The Intelligence Corps
The Museum began life in 1969 as the Intelligence Corps Museum and the core elements within the museum reflect this fact. The Intelligence Corps has been the central, continuous pillar of military intelligence across the three Services (Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force) since its formation in 1940.
The museum displays many of the intelligence disciplines and activities carried out by members of the Intelligence Corps and its forebears since the Boer War.
The Intelligence Corps features throughout the museum, with Room 2 being largely devoted to its members and history.
Elsewhere we expose tactics, techniques and the tools of the trade employed by intelligence operators and units. We also tell the human stories.
Although military intelligence is fundamentally about 'thinking', a cerebral activity, the museum is home to a great many 'Tool of the Trade' that are used to gather, interpret, analyse, produce and transmit intelligence.
Many of our objects are obvious, such as cameras and radios, but others are more obscure, such as a German SS typewriter recovered from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp and used by an Intelligence Corps officer to document the war crimes committed there.
And who can resist our Norton H16 500cc motorcycle, an essential tool where speed and manoeuvrability are needed. This is currently on loan from the National Army Museum.
In more recent times the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force have formally established their own military intelligence capabilities, and operations are now conducted very much on a tri-service basis, a fact that has translated into the museum which now showcases the work of all three services.
