Constance Babington Smith

Constance Babington Smith MBE, FRSL (15 October 1912 – 31 July 2000) was a British journalist and writer, but is probably best known for her wartime work in imagery intelligence.

Early life Constance Babington Smith was born on 15 October 1912 at Beech Law, Puttenham, Surrey. She was the daughter of the senior civil servant Sir Henry Babington Smith, a scion of the Babington family. Her mother, born Lady Elizabeth Bruce, was the eldest daughter of the 9th Earl of Elgin, making Constance a granddaughter of a Viceroy of India and a great-great-granddaughter of the man who bought the Elgin Marbles. Constance came from a large family and was the seventh of nine children. Her father died in 1923, when she was ten. By then, her eldest brothers were already adults, whilst her youngest sister was just two years old.

She was educated at home at the family home 'Chinthurst', in Wonersh in Surrey. She finished her education in France and moved to London in adult life. A trained milliner, she worked for the milliner Aage Thaarup before the war.

When her mother Elizabeth became ill in the 1930s, Constance Babington Smith had to move to Weybridge to take care of her, a role often expected of the oldest unmarried daughter in a family. Brooklands aerodrome was nearby and she began to watch motor and air racing there as a distraction from her domestic duties. This stimulated an interest in aviation. On 23 December 1936 she ventured in to journalism by writing her first article as 'Babs' for The Aeroplane magazine.

War service Her knowledge of aircraft took her into the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and photo intelligence in the Second World War. In December 1940, Babington Smith was in the fifth group of WAAFs trained in photographic interpretation in the top secret Photographic Development Unit, qualifying alongside Eve Holiday, and Ann McKnight Kauffer (daughter of the poster artist Edward McKnight Kauffer), initially based at Paduoc House, Wembley. She later worked alongside Sarah Oliver (Winston Churchill's daughter). The photographic interpretation work concentrated on ships but her expertise with aeroplanes led to her being asked in early 1941 to set up an aircraft recognition section. It was unusual for a WAAF officer to head her own section without an RAF officer alongside. A colleague there, Ursula Powys-Lybbe, later wrote that "Babs had sufficient strength of character, an extraordinary singleness of purpose together with total dedication to the task, mixed in with a modicum of determination necessary to be able to assume sole command of the new section".

In 1942 she made an uncredited appearance in the Air Ministry feature film Target for Tonight, along with her fellow Medmenham colleague, Sqn Ldr Peter Riddell, and was Mentioned in Dispatches for her work.

Working on the interpretation of aerial reconnaissance photographs, Constance was credited with the discovery of the V1 at Peenemünde, Germany, making the initial identification in the summer of 1943 with full confirmation in December 1943. She challenged the preconceptions and initial dismissal of her interpretation of 'ski sites' by the Industry section at Medmenham and worked to prove that they were in fact launch ramps for the V1. 96 ramps were identified and subsequently destroyed by the Allies.

By 1944 the aircraft recognition section had eleven staff.

After VE-Day Constance was attached to USAAF Intelligence in Washington, D.C. to continue her work on photographic interpretation, this time for the Pacific theatre.

Publications

How Photographic Detectives Solved Secret Weapons Mystery (LIFE, 28 October 1957) Evidence In Camera (1957) - published as Air Spy in the US Testing Time (1961) Amy Johnson (1961) Rose Macaulay (1972) - Macaulay was a cousin John Masefield; a Life (1978) Iulia de Beausobre (1983) Champion of Homeopathy: the Life of Margery Blackie (1986)

Ancestry