more specific, officers of Norodny Kommissariat Vnutrennich Dyel (NKVD), the Soviet People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, liaised with officers in the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a newly formed clandestine warfare organisation which was separate from the established Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), usually known as MI5 and MI6 The Soviet Union sent a mission to London and Britain sent a mission to Moscow.For four years until September 1945, NKVD and SOE officers liaised over military, political and economic matters, not just in Western Europe but also in the Middle East and Far East. This book, a documentary history written with an admittedly British filter, focusses on SOE and NKVD activity in Afghanistan, a landlocked mountainous country between the Soviet Union and India, the crown jewel of the British Empire. It also includes the story of Bhagat Ram, a Hindu communist who worked as a Soviet agent, taking false intelligence reports to officials in the Italian, German and Japanese embassies in Kabul in exchange for large sums of money, wireless sets and explosives. The NKVD shared Ram's services with the SOE so that he became the only quintuple agent of the Second World War.Primary sources include correspondence in SOE files found in the National Archives in Kew, London, from not just SOE and NKVD officers but also officials in the War Office, the Foreign Office, MI6, British Embassies in Iran, Cairo and New Delhi, the Indian Political Intelligence, the British Raj, the Delhi Intelligence Bureau and Allied Military Headquarters in the Middle East. It also uses extracts from autobiographies and biographies, history books, articles from academic journals and contemporary newspapers and snippets from websites. Bernard O'Connor provides a day-to-day account of the changing Anglo-Soviet relations during the war, international diplomacy, political rivalries, misunderstanding, incompetence, intrigue, lies and deception.

Towards the end of 1943, the British Intelligence services were receiving reports that captured Soviet soldiers were fighting in the Wehrmacht in Western Europe and that captured Soviet citizens were being used as slave labour in German factories, mines and farms. The Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British clandestine warfare organisation, like the British Foreign Office and MI6, had Country Sections engaged in collecting such intelligence and making plans to counteract enemy activity. Len Manderstam, a Russian-speaking officer of SOE's Russian Section who had served in the Red Army as a young man, devised Operation MAMBA, a plan to drop propaganda materials to encourage Soviet troops in the Wehrmacht to surrender to the Allies and to encourage Soviet labourers to engage in passive sabotage. In liaison with the Ministry of Economic Warfare and SOE's Forgery Section, propaganda materials were produced and dropped into France, Belgium and Holland to convince the Germans that there was an active underground Soviet resistance organisation.After D-Day, Manderstam went to France, interviewed captured Soviet soldiers and those who had surrendered and learned how the Germans had used the threat of torture and starvation to force their prisoners to fight for them. He developed a scheme to interrogate those brought to Britain as prisoners of war and recruit those who convinced him they were anti-Nazi. His plan was to train them in sabotage, parachute jumping and clandestine warfare and infiltrate groups into France to encourage Soviet defection, and others to be dropped into Germany to encourage Soviet workers to 'go slow' and others to attack Germany's secret weapons sites.As the Soviet Union was Britain's ally and there was a secret agreement between the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, they were invited to participate in Operation MAMBA. However, as Stalin had ordered Soviet soldiers to fight to the death and any who were captured were considered traitors, the NKVD refused to collaborate and raised their objections with the British Foreign Office.Bernard O'Connor's documentary history uses primary sources including letters, memoranda, telegrams and reports found in SOE files in the National Archives and secondary sources including autobiographies and biographies, newspaper articles and web pages to shed light through a British filter on this little-known operation.

During the Second World War, the British Royal Air Force''s Special Duties Squadrons parachuted thousands of pigeons into Belgium. Bletchley Park, the nerve centre of the British Intelligence Service, had its own pigeon loft from where birds were sent on intelligence gathering missions. A secret organisation, MI14(d), was created to organise a pigeon service to occupied Europe. Those who found the pigeons were expected to supply military, economic and political intelligence for the Allies. This book includes the messages sent back from Belgium. In particular, it investigates the roles played by Josef Raskin and Jean Ceysens, the British Intelligence Services, the RAF and the brave individuals who, despite the possibility of imprisonment, sent messages to Britain in the hope it would help liberate their country.

Over 16,000 pigeons were dropped into occupied Europe during WW2. Some were used by secret agents to send messages back to headquarters. Others were dropped by parachute into France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark in the hope that people would complete the attached questionnaire and provided military, political, economic or other intelligence of value for the Allies. Photographic negatives could be sent. Bletchley Park had its own loft for its pigeon spies. This book investigates the work of MI14, known as the Colomba Service, and for the first time sheds light on conditions in Occupied Europe described by extremely brave men and women who risked execution if found in possession of a pigeon. MI14 staff, decoded or translated messages and forwarded copies to SOE, SIS, MI19, War Office, RAF, Royal Navy, Ministry of Economic Warfare, BBC, Churchill and de Gaulle.

Over 16,000 pigeons were dropped into occupied Europe during the Second World War. Some were used by secret agents to send messages back to headquarters. Others were dropped into selected areas of France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark in the hope that people would complete the attached questionnaire and provided military, political, economic or other intelligence of value for the Allies. There were also requests for information on the reception and content of the BBC Overseas Service news. Many messages sent back requests that the BBC acknowledge receipt of the message. This book investigates the work of MI14, known as the Colomba Service, and for the first time sheds light on conditions in Occupied Europe described by extremely brave men and women who risked execution if found in possession of a pigeon. MI14 staff, decoded or translated messages and forwarded copies to the SOE, SIS, MI19, the War Office, RAF, Royal Navy, Ministry of Economic Warfare, Churchill, de Gaulle and the BBC.