Timeline of SOE's Prosper Network

The objectives of SOE were to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and Asia against the Axis powers, especially Nazi Germany.

An SOE network in France (also called a circuit or a reseau) usually consisted of three agents: an organizer and leader, a courier, and a radio operator.

SOE French Section headquarters in London, headed by Maurice Buckmaster and Nicolas Bodington, was slow to recognize that Prosper had been destroyed and that its radios were controlled by the Germans.

[5] The opposing view, advocated by a few, is that Prosper was deliberately sacrificed by the British intelligence services as part of Operation Cockade to mislead the Germans about allied plans for the invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe.

The reasoning behind the deception was that if the Germans anticipated an invasion of France in 1943, they would maintain or expand their occupation forces in western Europe, rather than sending resources east to combat the advancing Soviet Army.

France in 1942.
The Westland Lysander ferried agents back and forth to England. A canister beneath the fuselage carried supplies.
The B2 radio weighed a cumbersome 15 kg (33 lb) and required a long exterior aerial to transmit. A radio operator had the most dangerous of SOE jobs in France.