It is well documented that post war there was a fire in part of the Baker Street, London premises of SOE. Does anyone know what investigation was carried out? Was it documented? Has there been any further investigation in the intervening years e.g. by historians, to get to the bottom of that event? Was any effort made to identify from correspondence registries exactly what was destroyed in that fire and what part of those records concerned the failed operations in Holland (the englandspiel)? I have read in various sources that Marks report regarding the perfect signals from agents was one of the documents destroyed. I have sought an inter-library loan from interstate (South Australia Adelaide University) for Foot's book on the Operations in the Low Countries and he may have covered it but otherwise the book is out of print and unavailable in Australia.
The fire took place in a part of the Belgian Section offices it destroyed a number of files though many were rescued and some parts saved - in some of the files at TNA Kew some of the pages of files are charred around the edges. Duncan Stuart the last SOE Adviser at the Foreign Office wrote a very good article on the fate of the records which appears in both the Journal Intelligence and national Security and a book Routledge published on SOE called The Politics and Strategy of Clandestine War ed Neville Wyllie The Politics and Strategy of Clandestine War: Special Operations Executive, 1940-1946 (Studies in Intelligence) by Neville Wylie (Hardcover - 28 Sep 2006) The Journal should be available online at most University Libraries. In the 1950s and 1960s there was much destruction of the files in successive weeds by the British Authorities including the destruction of the majority of the NCOs and other ranks files. Some of the files of interest held overseas were also destroyed rather than have them shipped back to UK postwar.
According to my mother who worked for SOE, but may have left by then, it started in a film records room (I've seen other reports of a stationary room); the door was locked/barricaded from the outside; at least one person died in that room (a friend of hers) it was done by agents of Russia.
I'd be interested to hear more ! She passed away, so there is not much more to add, except she went to the funeral service, which earned her a visit from the government.
good day mirth,09 decenber.2012.10:10pm.re:soe records baker st fire 1946.this all reads like a james bond movie,please accept my condolenses at your mothers passing,the visit you talk about.the black suited visitors from the government.did she ever tell you what they said?with her background training I suppose not,may she rest in peace,with respect bernard85
