I understand that there was a Luftwaffe unit in France that always used the same 3 letter start groups when setting up their enigma: HIT and LER. They would then send a weather forecast which always started in the same format... these keys allowed the codebreakers to crack the Luftwaffe enigma within a couple of hours (if not sooner) for most days during the War (including the forewarning of the raid on Coventry, but measures could not be taken in case ULTRA was compromised).

I also believe that a lot of operators finished their messages with "HH" (Heil Hitler). Another way in.

Ref the Swedes and intercepted messages, following the German invasion of Norway, the Germans asked for the use of the Swedish telephone system. The Swedes were quite happy to provide this, and sent thousands of intercepted messages to the British.

I thought our secret weapon was Hitler and Goering :E

:ok:




Eight left :(

The few of the few indeed. God bless em.

typerated (#27),
I've read somewhere that Hitler ordered Guderian to halt his armour for 72 hours on the dash to the coast, simply to enable the evacuation from Dunkirk to take place.

That way Britain would have to feed and house the 300,000 + returning troops, who would otherwise have been his problem as POWs. We (he thought) were finished anyway, and had no option but to sue for peace. It was on the cards in those few days, till Churchill took over power, and the rest is history.

FODPlod (#38)
The story that we were later told out there was: After the first attack, Admiral Phillips broke radio silence, not to ask for aircraft cover against the second attack which was sure to come - but merely for a tug from Singapore to help his crippled flagship POW (limping, on one shaft at 1½ kts), back to port. AHQ at Singapore took no action; and it was left to a Flt Lt Tim Vigors (temporarily in command of a "Buffalo" squadron), to recognise the danger and order a scramble. But he was too late: when they arrived on the scene, the second attack had come, and the ship was on the bottom.

What good the "Buffaloes" could have done is questionable, but you do not have to shoot down a torpedo bomber, it is enough to molest it, to put it "off its stroke" on its torpedo run. (Or so I would suppose, knowing, as I do, nothing about it). "Owt is better'n Nowt", as they say in these parts.
Taranto was the model for Pearl Harbor.
But they were enough !

"A properly handled capital ship can always beat off air attack". Phillips had declared - and, to be fair to him, I believe it was the Admiralty thinking at the time (he went down with his ship).

It was one of our greatest Naval disasters of the war, and Wiki states 840 casualties tho' at the time 1,200 was the figure IIRC.

As I understand it, Goering asked Hitler to halt the armoured advance so that his Luftwaffe could finish the job.

Not the only example of the self delusion of the R.N. at that time. I posted this some time ago.

oxenos (#47),

'Bout time there was another "mad scramble" (or any scramble !) But there are no more pennies in the piggy-bank to be dropped.

D O F. Re your #35,


It was also significant that, prior to a raid, each aircraft conducted a radio check using the a/c call-sign. Thus RAF sigint knew which units and numbers of aircraft would be involved, thereby forewarning Fighter Command.


(Allegedly)

Point conceded but the RN didn't have a monopoly on self-delusion. The RAF's faith in the accuracy of its own bombing was misplaced too.

In 1940 an investigation revealed that just one in five RAF aircraft was dropping its bombs within five miles of its target, even in daylight. In December 1941 it was estimated that only three in every hundred RAF bombs dropped at night came within five miles of the intended target.

Can you tell I used to work in OA? :)

FODPlod ... with that background, you would be interested to know that the RAF "Survival to Operate" (STO) team in MoD used a very detailed study into the bombing of Malta to try to extract some data on mass HE effectiveness. I wouldn't say every German/Italian bomb dropped was plotted, but it was close to that.

Surprisingly, much of Malta still exists, as I noticed last month whilst on holiday. Plenty of shrapnel scars though, just like Berlin.

That was good thinking but they nearly ran out of luck when, after the Bismarck episode in May 1941, it was decided to sink all but one of her supply ships dotted around the Atlantic using the same strategy. Their positions for each day were known so it was just a case of pretending to find them with air patrols, then sinking them. One was to be spared so that the reading of enigma wasn't compromised.


Unfortunately the RN just happened to find this one in the course of normal duties and sank it!


This caused much consternation in the UK and Germany but after an investigation the Germans decided it was not possible to break the code. They continued with that thought for the rest of the war.

Ah, the multiple deceptions of this and that, and not knowing what you know. Those must have been fascinating times.

I seem to remember reading somewhere in the dim and distant past that, prior to an op, it was SOP for Bomber Command crews to check out their aircraft, including a ground radio check (on HF!) - all of which was being monitored by the Luftwaffe Signals Intelligence Agency (Luftnachrichten Abteilung 350).

Britains secret weapon(’s) were numerous, one probably being from a genetic pool of overly aggressive absolute hairy arsed bastards who invade these islands over the centuries, raping the women and donating their more progressive tendencies, from a survival point of view.

I believe that, on occasion, Churchill had on his desk an Ultra transcript of an Oberkommando order before the intended recipient had seen it.

There was no "silver bullet" to be credited with winning the war, but I reckon "Ultra" came close.

Some years ago I knew a chap who had been involved in codebreaking in the western desert in the days before Ultra - just stick and string stuff. The Italians could be pretty careless. He said that occasionally they could break a signal and have the result laid reverently on the CinC's desk, to be followed by a further signal from the original recipient saying

''Your XYZ received corrupt. Please send again''

and thus they were able to claim that they were reading the enemy's signals faster than real time.

An Aryan master race of supermen?

How well did that theory work out over the second half of that 20thC game?

Who won?

America ;)

Puzzled by an episode of 100 Years of Women at war on Beeb2. Nicky Campbell's Mum implied that there was radar control from UK of outgoing bombers - not heard of that before, or was it a journalistic short cut to confuse the unwary?