page_title: Camp X
section_title: Hydra
hierarchical_section_title: Camp X / Hydra
caption_attribution_description: English: The main plaques on the monument at the site of Camp X. Photographed in the afternoon of Sunday, October 9, 2011.
context_page_description: Camp X was the unofficial name of the secret Special Training School No. 103, a Second World War British paramilitary installation for training covert agents in the methods required for success in clandestine operations. It was located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario, Canada. The area is known today as Intrepid Park, after the code name for Sir William Stephenson, Director of British Security Co-ordination, who established the program to create the training facility.
  The facility was jointly operated by the Canadian military, with help from Foreign Affairs and the RCMP but commanded by the BSC; it also had close ties with MI-6. In addition to the training program, the Camp had a communications tower that could send and transmit radio and telegraph communications, called Hydra.
  Established December 6, 1941, the training facility closed before the end of 1944; the buildings were removed in 1969 and a monument was erected at the site.
context_section_description: One of the unique features of Camp X was Hydra, a highly sophisticated telecommunications relay station established in May 1942 by engineer Benjamin deForest Bayly. Bayly was the assistant director, with British army rank of lieutenant colonel. He also invented a very fast offline, one-time tape cipher machine for coding/decoding telegraph transmissions labelled the Rockex or "Telekrypton".
  The book Inside Camp X indicates that the facility was located on Lake Ontario, 30 miles across from the U.S., because it was an ideal location for receiving radio communications from Europe and South America via the U.S. The camp was an appropriate location for the safe transfer of code due to the topography of the land; it was also an excellent site for picking up radio signals from the United Kingdom. A news article also indicates that "HAM Operators at Camp X used transmitters to send and receive coded messages from Britain behind enemy lines".
  Hydra sent and received Allied radio (including telegraph) signals from around the world. The Government of Canada later stated that Hydra provided "an essential tactical and strategic component of the larger Allied radio network, secret information was transmitted securely to and from Canada, Great Britain, other Commonwealth countries and the United States".
  The Hydra station was valuable for both coding and decoding information in relative safety from the prying ears of German radio observers and Nazi detection. Hydra also had direct access via land lines to Ottawa, New York City and Washington, D.C. for telegraph and telephone communications. The main transmitter was previously used as that of American AM station WCAU's shortwave sibling W3XAU, and upon severance of W3XAU in 1941, the transmitter was refurbished and became the transmitter for Hydra. Other radio apparatus was purchased discretely from amateur radio enthusiasts, brought to the building in pieces and assembled on site.
  After use by the Canadian Forces during the Cold War, the transmitter was scrapped in 1969.
caption: Plaque and memorial at the site of Camp X
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