مذكرة عن السيرة المهنية للسير توماس إدوارد روجرز [و‎‎٣‎١] (١١٨/٦١)

worked my way round the outskirts of Jask village to look for higher buildings
l
or features not revealed by my vertically taken air photographs which could
have been used for signalling seawards. After a couple of hours I could find
nothing suspicious in the village of low huts.
The lighthouse was clearly the best platform for signalling but to have left
it unlighted except for the matter of minutes required to send short messages
would have aroused attention unnecessarily. Yet it had remained unlit for some
time, though I had not been told how long, and this could mean that the
circumstances were not suspicious. A poorly paid lighthouse keeper, for example,
with oil very scarce and expensive could have been saving mone^ or supplies could
have failed temporarily in this remote and poverty-stricken area. As to the
green and red lights, I talked later to a pair of R.A.F. works personnel
reconnoitring a possible landing strip east of Jask. Though they did not admit
it there was a possibility that in induced high spirits late at night they could
have fired off a few Very cartridges with no idea that they might be observed from
the sea. The local Persian officials when questioned professed ignorance but I
could not exclude that they could have felt some indirect responsibility for the
failure of the lighthouse if indeed that had been due to neglect or pilfering.
Although we never got to the bottom of the Jask lights scare the incident
showed that simple signals could be sent to enemy submarines to alert them to the
departure of convoys from Bandar Abbas well off to the north. The conclusion
was that some kind of coast-watching system, however difficult to operate along
the remote coastline to the east and north, should be set up. If enemy submarines
were not already in the area they could be expected to arrive before very long.
This was established later by an R.A.F. 'kill' by planes based on Sharjah on the
Gulf's west coast. Well before that I had set off for the port of Bandar Abbas in