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134 FIGHTING THE ELECTRONIC WAR
By 1954, Beasley had managed to join the elite ranks of the
Radio Warfare personnel, which had its own heavily guarded
compound on the northern edge of HMS Mercury. Here he
was first instructed in S~viet communication procedures in
preparation for his language course. Although HMS Mercury
was far from the Soviet Union, radio signals bounced off the
ionosphere at night, so transmissions from as far afield as Baku
and Tbilisi could be heard comfortably. Towards the end of the
ten-week 'special course' Beasley began to study the arcane
subject of Soviet radars and guidance systems, which constituted
elint collection. He had found his forte in the mysterious
world of electronic signatures and wavebands, and
accordingly he was diverted away from the Russian course at
HMS Pucklechurch to become more of an elint specialist. Soon
he was serving on fishery-protection vessels, including HMS
Truelove, Mariner and Pickle. Operating out of Norwegian
harbours such as Troms0, their fishery duties gave them a legitimate
reason to be close to Soviet exercises in northern waters,
allowing them to sit listening at their leisure, often using their
own personal monitoring equipment which they put together
'Heath Robinson style'.
Late in 1954, Beasley and three of his comrades found themselves
back at HMS Mercury, where they had been called in to
see the head of the Radio Warfare Special Branch, Lieutenant
Commander Harry Selby-Bennett. As experienced elint and
comint operators, they had been selected for 'special duties'.
They were told to write six weeks' worth of letters that would
be posted to their families at intervals, but were given no information
about where they were going, or even what they might
do. Arriving at Portsmouth with their kitbags, they were transferred
to a motor launch, still none the wiser about their mysterious
task or their destination. One of the four suggested it might
be a submarine, but the other three laughed out loud at the
idea, since none of them had been through the stringent obligatory
three-month submarine course at nearby Gosport, which
included passing through the famous hundred-foot salt-water