The story of female spies who worked for the Allies and were dropped into Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War is going on public show at the historic site of RAF Hornchurch.

The women were secretly trained to parachute into enemy territory during the conflict to make contact with the French resistance — but many were caught by the Germans and put in front of a firing squad.

The weekend exhibition on wartime secret agents is taking place on October 12 and 13 is at the Essex Wildlife Trust Ingrebourne Valley Visitors Centre in Hornchurch Country Park, where the RAF’s Hornchurch wartime airbase operated.

Rainham local historian Kim Smith has organised it to make sure the agents' stories are not forgotten.

She is author of Behind the Lines about the Special Operations Executive (SOE) — the secret organisation set up by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1940 after the fall of France.

Kim has interviewed some of the agents over the years who survived the war who are sadly no longer with us.

“It was a great honour to meet these veterans,” Kim recalls. “We talked about their secret past and the lives they led during those dangerous times, never knowing when they might be betrayed by Nazi sympathisers.

“I tell their stories so they are never forgotten.”

Kim has a collection of gadgets they used such as miniature cameras, weapons, suitcase radio sets and escape maps which are all on show.

Churchill ordered the fight against the Nazis to continue in the occupied countries, from France and Poland to the Balkans, “to set Europe ablaze” in the cloak-and-dagger operation.

Author and researcher Stuart Outred, who is signing copies of his new book Salesman 2 at the exhibition, investigated what happened to the famous agent Violette Szabo who was executed by firing squad at Ravensbruck concentration camp in February 1945 — just two months before the war Europe ended.

Violette’s life as an agent was made into the movie Carve Her Name with Pride in 1958, where she was played by Virginia McKenna.

Violette’s memorial stands today in front of Lambeth Palace.

Historian Paul Hunt is showing items from the secret codebreakers of Bletchley Park who were led by Prof Alan Turing, the maths genius who managed to unlock the secret of the Nazi Enigma machine that gave the Allies an all-seeing advantage decoding German messages.

The exhibition is open from 10am to 4 pm both days. Admission is £2 for adults and children are free.