Very special intelligence: The story of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre, 1939-1945

Called by many the best work available on British naval intelligence in World War II, this book tells how the intelligence was gathered and how it was used. The Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) was the nerve center of the British Admiralty and collected, analyzed, and disseminated information from every possible source on the intentions and movements of German naval and maritime forces. Personally responsible for hunting down Hitler’s surface raiders, the author served with OIC from 1940 to 1945, and he draws on those experiences to provide many details of OIC’s tireless efforts to supply the Navy and RAF with useful intelligence. His book offers a compelling look at the organization’s early disappointments and later successes, throwing new light on such dramatic episodes as the hunt for the Bismarck and the tragedy of convoy PQ17 as well as the long war against the U-boats. Patrick Beesly’s blueprint on how to find the dots, connect them, hunt them down, and destroy them also offers lessons for dealing with today’s terrorists.