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British codes & such

Discussion in 'Atlantic Naval Conflict' started by chromeboomerang, Nov 14, 2006.

  1. chromeboomerang

    chromeboomerang New Member

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    http://www.nesa.org.uk/html/automedon-ultra.htm

    A complete Set of current Naval ciphers was seized from the submarine HMS Seal, captured off the German coast in 1940. There is still some mystery surrounding this incident, because nearly an hour passed between the submarine being forced to the surface and surrendering, yet no attempt was made to throw the ciphers overboard. On 11th September 1942 a motor torpedo boat was captured by the Germans which again carried valuable cipher material, similar secret Naval documents were found in Royal Naval vessels lost off Crete.


    One or their early successes was the capture by the raider Atlantis (on 11 July 1940), of the steamer City of’ Baghdad. from which was taken current copiesof the Merchant Navy cipher and secret call-signs that enabled the captain of the Atlantis, Bernhard Rogge, to read messages for other Allied merchant shipping, plot their likely course, and intercept them without difficulty. On several occasions prisoners were told by the Germans the name of the vessel they would intercept the next day, and each time this proved correct. The raiders were practiced at sending out false messages which cancelled the distress calls of those ships they had captured.

    On 10 September 1940, using this technique, the Benarty was secured and more secret mail seized, then, on 11th November, the Blue Funnel steamer Automedon (7.528 Tons) was intercepted by the Atlantis off the Nicobar Islands, in order to stop her using her radio to send a "raider sighted" report, the Atlantis shelled her with 28 rounds from her 5.9 inch guns (wrecking the vessel and killing Captain McEwen and two officers and a steward on the bridge).

    The German boarding party was led by Lieutenant Ulrich Mohr, who had an excellent knowledge of English, forcing open the strong-room they seized some 60 packages of mail including all the top-secret post en route for Far Eastern Command, Singapore. Among their haul were the new Royal Navy fleet ciphers and the new Merchant Navy ciphers valid from 1 January 1941, also Admiralty weekly shipping intelligence summaries, and a host of other sensitive documents, there was also six million dollars of new Straits currency notes, fresh from the Treasury printers in England.

    The single most important item packed in its own weighted canvas bag marked "SAFEHAND—BRITISH MASTER 0\Ls", was a copy of the War Cabinet Minutes for 8th August 1940, which included the highly secret Chiefs-of-Staff report on the defence of Singapore and the Far East against Japanese attack, which was being sentto Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, C-in-C, Far East. This document consisted of 87 detailed paragraphs, and was most gloomy in tone. It flatly stated that Britain "was not" in aposition to resort to war if Japan attacked French Indo-China or Siam, and that Hong Kong, Malaya. Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies were indefensible since we would he unable to spare sufficient forces from other theatres of war to match the Japanese.

    It seems incredible that such a valuable document should have been sent to the Far East on a slow, vulnerable, merchant ship when the flying-boat service to Singapore was still in operation.
     
  2. chromeboomerang

    chromeboomerang New Member

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    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_auxiliary_cruiser_Atlantis


    Automedon and her Secret Cargo
    At about 0700 on November 11, Schiff 16 encountered the cargo ship Automedon northwest of Sumatra. As soon as the Germans fired a warning shot, Automedon began transmitting, "RRRR", the signal for "raider". From a distance of more than 1.5 km, 28 shells are believed to have hit the bridge. The captain and all the officers were killed.

    The Germans boarded the cargoship and axed into the captain's safe. Obliging the ship's lone female passenger, they then blasted open a nearby strongroom and discovered 15 bags of mail marked, "Safe hand. By British Master only." This mail included a whole shipment of Top Secret mail for the British Far East Command, new code tables, a British War Cabinet report on British forces, the defences of Singapore, information regarding Australia and New Zealand, and an appraisal of the Empire of Japan's intentions. Automedon was sunk at 1507.

    The documents, POWs, and 10,000 tons of aviation fuel were sent to Japan, aboard Ole Jacob. The mail reached the German embassy in Tokyo, on December 5, and was then hand-carried to Berlin via the Trans-Siberian railway. A copy was given to the Japanese and it is sometimes argued that this played a prominent part in the Japanese decision to initiate what it referred to as the, "Greater East Asia War". Rogge was rewarded with an ornate katana Samurai sword.

    Once it reached Berlin, one can imagine what German navy did with it, & how that affected Atlantic conflict. Therefore, Atlantis did in fact affect the Atlantic conflict greatly.
     
  3. chromeboomerang

    chromeboomerang New Member

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    Apart from radio interception and code-breaking, Hitler’s Intelligence Services had also captured large quantities of secret cipher material from the various British Embassies and Consulates in Scandinavia during April-May 1940. A complete Set of current Naval ciphers was seized from the submarine HMS Seal, captured off the German coast in 1940. There is still some mystery surrounding this incident, because nearly an hour passed between the submarine being forced to the surface and surrendering, yet no attempt was made to throw the ciphers overboard. On 11th September 1942 a motor torpedo boat was captured by the Germans which again carried valuable cipher material, similar secret Naval documents were found in Royal Naval vessels lost off Crete.

    German Intelligence was also adept at exploiting specific coups, for example, in August 1941 an Italian employee at the US Embassy in Rome picked the lock of the safe used by the Military Attaché, Colonel Fiske and photographed his cipher (sometimes called the "Black Code"), which was then passed on to the Germans, for the next 15 months or so they were able to read all American military attaché traffic around the world.

    As is usual, history is written by the winners. The myth of allied superiority in code breaking during the war is the only side we hear. There are 2 sides to the spy/code element of the war.
     
  4. chromeboomerang

    chromeboomerang New Member

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    The allies received a priceless gift from the Poles, & are now finally acknowledging the Poles major contribution to the whole Enigma subject. they were at it for years before turning the Enigma machine over to the Brits. So again, the myth of British/allied superiority should reevaluated with this in mind. The US borrowed the previously done work.
    Having the enemy's machine is an enormous advantage.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/930873.stm

    Mr Buzek said he was "greatly satisfied" that the UK officially recognised that Enigma was decoded by the Poles.

    Polish historians say three Polish mathematicians - Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henryk Zygalski - broke the Enigma code in 1933.



    Further work was done by the British, but the lions share of credit belongs to the Poles, not only for the decoding work, but also for smuggling it to the British, along with their scientists who shared & explained their work with the British.
     
  5. von Poop

    von Poop Waspish

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    This isn't news Chromeboomerang.
    Read any decent book on the Enigma/Ultra subject and the Polish & Czech role is always fully acknowledged. The more remarkable and truthful reason the decoding efforts origins were so much more cloudy before the mid '90's (that article 2000) is that the hundreds of men and women involved kept utterly silent about what was done until lured out by historians around that time. In television interviews they still often look very uncomfortable discussing the subject after 50 years of faithfully keeping one of the wars largest secrets to themselves.
    As for "the lions share", If I recall the gent who did the initial work was Czechoslovakian, despite approaching the UK via Poland (?).
    Cheers,
    Adam.
     
  6. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    I do think Abwehr and Canaris did not achieve much in the process really. Maybe their biggest achievement was Operation Nordpol but other than that, you can tell us the hard evidence, please, chrome. Getting some documents pictured does not mean you get any valuable information.

    I do believe Canaris actually stopped any meaningful info reaching the top nazis and maybe even more.

    And if the Germans had circulated any info through their channels Ultra would have given this info to the Allied very soon.

    Ultra was deadly, like it or not. The Germans just were stupid enough to believe it could not be cracked.
     
  7. chromeboomerang

    chromeboomerang New Member

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    Ultra was deadly, have no 'like' or 'not like' about it. Like it or not, the Poles were largely responsible for it.

    Here's some hard evidence...

    German Intelligence was also adept at exploiting specific coups, for example, in August 1941 an Italian employee at the US Embassy in Rome picked the lock of the safe used by the Military Attaché, Colonel Fiske and photographed his cipher (sometimes called the "Black Code"), which was then passed on to the Germans, for the next 15 months or so they were able to read all American military attaché traffic around the world.

    Canaris was a double agent, "of course" he didn't accomplish much for the Germans, kinda obvious I should think.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris

    http://www.answers.com/topic/b-dienst

    The B-Dienst (Beobachtungsdienst) was a German Naval codebreaking organisation. During World War II, B-Dienst solved British Naval Cypher No. 3, providing intelligence for the Battle of the Atlantic, until the British Admiralty introduced Naval Cypher No. 5 on 10 June 1943. B-Dienst also solved a number of merchant codes.
     

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