Australian Code Breakers by James Phelps

Author:James Phelps
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-01-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

SECTION E

Melbourne, 17 September 1914

‘Wheatley’s report, sir,’ said the secretary.

‘Good,’ Thring said. ‘Put it there.’ He pointed to the only vacant space on his desk. Thring wiped his eyes, only recently opened after yet another night spent in his office. He took a swig of tea before reading Wheatley’s summary, thankfully separate from the blow-by-blow list of every signal intercepted since the start of the war:

Report of Intelligence Branch, Navy Office, Melbourne, on wireless messages of German origin intercepted by Australian shore stations during the week preceding the outbreak of war.

At the outbreak of war the German Pacific Squadron (flagship Scharnhorst) was amongst the islands to the north of New Guinea. From 25 July to 31 July the German wireless stations at Yap and Tsingtao were very busy interchanging messages between Berlin and Scharnhorst. Unfortunately, the text of these messages was not taken by our stations, the only record being that the German stations were interchanging traffic.

Thursday Island, Port Darwin and Port Moresby all notified the head office in Melbourne of this interchange of traffic.

At times, there was apparently some difficulty in getting Scharnhorst through Yap and Tsingtao, as on 30 July and 1 August messages were transmitted from Berlin to Thursday Island to be sent through Port Moresby radio to Planet, which at that time was on the north coast of New Guinea. These messages were then forwarded by Planet to Scharnhorst and also by Planet to Nauru and Scharnhorst replied to Yap. Messages continued to arrive in this way for Planet until 3 August but on this day they were not transmitted by Port Moresby. On this day the Germans were also making use of the Dutch stations to get into communication with Geier, which was evidently cruising in the Dutch Islands. These messages were mostly intercepted by Broome and Port Darwin.

The same message was frequently being sent in different directions. On 2 August 8.20 pm a message of 19 words was sent from Berlin to Deutscher Kriegaschiff Planet Nauru and intercepted by Port Moresby. On 3 August at 9.17 pm the same message beginning Berlin No.23 19 words via Yap 2 August was sent by the Dutch station Sitoebondo to Geier and intercepted by Broome.

Again on 3 August at 12.10 am a message was sent from Planet to Nauru 10 words to Admiral Berlin, also at 12.52 am from Scharnhorst to Yap 12 words to Admiral Berlin. Both these messages at 10.40 pm that night were sent by Sitoebondo to Geier.

For days after the outbreak of war Scharnhorst was receiving and sending messages from and to Yap and Tsingtao. These were all in the same code, which was evidently a code for the use of men-of-war and important land stations only. It differs very considerably from the Handelsverkehrsbuch which was used when men-of-war communicate with merchant vessels.

Thursday Island and Port Moresby were the best stations for intercepting messages to the north of New Guinea, and Broome for messages from the Dutch Indies.

It may be noted that the receipt of these messages altered the whole movement of the Australian fleet.

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