Operation Jungle

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Operation Jungle was a secret MI6 program in the early Cold War (1949–1955) to send intelligence officers and resistance fighters into Poland and the Baltic states to aid anti-Soviet groups like the Forest Brothers and the so-called cursed soldiers.

Most agents were Baltic and Polish exiles trained in the United Kingdom and Sweden. The project used German crews and boats under Royal Navy control, operating under a cover story called the British Baltic Fishery Protection Service. The American Gehlen Organization also helped recruit agents from Eastern Europe. Some agents were captured or turned by Soviet counter‑intelligence.

The operation began with a small, improvised setup from Chelsea, London, led by MI6 officials. A former German E‑boat was repurposed for the mission and crewed by German sailors. The agents were landed by sea off Saaremaa (Estonia), and at places in Latvia and Lithuania, as well as Ustka in Poland, often after a radio cue from London.

The first landing occurred in May 1949 with six agents aboard, conducted by German crews and a few British officers who handed command to Swedish officers on site. The boat carried out a handful of landings in 1949–1950, with more agents dropped off in Ventspils and Palanga and later retrieved.

From 1950 the operation became more formal, with a dedicated German crew and the boat based near Hamburg. The missions expanded to include visual and radio reconnaissance of the Baltic coast. A second E‑boat joined in 1952 to support both espionage and SIGINT work. Polish agents were also landed using balloons at times.

In 1954–1955 three new German Silbermöwe‑class boats (Silvergull, Stormgull, and Wild Swan) joined the effort. These boats were built for the West German Border Police, but were used for Jungle missions under the pretense of other duties. In early 1955 a brief clash with a Soviet patrol boat occurred near Klaipėda, and one mission boat, Wild Swan, escaped after being fired upon.

The operation suffered from significant setbacks after Soviet counter‑intelligence, helped by information from a spy ring known as the Cambridge Five, began to uncover and compromise agents. A large counter‑operation, Lursen‑S, led to the capture or killing of most Baltic agents, with many turned into double agents.

Although some individual missions, especially Klose’s coast‑and‑signal work, achieved success, the overall Baltic effort was deemed a fiasco. The last landing took place in April 1955 on Saaremaa, and MI6 suspended Operation Jungle later that year. The boats were handed over to the new German Navy in 1956.