a The fact that Déricourt declared his contacts with German intelligence from the very outset was confirmed in 1958 by Lord Lansdowne, a junior Minister from the Foreign Office. Since then, the Foreign Office have changed their position and now declare that Lansdowne was ‘incorrectly briefed’. However, independent sources confirm that Déricourt did in fact make this declaration on a number of occasions to different people. A series of files concerned with his arrival in Great Britain are listed at the Public Records Office. They are: Z 7300, Z 9571 and Z 9958. Unfortunately, the files themselves are not there. According to the Foreign Office, they were destroyed some time ago.25
b Unfortunately, unknown to Déricourt, the RAF had given the operation a black mark. Vaughan-Fowler claimed in his report that Déricourt’s strip had been too bumpy, possibly because he had laid it across some cart tracks, and the violent buffeting had caused his engine to catch fire.
c Kopkow was also the head of the department responsible for creating forged documents.