F. W. Winterbotham
| F. W. Winterbotham | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Frederick William Winterbotham |
| Born |
16 April 1897 Stroud, Gloucestershire, England |
| Died | 28 January 1990 (aged 92) Blandford, Dorset, England |
| Allegiance |
 United Kingdom
|
| Service/branch |
 British Army Royal Air Force
|
| Years of service | 1914–1918, 1939–1946 |
| Rank | Group Captain |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | |
| Other work |
|
Frederick William Winterbotham (16 April 1897 – 28 January 1990) was a British Royal Air Force officer (latterly a Group Captain) who during World War II supervised the distribution of Ultra intelligence. His book The Ultra Secret was the first popular account of Ultra to be published in Britain.
Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire Winterbotham enlisted in the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars Yeomanry at the start of the war. He later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, and became a fighter pilot. He was shot down and captured on 13 July 1917, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, for much of the time in Holzminden prisoner-of-war camp.
Winterbotham took a law degree, but had no liking for an office job. He pursued farming opportunities in Britain, Kenya, and Rhodesia without success. By 1929 he was back in Britain, and considered becoming a stockbroker in the City. Instead he was recruited to join the staff of the Royal Air Force, where he was assigned to the newly created Air Section of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6). During the next few years, Winterbotham began the process of building up an intelligence service for the RAF. His job was to gather information on the development of military aviation in hostile or potentially hostile countries. He recruited agents, and filed and analyzed their reports.
One of these reports revealed that Germany had secret arrangements with the Soviet Union for the training of military pilots in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. William de Ropp, the agent who supplied this information also informed Winterbotham that the Nazis, not yet in power, wanted to cultivate high-level contacts in Britain; they imagined that "imperialist" Britain would be sympathetic to their own dreams of racial conquest. Winterbotham, who was socially well-connected, seemed a likely channel.
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