Nazi spy's secret... he was useless

MI5 files revealed yesterday German Intelligence complained that bungling Werner Strebel, 42, was only interested in cash to fund a cushy lifestyle.

He was sent to London just before war broke out with a cover as a foreign correspondent and stock of secret ink, to spy on the RAF station in Dunstable, Bedfordshire.

But he sent back only three secret "quite useless" messages, after complaining he could not get near the base because of the sentries.

Swiss-born Strebel was hired by Heinrich von Wenzlau, of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) despite being told his new recruit's only qualifications for cloak and dagger work were an appetite for "good food, good drink and easy living".

For 7 or 8 a week, he agreed to go behind enemy lines – to the Luton area – and send back secret messages written in invisible ink with a toothpick.

However, a dire warning composed in September of a huge air attack on a German chemical works "within days" did not actually reach Berlin until two months later.

Despite his failure he was sent back to Britain in March 1940 by his bosses, who never heard anything from him again.

Apparently rather than infiltrate the higher reaches of Allied Command, he was working as a restaurant waiter in London.

Strebel was tasked with finding out everything about the RAF station at Dunstable, including its exact location, size, the length of the runway, how many airmen were based there, how it was illuminated at night and whether it was used for fighter or bomber planes.

But he apparently sent back only three secret messages, all of which were considered "quite useless" by Nazi spy chiefs.

Explaining his failures, he told his controller that he went to Luton and "saw the aerodrome in the distance" but could not reconnoitre it because of the "strict guard".

After the war, von Wenzlau complained to his British interrogators that Strebel "was chiefly concerned with having an easy and pleasant life and that his sole idea seemed to be to get such money as he could without rendering any service for it".

MI5 said after the secret agent's brush with danger in Dunstable he did nothing more than squander Germany's money for the rest of the war and was deported two years later.

Other files released yesterday revealed the astonishing story of the capture of a First World War hero who tried to sell military secrets after falling on hard times.

Ex-officer William Burges was jailed for 12 months in 1935 after he attempted to pass secrets about weapons tests to ICI.

MI5 arranged for a three-word personal ad – a coded password – to be published in the Daily Mail to lure him to the chemical company's London HQ.

Burges, 59, had served in the Great War with distinction, but in peacetime the father-of-six struggled to make ends meet working at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich.

He wrote to ICI under a false name, offering to supply classified documents that the War Office had refused to let the company have, relating to secret wind tunnel tests aimed at improving firing ranges for shells. ICI contacted the War Office, who called in the security services. After handing over secret papers, he was arrested.