Matthews - SIGINT : the Secret History of Signals Intelligence in the World Wars

To my grandchildren, Hannah, Alex, Piers,
Elliot, Natasha and one yet unborn.

I am pleased to acknowledge the advice and help of all those mentioned below and thank them for helping iron out some of the wrinkles in the book:

James Gates, who helped with validating some coding exercises and assisting with the mysteries of computing when several chapters of my book disappeared from my computers memory.

Joseph Mankowitz, who encouraged me with snippets of military history and participated in an exciting visit to Chicksands Priory which was a Listening Station for the Royal Air Force during the war. It is still in operation as a British Army Intelligence Corps unit.

Paul Croxson, who was my rock in writing the book and put me right on much in the intelligence world with kind comment and guidance. He served in the Intelligence Corps in GCHQ and Germany as a traffic analyst. He is now a voluntary archivist in the Intelligence Corps Museum at Chicksands Priory and researching the history of SIGINT.

Marylyn Blackwell provided information about the Tirpitz from the archives of Lieutenant Norman Gryspeert RN.

The British Library staff and, particularly, Cathy Collins who guided me towards the accounts of the wartime actions in the four-page skimpy newspapers of the time in the new National Press Archive.

Clive Matthews, who instructed me in the use of social media and helped me carry out an interview on the CNN Network in the USA about this book.

The Public R ecords Office (National Archives, Kew) where many obliging staff guided me towards the captured logs of U-boats and British warships fighting the war at sea in both wars. The log of my grandfathers ship HMS Venus in operation from Queenstown in Southern Ireland was of particular interest to me.

Various members of the Imperial War Museum in London, but in particular Nick Vanderpeet and his staff at its Formal Learning Department. The exhibits in the Secret War section of agents operating gave the feel of the equipment they used.

The German Bundesarchiv in Koblenz have guided me through the early history of the German Federal Intelligence Agency ( Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND for short) where Dr Hechelhammer has helped with information about the spymaster General Gehlen.

Randy Rezabek in Los Angeles, who maintains an encylopedic archive on the subject of TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee) and provided documentation on German intelligence matters, some of which are quoted in this book.

Werner Sunkel, a volunteer curator at the Wehrtechnik Museum in Nurnberg, whose father was Oberwachtmeister (Sergeant Major) at Lauf and left photos, some of which are reproduced here.

Dr Steven Weiss, with whom I had discussions about Operation Anvil, in which he was involved as a soldier, and his experiences with the French Resistance, and he kindly shared his photographs with me for this book.

Members of the Tunbridge Wells Library who surprised me by seeking out many books for my research.

The German Wehrmacht veterans of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), most of whose names I have forgotten, whom I knew and talked with in Berlin as the Second World War ended and the Cold War began. Their wartime experiences, often recounted at great length during the long days and dark nights of the Berlin Airlift, are used in this book.

Wilhelm H. Flicke (now deceased) who I got to know well was one of those mentioned above who gave me his papers that have formed a part of this book. I have had his badly typed memoirs deposited in the rare books section of the research library of the Imperial War Museum.

Last and most appreciated is my wife Carole, who supported me uncomplainingly during the hours that I spent at the computer and even read and corrected the manuscript of this book.

The SIGINT Battlefield

The Value of SIGINT

Cable Wars

Wireless Telegraphy Pioneers

The History of Codes

Codes and Codewords

Interceptions and Encryption

Decryption

Frequency Analysis

Intelligence in Signals

Politicians and Intelligence

German Intelligence

Germanys Allies

Allied Intelligence

The Reasons for War

The Battle of Tannenberg

SIGINT in Galicia

The Miracle of the Marne

The Race to the Sea

In the Trenches

The Direction Finding Service

The French Goniometric Service

Romania and Russia

Room 40 at the Admiralty

Codes in the War at Sea

Directionals at Sea

U-boats and Convoys

Surface Raiders

The North Sea

Jutland

Zeppelins and Gothas

Air Battles in France

America Drifts into War

The Lusitania

Zimmermann and America

1918 and the End Game

The Yanks are Coming

Brest-Litovsk

Compigne and the Armistice

Minor Wars

Polish Con-Men

TICOM Analysis

The Players

German Intelligence

Cipher Machines

Non-Belligerents

Czechoslovakia and Poland

The Phoney War

Norway

The Battle for France and Dunkirk

Britains Air War

The Battle of the Atlantic

Raiding Europe

Germanys Surface Fleet

The Balkans

The Middle East

The Desert Campaign

The Afrika Korps

The Torch Landings

Russia

Russian Battlefield Intelligence

Japan

Sicily and Italy

Counter Intelligence

Scandinavian Resistance

France

Belgium

Holland and the North Pole

D-Day

The Battle for France and the Bulge

Middle Europe Poland and Czechoslovakia

The Bomb Plot

The Wars End

Beginning Again

As war ended in 1945, some of the German Wehrmachts most experienced signals intelligence operators began working for Anglo-American intelligence against the Russians. As a young soldier I mixed with them, perfecting my German as I talked with them at length and listened to their experiences. I was tolerated because I brought cigarettes, which were in very short supply in Germany at that time. They believed themselves to be the elite in signals intelligence at that time and, from their tales related to me in 1947, so did I. The triumphs and few tragedies they related at that time sounded good, but they knew little of the reverses that the Wehrmacht suffered in the signals intelligence war. So we all believed their tales of outwitting the enemy. It was not until almost thirty years later that the story of Bletchley Park began to emerge and I can imagine the astonishment they felt as the secrets began to be revealed. Most of the German signals intelligence warriors that I had met with and listened to with rapped attention in 1947 would have been dead by the time that we all knew of the story of Ultra intelligence. They have left me impressed with their achievements, even though their work had been eclipsed by Bletchley Park. They even gave me some of their private papers (bought from them for a few cigarettes which they probably used in trading on the black market).

I have been re-reading their accounts of the 1940s and have tried to set them into the considerable body of literature that has been published about British cryptography and smiled at the naivety of those German cryptographers. I decided to write this book to try and compare the abilities and shortcomings of the signals intelligence agencies of the belligerents in the two great wars of the twentieth century.

The book traces the emergence and maturity of electronic signals interception and decryption in the first half of the twentieth century, and its effect on the warring nations of the world. The place of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, in military history is not just about Bletchley Park and Enigma, but the way that the intercept services of armies, navies and air forces competed to gain advantage in battle. Intercept services of Germanys Abwehr, Frances Deuxime Bureau and the British Admiralty Room 40 all vied with each other in their different fields from the inception of signals intelligence before the First World War. The first steps in electronic warfare had been laid and preparations were made during the inter-war years for the signals intelligence battle in the Second World War. This is its tumultuous story.