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- 05/21/14--01:02: _Naval Enigma compro...
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- 05/29/14--02:42: _Update
- 06/03/14--03:52: _The War Nerd returns
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- 06/08/14--08:14: _Update
- 06/08/14--08:26: _The codebreakers of...
- 06/11/14--02:38: _Compromise of Sovie...
- 06/14/14--05:03: _Decoded messages in...
- 06/17/14--00:33: _Update
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- 06/20/14--22:41: _Update
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- 06/24/14--01:26: _Update
- 06/29/14--01:50: _Index
- 06/29/14--01:57: _Update
- 07/02/14--00:04: _In the news
(showing articles 201 to 220 of 495)
Channel Description:
Military and intelligence history mostly dealing with World War II.
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Signals intelligence and codebreaking played an important role in WWII. British and American codebreakers solved many important Axis crypto systems, such as the German Enigma machine and the Japanese Navy’s code JN25.
The solution of the German military’s plugboard Enigmawas mostly carried out at Bletchley Park with Hut 6 attacking Army and Airforce ‘keys’, while Hut 8 worked on the naval traffic. During the Battle of the Atlantic the German U-boats relied mostly on the Enigma for their communications with U-boat Command, so the solution of these messages was a top priority for the Allied codebreakers.
Unfortunately the fact that the Navy used stricter procedures than the Army and Airforce plus their introduction of a separate 4-rotor Enigma machine in 1942 meant that in the period March 1941- September ‘43 the successes of Bletchley Park were spasmodic and suffered from time lag. Things changed in September since the new 4-rotor ‘Bombes’ built by the Americans were introduced and they could solve the Enigma settings reliably and in a timely manner (at least until the introduction of individual Enigma keys for U-boats in late 1944). According to several books and articles the Germans never suspected that their codes were being read and they thought that the Enigma was unbreakable. The reality was a slightly more complex than that as can be seen from the numerous security measures they implemented during the war. Would they have taken so many precautions if they considered Enigma unbreakable?
Since the Enigma was used in huge numbers it was accepted that during the war both cipher machines and valid keylists had fallen into Allied hands. Thus current traffic could be compromised but only until new settings were introduced. Another question is whether the Germans considered the Enigma to be vulnerable to cryptanalysis. After all it wasn’t every day that Enigma machines and keylists would fall into enemy hands. Here the story diverges since the different codebreaking departments in the Army (Inspectorate 7/VI), Navy (B-Dienst), Airforce (Chi Stelle) and Armed Forces High Command (OKW/Chi) had different opinions on the matter. Unfortunately we don’t know the full story of their security investigations as the relevant files have not been studied in detail but it is clear that they constantly researched ways of solving the Enigma.
In this area the Army codebreakers proved more suspicious than their counterparts in other departments and they always worried about the possibility of solution of the machine by the enemy. During the war they not only studied the Enigma but also interrogated Polish personnel regarding their solution of the prewar Enigma, known to the Germans as case ‘Wicher’.The analysts of the naval cipher security department on the other hand seems to have shown a lack of imagination when it came to researching the Enigma. For some reason they constantly downplayed the possibility of cryptanalytic solution and attributed enemy successes to captured cipher material.
This can be seen from one of their reports found in NARA-RG 457- Entry 9032- box 1279 – NR 3775 ‘German Navy U-boat logs’. In the summer of 1943 the military intelligence service Abwehr learned from a Swiss-American working in the US Department of the Navy that the operational orders to U-boats were decoded by the Allies and all messages read.
According to google translate:
At 10.8. received the following message via KO Switzerland :
‘‘For several months, deciphering German naval codes with regard to operating Uboat commands succeeded. All commands are read.Additional: Source Swiss-American secretary in high position in the U.S. Navy Department.‘’
It is not clear if this person was an Abwehr agent or someone who revealed this information to Swiss diplomatic or intelligence authorities and they in turn shared this information with the Germans.
The response of the security department was that the continuous reading of their communications by the Allies was out of the question. There was however the possibility of losing cipher material in one of the sunken U-boats. For that reason they instituted a change of the Enigma settings using the keyword ‘Andromeda’. The emergency key-‘Stichwort’, worked on the following system according to the study ‘Cryptographic History of Work on the German Naval Enigma’, p6:
"Stichwort".19. The "Stichwort" was a device used when the enemy suspected that the keys had been captured, or wished to protect himself from the danger of this happening. An example will make its nature and method of use clear.
20. All holders of the machine (at the time of this example) held a sealed envelope labelled PERSEUS. An order was sent out "STICHWORTHEFEHL PERSEUS". The holders opened their envelopes and found the word DANZIG inside (the "Kennwort"). They then "applied" DANZIG to the key as follows (1) D = 4 was added to the number of each wheel in the W.O. (2) A, N, Z respectively were added to the three letters of the Ringstellung. (3) I = 9 was added to each letter in the Stecker. This change was applied to all keys until further notice.21. Suppose for instance the key for the day had been W.O. 275, Rings. BYL, Stecker A/F, B/J, D/X.... . The modified key would then be W.O. 631, Ring. CML, Stecker J/O, K/S, M/G .... .
22. This is a security measure with some "nuisance value" but is clearly not equivalent to a new key. Given that a key has been captured (the assumption on which the Stichwort is based) then - once we have discovered what is happening - there are 8 W.O.'s and 26 sets of Stecker to try; this might certainly be tiresome but does not compare with the 336 W.O.'s and 140 million million stecker on a completely unknown key.The naval codebreakers would change their minds regarding the theoretical solution of their 4-rotor Enigma in late 1944 when one of their analysts named Hans-Joachim Frowein showed that it could be solved on a ‘crib’ of 25 letters (suspected plaintext in the ciphertext).
This report is TICOM I-38 and is available from Ticom Archive.
1). Articles from Anatoly Klepov on the compromise of Soviet communications in WWII:
2). War Nerd: China, Vietnam and Naval Nerf Wars
3). Frontline documentary on the NSA and the Snowden affair4). New information on the Soviet M-105 (AGAT) cipher machinefrom Cryptomuseum.
I’ve added pics from SRH-368 in WWII Myths - U-boat tankers and ULTRA intelligence.
Best seen under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.
I’ve rewritten State Department’s strip cipher – reuse of alphabet strips and key lists using information from the report ‘JCS Ad hoc committee report on cryptographic security of government communications'.
On 6 June 1944 the Anglo-Americans landed in Normandy, France and proceeded to liberate Nazi occupied Europe.
The anniversary of this operation will undoubtedly lead to statements in magazines and newspapers attributing the success of ‘Overlord’ to a disinformation campaign. According to this view the Germans could have defeated the landings but they were tricked into holding most of their forces in reserve so they could be used against the ‘real’ landings expected near Pas de Calais.
For an opposing view read the following essays:2). Normandy 1944 – What-if scenarios and the Fortitude deception
4). The Jellyfish radio-teletype link
6). Book review – Normandy 1944
1). I have uploaded TICOM report DF-169 ‘Cryptanalytic section Japanese Foreign Office’. Acquired through the NSA’s FOIA office.
Available from my Google docs and Scribd accounts.
2). I have added information on the codebreakers of the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Japanese codebreakers of WWII.
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Imperial Japan entered WWII with three separate codebreaking agencies under the control of the Army, Navy and Foreign Ministry. The Army and Navy signal intelligence agencies intercepted foreign radio traffic and decrypted several military and civilian US, UK, Chinese and Soviet cryptosystems. However relations between these two organizations were strained and in many cases they withheld valuable information from each other. Compared to them the decryption department of the Foreign Ministry was much smaller and had access to limited resources, both in terms of manpower and radio equipment.
Information on the decryption department of the Japanese Foreign Ministry is limited since their archives were destroyed twice during the war. First in a bombing on 25 May 1945 and then in August 1945, when they were ordered by their superiors to burn all secret documents.
According to the recently declassified TICOM report DF-169 ‘Cryptanalytic section Japanese Foreign Office’ this department was established in 1923 and by the end of WWII had approximately 14 officials and 16 clerks. The radio intercept unit supplying it with messages had a station in Tokyo equipped with 10 receivers and 19 operators. They usually intercepted 40-60 messages per day with 100 being the maximum.
The emphasis was on the solution of the codes of the United States, Britain, China and France but some German, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Thailand and Portuguese codes were also read. Despite their limited resources it seems that the Foreign Ministry’s codebreakers were able to achieve their goals mainly thanks to compromised material that they received from their Army and Navy counterparts.
British codes
In the case of Britain the Government Telegraph Code, R Code, Interdepartmental Cypher and Cypher M were read.
According to one of the Japanese analysts a 4-figure diplomatic codebook and its substitution tables were received from either the Army or the Navy in January 1940, thus a great deal of the traffic could be read. Even though the substitution tables changed every 4-6 months the Japanese were able to get a copy roughly one month after their introduction.
The Chinese government used several codebooks but only a few were enciphered properly. This allowed the Japanese to solve most of the traffic. One of the codebooks they solved was the ’27 DEMPON’.
Some French codes and their substitution tables were received from the Army and thus it was possible to solve this traffic. These were called ‘PC 149’, ‘PC 150’, ‘PC 151’ and ‘CGX’ by the Japanese and they were used by the French embassies in Tokyo, Peking, Hanoi, Nanking and Chungking.
German codes
Even though Japan and Germany were allies in WWII it seems that the Japanese authorities did not neglect to solve German diplomatic codes. According to DF-169, p2 a German diplomatic unenciphered code of 100.000 values was solved in part and from 1942 it was possible to read some messages even when they were enciphered with additive sequences, thanks to the reuse of the additive pads. 
This must have been the German Foreign Ministry’s basic codebook used unenciphered for low level messages, enciphered with reusable additive pads for important messages and also with one time pads for the most important traffic.
Swiss codes
The code of the Swiss legation in Tokyo was received from the military in summer 1945 and messages were read till the end of the war.USA codes
The main target of the Foreign Ministry’s codebreakers were the diplomatic systems of the United States. The State Department used the Gray and Brown codes, the enciphered codebooks A1, B1, C1, D1 and the M-138-A strip cipher. By 1940 the Japanese had managed to get copies of Gray, Brown, A1 and several sets of strips of the M-138-A.
During the war they received more strips and keylists from their Finnish and German allies.
Series of essays from Anatoly Klepov on the compromise of Soviet communications in WWII:
"Historical truth" Beria and Suvorov about cryptography and radiolocation performance - Conclusion
The history of signals intelligence and codebreaking is usually focused on the achievements of the codebreakers of large countries such as the USA, Britain, Germany, Soviet Union etc. However small nations have often managed to achieve great victories in the field of signals intelligence despite being hampered by limited resources.
The Finnish signals intelligence service of WWII was able to solve many foreign cryptosystems including Soviet military and NKVD codes and the diplomatic systems of the United States. Many of these messages can be found in the Finnish national archives. The decoded diplomatic traffic can be found in folders T-21810/4 and T-21810/5.
It is interesting to note that a lot of the traffic from Bern, Switzerland consists of reports on the German military and the war industry. These were probably prepared by the OSS Bern Station and the US military attaché Barnwell R. Legge.
Here are some of these messages:
Folder T-21810/4 – messages of 1943
The Vatican requests information on POW officers in Crossville, Tennessee
Reports by US ambassador Laurence Steinhardt on negotiations between SU foreign minister Molotov and Turkish government
Office of Strategic Services requests that US embassy in Turkey pay 10.000 dollars to Albanian minister Dshadshuli
US report from Bern regarding shipping of raw materials essential to the German war effort
Report by General Barnwell R. Legge, US military attaché in Bern, on German manpower reserves
Turkish report on the troops of the Soviet Ukrainian Front
Turkish account of Molotov speeches regarding peace negotiations with Finland
US report from Bern on French resistance
Report on French industry from British ambassador in Switzerland Clifford Norton
US reports from Bern on German war industry
Note: The messages in the Finnish archives were located and copied for me by the researcher Martti Kujansuu.
I have added a link to Decoded messages in the Finnish national archives in The Finnish cryptologic service in WWII.
I have added a message from the Finnish national archives in Allen Dulles and the compromise of OSS codes in WWII.
After spending months trying to track down this report I’ve finally managed to get a copy through the CIA’s freedom of information act office.
The report is called ‘ENGINEERING ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSIAN T34/85 TANK’ and contains analysis of all the components of a Soviet T-34/85 tank captured in Korea.
First impressions
The T-34/85 seems to have been improved in terms of performance and reliability compared to the T-34/76 examined by US experts at Aberdeen in WWII. However the transmission failed again.
Also the vehicle examined still had the older 4-speed transmission and no radio onboard. I thought all T-34/85’s had these…
The report is 453 pages long, so it will take me some time to scan it. In the meantime read WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war.
I have uploaded the report ‘ENGINEERING ANALYSIS OF THE RUSSIAN T34/85 TANK’. Acquired through the CIA’s FOIA office.
Available from my Google docs and Scribd accounts.
I have added tons of new information in WWII Myths - T-34 Best Tank of the war as well as a detailed listing of the sources. Enjoy!
I have added new information in The Soviet K-37 ‘Crystal’ cipher machine and Soviet partisan codes and KONA 6.
USA codes
US Military Strip Ciphers
The State Department’s strip cipher – no clear cut answers
State Department’s strip cipher – reuse of alphabet strips and key lists
Mister David A.Salmon - The State Department’s master of ciphers
Allen Dulles and the compromise of OSS codes in WWII
The American M-209 cipher machine
The Slidex code
The US AN/GSQ-1 (SIGJIP) speech scrambler
Soviet codes
Soviet signals intelligence and the German Enigma cipher machine
NKVD operational and high level codes
The Forschungsamt’s biggest success
German exploitation of Soviet radio-facsimile traffic
Soviet Diplomatic Code 26 and the elusive Dr Roeder
The Soviet K-37 ‘Crystal’ cipher machine
Soviet naval codes and the Arctic convoys
Soviet cipher teleprinters of WWII
German signals intelligence and the Stalingrad offensive
British codes
The British War Office Cypher
The British Interdepartmental Cypher
B-Dienst vs Bletchley Park - The invasion of Norway and the Battle of the Atlantic
Rommel’s Italian savior
SOE cryptosystems – The German view
Typex operational procedures
Solution of prewar Polish diplomatic code by OKW/Chi
Decoding the Warsaw Uprising
Forschungsamt success with Polish diplomatic link London-Washington
French Hagelin cipher machines
Normandy 1944 – What-if scenarios and the Fortitude deception
German fuel reserve - Normandy 1944
A who’s who of German Signals Intelligence
Italian codebreakers of WWII
An easy target - Italian codes and German codebreakers
German mathematicians in the cryptologic service
The codebreakers of the Hungarian General Staff
The codebreakers of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and the compromise of US codes prior to Pearl Harbor
The Japanese J-19 FUJI code
Decoded messages in the Finnish national archives
German disinformation operations - Barbarossa 1941
Compromise of Iranian codes in WWII
The German intercept stations in Spain
Swedish Army codes and Aussenstelle Halden
Wartime exploitation of Turkish codes by Axis and Allied powers
The Pope’s codes
Naval Enigma compromise and the spy in the United States Department of the Navy
Specialized cryptanalytic machines of WWII
An Abwehr success via Moscow
The Abwehr’s assessment of Russian women
Leaders of the Rote Kapelle
Kurt Jahnke German saboteur, Soviet spy?
P for Philby?
Abwehr agent Marina Lee and the Norway campaign
German counterintelligence operations in occupied France
Dienstelle Klatt – A case of Soviet deception
Exploding telephone poles in the Eastern front
German 80mm Photophone - Carl Zeiss Lichtsprechgerät
German AFV losses 1941-44
German Tank losses FMS P-059
Eastern Front Aircraft Strength and Losses 1941-45
The German response against the Soviet T-34 and KV tanks
German AFV losses in the Eastern Front
RAF Bomber Command strength 1939-45
RAF Strength Far East Command – January 1942
RAF 2nd TAF strength 1944-45
British report on German armor piercing projectiles
WWII Myths – The Me262 jet fighter and the dumb Fuehrer
German evaluation of captured Soviet tanks
Some facts on the Panzer V Panther
Was the Panther a ‘heavy’ tank?
WWII Myths – Weak Panzer Divisions after 1940
Battle of Britain 1940 - Strength reports and What If scenarios
WWII Myths – German lack of standardization
The Mortain counterattack – Effects of ULTRA and airpower
WWII Myths – Multitude of German AFV types
‘Ultra’ the end of a myth. The war of the codes between the British and Italian navies. 1934-1945’
Brute Force
Strategic Bombing by the United States in World War II: The Myths and the Facts
Normandy 1944
Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in Europe 1943-45
British Intelligence in the Second World War
Red Storm Rising
I have added an index for the top essays and included a permanent link on the upper right side of the site.
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