364-Sidney Cotton's Aerial Reconnaissance

Futility Closet

Greg Ross

History

4.8 • 748 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the most remarkable pilots of World War II never fired a shot or dropped a bomb. With his pioneering aerial reconnaissance, Sidney Cotton made a vital contribution to Allied planning. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe his daring adventures in the war's early months.

We'll also revisit our very first story and puzzle over an unknown Olympian.

Intro:

Hall's Law holds that a group's social class is reflected in its members' initials.

In 1814 Richard Porson wrote a sonnet to nothing.

Sources for our feature on Sidney Cotton:

Michael Smith, The Secret Agent's Bedside Reader: A Compendium of Spy Writing, 2019.

Chaz Bowyer, Air War Over Europe: 1939-1945, 2003.

David Marshall and Bruce Harris, Wild About Flying!: Dreamers, Doers, and Daredevils, 2003.

"Spies in the Sky: The Secret Battle for Aerial Intelligence During World War II," Contemporary Review 294:1705 (June 2012), 249.

Taylor Downing, "Spying From the Sky," History Today 61:11 (November 2011), 10-16.

"Sidney's Sky Spies," Air Classics 37:12 (December 2001), 30.

Walter J. Boyne, "Reconnaissance on the Wing," Air Force Magazine 82 (1999), 72-78.

"Parkes Display Plane's Remarkable Career," Parkes [N.S.W.] Champion Post, Nov. 1, 2015.

Jessica Howard, "Daughter Tells of Spy Who Loved Her," [Hobart Town, Tas.] Mercury, July 27, 2013.

"007 Cotton Inspires Bond," Gold Coast Bulletin, Sept. 27, 2008.

"Aussie Maverick Who Fooled Nazis," [Surry Hills, N.S.W.] Daily Telegraph, Nov. 9, 2002.

Christopher Bantick, "Aussie Spy in the Sky," [Hobart Town, Tas.] Mercury, Nov. 2, 2002.

Stephen Holt, "Oh, What a Lovely War," [Brisbane, Qld.] Courier-Mail, Oct. 19, 2002.

David Morris, "The Real Bond - Revealed: 007 Was Actually a Queenslander," [Brisbane, Qld.] Sunday Mail, July 15, 2001.

David Wroe, "The Original Spy in the Sky," [Melbourne] Age, June 8, 2000.

"He Fought the R.A.F. as Well as the Enemy," Sydney Morning Herald, April 12, 1969.

"The Cheeky Missions of a Young Spy-Flier Helped to Save Thousands of Allied Lives," Sydney Morning Herald, Feb. 9, 1969.

"May Be the Wreckage of French Airplane," Morristown [Tenn.] Gazette Mail, July 15, 1927.

"Search for Lost Men Is to Be Discussed," New Britain [Ct.] Herald, July 14, 1927.

"Plans Search By Air For Nungesser, Coli," New York Times, May 26, 1927.

"Was Proserpine's Sidney Cotton the Real James Bond?" Breakfast, ABC, Sept. 19, 2021.

"Guide to the Papers of Frederick Sidney Cotton," Australian War Memorial (accessed Nov. 1, 2021).

John McCarthy, "Cotton, Frederick Sidney (1894–1969)," Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1993.

Listener mail:

Norman Fraser, "Sad Ending to Beautiful Betsy Wartime Mystery," [Brisbane] Courier-Mail, March 18, 2015.

"Beautiful Betsy," Monument Australia (accessed Nov. 13, 2021).

"Monto-Historical and Cultural," North Burnett, Queensland (accessed Nov. 14, 2021).

"Cylinder, Iowa," Wikipedia (accessed Nov. 18, 2021).

"The Skeleton in the Bale," Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 2, 1892. (Greg's blog piece is here.)

This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener S Wan. Here's a corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle).

You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on Google Podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, or via the RSS feed at https://futilitycloset.libsyn.com/rss.

Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to the Futility Closet Podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history.
0:15.4	Visit us online to sample more than 12,000 quirky curiosities from predictive initials to a sodda to nothing.
0:23.1	This is episode 364. I'm Greg Ross.
0:25.9	And I'm Sharon Ross. One of the most remarkable pilots of World War II never fired a shot or dropped a bomb.
0:33.3	With his pioneering aerial reconnaissance, Sidney Cotton made a vital contribution to Allied planning.
0:39.7	In today's show, we'll describe his daring adventures in the war's early months.
0:44.4	We'll also revisit our very first story and puzzle over an unknown Olympian.
1:10.2	In September 1938, an Australian businessman named Sidney Cotton was sitting in his office in St. James Square, London, when he received a telephone call from a man with a superbly anonymous voice.
1:15.5	He said his name was Frederick Winterbatham, and he wanted Cotton to take some pictures from the air.
1:22.1	Winterbatham was a spy. He headed the air section of MI6, the British Secret Intelligence Service,
1:27.2	which gathered intelligence overseas. He was known to his colleagues as Cloak and Dagger Fred. He'd also been a pioneer of air
1:29.8	photography in World War I, and now, as war again loomed over Europe, the British and the French
1:35.8	had begun to discuss how to get photographs of the military buildup inside Germany. In an era
1:41.5	before satellites, this could only be done from the air. France had begun
1:45.6	reconnaissance flights in 1936, but these had covered only the immediate frontier. The British
1:51.6	knew that any deeper ventures into German airspace must be made by civilian aircraft to
1:56.8	avoid exacerbating the tense political situation, and to minimize the chances of detection and
2:02.7	interception, any such flight must be made at high altitude and high speed. That, Winterbotham said,
2:09.1	was where Cotton came in. He had experience as a pilot and an aerial photographer, and he'd been
2:14.5	trying to promote color photography in Europe, so he had legitimate reasons to visit Germany.
2:20.0	Would he be willing to fly over the country in a private plane and take pictures from the air?
2:25.5	Cotton considered, at 44 years old, he'd already had adventures enough for several lifetimes.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Greg Ross, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Greg Ross and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.