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British disapprove of US State department crypto security
It seems that during WWII the British codebreakers did not have much respect for the security of US diplomatic communications: What report are they referring to? This one:
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The mysterious Irish codebreakers
A British report investigating the security of US diplomatic codes mentions that the Irish had a codebreaking department and were ‘thoroughly well equipped in the art of code breaking’.According to...
View ArticleReport on problems of SOE cipher systems
A very interesting report on the problems of the crypto systems used by SOE has been posted at the arcre website.
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Book review - Air Power at the Battlefront: Allied Close Air Support in...
Airpower played a major role in WWII. The German victories in the period 1939-41 are linked with the support they received from the Luftwaffe and especially from ground support aircraft like the Ju-87...
View ArticleWartime exploitation of Turkish codes by Axis and Allied powers
The Republic of Turkey remained neutral during most of WWII, while at the same time maintaining close economic relations with Germany. Through constant negotiations with Germany, Britain and the Soviet...
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Time for some new TICOM reports:I-44 ‘Memorandum on speech encipherment by ORR Huettenhain and SDF Dr Fricke’ - 1945I-192 ‘Interrogation of Gustav Schade of OKM 4 SKL III and of the Reichspost and...
View ArticleThe Mortain counterattack – Effects of ULTRA and airpower
In the final days of July 1944 the Allied forces fighting in Normandy were able to break out and threatened the German forces with annihilation. The German response was an attack near Mortainwith the...
View ArticleRAF 2nd TAF strength 1944-45
The 2ndTactical Air Force was a RAF group that supported the Allied troops fighting in Western Europe in the period 1944-45. Strength returns of 2nd TAF are available from ‘AIR 22-Air Ministry:...
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German signals intelligence and the Stalingrad offensive
In the summer of 1942 the German forces in the East managed to surprise the Soviet High Command by attacking in the area of Army Group South. The Germans together with their Rumanian, Hungarian and...
View ArticleLies, damned lies, and statistics - The case of the unreliable Panther tank
The Panther is often castigated because it had a low serviceability rate, especially when it was first introduced in 1943. For example:1). ‘Panther Vs T-34: Ukraine 1943’, p33 says: ‘In contrast no...
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Book review - A Hard Way to Make a War: The Allied Campaign in Italy in the...
The Italian campaign of WWII featured important battles and involved hundreds of thousands of German, Italian, American, British and French soldiers but for some reason authors usually devote little...
View ArticleSupport the cause
Time for a social experiment. I’ve seen that many sites have added a donate button and I have to say that I’m intrigued.So far I’ve written countless essays on various aspects of WWII. A lot of the...
View ArticleRecurring problems of Soviet tank design
In my piece on the T-34 tank I said that postwar Soviet tanks (T-55, T-62, T-72, T-64, T-80) were built on the same principles as the T-34 with unfortunate consequences for the countries that had to...
View ArticleSpeer and the one factory shift story
Several sources (books, magazines, sites) mention that the Germans could have produced more armaments in WWII if they had forced their workers to work more than one shift per day. The belief that the...
View ArticleThe American SS Sturmbannführers
A very interesting WWII espionage mystery is mentioned in the book ‘The German Penetration of SOE: France 1941-1944’, p155. The source of this story was Ernst Vogt, an interpreter at the...
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Victory through airpower
When the United States entered WWII in 1941 there were many discussions regarding the correct strategy that the US leadership should follow. Books and articles appeared that promoted whatever the...
View ArticleWWII Myths – Crimea evacuation 1944
Books relying on Soviet sources claim that in the fighting in the Crimea in 1944 most of the Axis troops were killed or captured with only a handful escaping. For example ‘When Titans clashed: how the...
View ArticleUpdate
Time for some new reports:CSDIC/CMF/Y36 - First detailed interrogation report on one German army intercept PW (Reudelsdorff) - 1945I-23 ‘Interrogation of Major Ernst Hertzer, German Army Signals...
View ArticleThe secret messages of Marshall Tito and General Mihailović
The Kingdom of Yugoslaviawas one of the states that were created when the old Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed at the end of WWI. The country covered a large area in the Balkans but was politically...
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The German bombe and the M-209 cipher machine
Back in April 2012 I uploaded TICOM report DF-114‘German Cryptanalytic device for solution of M-209 traffic’. This report is a translation of a German document retrieved in 1947. It describes a...
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