Constance Babington Smith

Constance Babington Smith MBE Legion of Merit FRSL (15 October 1912 – 31 July 2000) was a journalist and writer.

Babington Smith was the daughter of the senior Civil Servant Henry Babington Smith. She was educated at home at Chinthurst, England and in France, before moving to London in adult life. She worked for the milliner Aage Thasrup and also Vogue magazine in London, before venturing into journalism, with The Aeroplane magazine.^[1]

Her knowledge of aircraft took her into the WAAF in the Second World War, where she served with the Allied Photographic Intelligence Unit at Medmenham, reaching the rank of Flight Officer. Serving alongside was her brother, Bernard Babington Smith, who was also a photo interpreter (PI) at Medmenham,^[2] whilst another fellow PI present at Medmenham was Winston Churchill's daughter, Sarah Oliver.^[3]

1943 RAF photo reconnaissance picture of Test Stand VII at the Peenemünde Army Research Center, a photograph of the sort that Babington Smith worked on

In 1942 she made an uncredited appearance in the Air Ministry feature film Target for Tonight, along with her fellow Medmenham colleague, Sqn Ldr Peter Riddell.^[4]

Working on the interpretation of aerial reconnaissance photographs, Constance was credited with the discovery of the V1 at Peenemunde, Germany.

She was portrayed in the 1965 film Operation Crossbow by Sylvia Syms.

After VE-Day Constance was attached to USAAF Intelligence in Washington, D.C. to continue her work on photographic interpretation, this time in the Pacific theatre.

From 1946 to 1950 she was a researcher for Life Magazine. She later moved to Cambridge, England, where she converted to Greek Orthodoxy and become a writer and biographer. Her war memoir Evidence in Camera was in 1957 the first comprehensive narrative of British photographic reconnaissance in the Second World War. (Because published before the revelation of wartime code-breaking, this book may also have contained a measure of Cold War disinformation.)

Her cousin was the writer Rose Macaulay, Babington Smith writing a biography of her published in 1972.

Babington Smith was a founder director of the Mosquito Memorial Appeal Fund - now the de Havilland Museum Trust.

Bibliography

• Evidence In Camera (1957) - published as Air Spy in the US
• Testing Time (1961)
• Amy Johnson (1961)
• Rose Macaulay (1972)
• John Masefield; a Life (1978)
• Iulia de Beausobre (1983)
• Champion of Homeopathy: the Life of Margery Blackie (1986)

Notes

1. ^ Daily Telegraph 9.8.2000
2. ^ Constance Babington Smith, Evidence in Camera p. 97
3. ^ Constance Babington Smith, Evidence in Camera p. 96
4. ^ Constance Babington Smith, Evidence in Camera p. 64

References

• Obituary, The Daily Telegraph, 9 August 2000
• Obituary, The Guardian, 12 August 2000

Persondata
Name	Babington Smith, Constance
Alternative names	Babs
Short description
Date of birth	15 October 1912
Place of birth	Putney, London
Date of death	31 July 2000
Place of death	Cambridge