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Posted on 07/13/2005 10:29:25 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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Misunderstood Allied Secret Weapon The importance of decrypted German radio transmissions to Allied victory is well documented. Almost forgotten, however, is the fact that Ultra intelligence was sometimes squandered.  The breaking of the high-level German codes began with the efforts of the Polish secret service in the interwar period. By creating a copy of the basic German enciphering machine, the Poles managed to read German signal traffic throughout the 1930s with varying degrees of success. However, shortly before the Munich conference in September 1938, the Germans made alterations to their enciphering machine—the so-called Enigma machine—and in mid-September, darkness closed over German message traffic. The Poles continued their work, however, and after France and Britain's guarantee of Polish independence in March 1939, they passed along to the British what they had thus far achieved. Considerable cooperation had also existed earlier between the Poles and the French. Building on what they had learned from their Continental allies, British cryptanalysts finally cracked some of the German codes in April 1940, just before the great offensive against France and the Low Countries. Other successes soon followed and gave Allied intelligence officers and commanders valuable insights into German intentions and capabilities. Nevertheless, the British were only able to break a small proportion of the specific codes used by the Wehrmacht. At the end of 1943, the Kriegsmarine, for example, used up to forty different ciphers, all requiring different Enigma machine settings. During the Battle of the Atlantic, the transmissions from U-boats to shore and from the commander of submarines to his boats received the highest priorities from cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, the location of the British decoding efforts in Europe.  Even with the exceptional resources available there and at that time, it took experts several days and in some cases up to a week to find solutions for a particular day's settings on the Enigma machine. The task of getting invaluable intelligence information out to the field where it could be of direct help was, of course, immensely difficult, especially given fears that if the Germans found out that their codes were being compromised on a daily basis, Ultra intelligence would dry up. In 1940 during the Battle of Britain, this need for concealment was not great, but as the war spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, it became an increasing problem. Accordingly, the British and their American allies evolved a carefully segregated intelligence system that limited the flow of Ultra to a select number of senior officers. The Ultra information dissemination process lay outside normal intelligence channels. For example, the intelligence officers of the Eighth Air Force would not be aware of the existence of Ultra and would therefore not know the duties of the Ultra liaison officers. Those officers, in turn, would forward Ultra intelligence only to the commanders of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces. The system seems to have worked, for the Germans never caught on to how extensively their ciphers had been compromised.  Unfortunately, there were drawbacks. Intelligence is used only if it reaches those who understand its significance. Three specific incidents underline this point with great clarity. The first occurred in early September 1944, as Allied armies pursued the beaten Wehrmacht to the Third Reich's frontiers. On September 5, Bletchley Park made the following decryption available to Allied commanders in Western Europe: For rest and refit of panzer formations, Heeresgruppe Baker [Army Group B] ordered afternoon fourth [September 4] to remain in operation with battleworthy elements: two panzer, one-six panzer [Second, Sixteenth Panzer Divisions], nine SS and one nought [Ninth, Tenth] SS panzer divisions, elements not operating to be transferred by AOK [controlling army] five for rest and refit in area Venloo-Arnhem-Hertogenbosch. This intelligence, along with a second confirmation on September 6, indicated that at the very time when the British-planned Operation Market-Garden was moving forward, some of Germany's best panzer divisions would be refitting in the town selected as the goal of the British First Airborne Division and the operation's final objective on the Rhine—Arnhem. Putting this message together with intelligence that soon emerged from the Dutch underground in Holland that SS panzer units were refitting in the neighborhood of Arnhem, Allied commanders should have recognized that Operation Market-Garden had little prospect of success. Unfortunately, they did not put these pieces together, and officers at the highest level at Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery's headquarters who had access to Ultra also failed to draw the correct conclusions.  A second example comes from a period three months after Operation Market-Garden, in December 1944. An unfortunate result of the rush to publish after the existence of Ultra became known to the public in the early 1970s has been the appearance of a number of legends. One of the most persistent is the belief that Ultra gave no advance warning to Allied commanders in December 1944 that the Germans were about to launch a major thrust through the Ardennes. Admittedly, Hitler's intuition suggested to him that German security had been compromised and led him to undertake a series of unprecedented measures to veil the Ardennes attack. Still, there were overt indications even in the high-level codes about German operational intentions. Ultra, however, pointed to a number of other indicators. These suggested that the Wehrmacht was moving supplies of ammunition and fuel into the region behind the Ardennes. Since the Germans were desperately low on such materiel, the allocations of resources could only portend major operations to come in the Ardennes. The German high command had no reason to expect that the Allies were planning to launch a major offensive in this area, especially since they were so obviously trying to kick in the door to the Reich at so many other points. Unfortunately, the mood in the higher Allied headquarters and in intelligence circles was euphoric—the war was almost over, and the Germans could not possibly launch an offensive. The third case of Ultra information not being used occurred during the Battle of the Atlantic. By 1943 the Allies were using Ultra, when available, in moving their convoys across the North Atlantic, so that the great formations of merchant shipping could avoid submarine patrol lines. In one particular case, decodings had picked up a heavy concentration of German submarines north of the Azores. Thus, a major convoy of aviation fuel tankers from the refineries at Trinidad to the Mediterranean was rerouted to the south of the Azores. Unfortunately, because his escorts needed refueling and the weather was better north of those islands, the convoy commander disregarded his instructions, sailed north of the Azores, and ran smack into the U-boats. Only two tankers reached port. What made the episode even more surprising was the fact that the convoy commander had just served a tour of duty in the Admiralty's convoy and routing section, where he surely must have had some awareness of the reasons for rerouting convoys.  If some commanders occasionally misused Ultra intelligence, such instances were the exception rather than the rule. It is, however, difficult to assess Ultra's full impact on the conflict. At times, particularly early in the war, no matter how much Ultra informed the British of German intentions, the Wehrmacht's overwhelming superiority made successful use of the information virtually impossible. For example, decoded Enigma messages in the spring of 1941 warned the British about German intentions against the Balkan states, first Greece and then—after the anti-German coup in Yugoslavia—against that country as well. Such intelligence, of course, was of extremely limited value due to the overwhelming forces that Hitler deployed in the region. On the other hand, the intercepts and decrypts in the summers of 1941 and 1942 gave the British government, and Churchill in particular, an accurate picture of Erwin Rommel's tank strength. That information indicated that the British army had considerable superiority in numbers in the North African theater against the Afrika Korps. These quantitative returns could not indicate, however, such factors as the technological superiority of German tanks and particularly the qualitative edge in doctrine and training that the Germans enjoyed. The intercepts, however, explain why Churchill kept consistent pressure on British Eighth Army commanders to attack the Afrika Korps.
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| Speer's hopes were not realized, largely because Ultra relayed to Allied air commanders the size and successes of German reconstruction efforts, as well as the enormous damage and dislocations to Germany's military forces that the bombing of the oil industry was causing. The intelligence officer who handled Ultra messages at the Eighth Air Force reported after the war that the intercepts indicated that shortages were general and not local. This fact, he testified, convinced "all concerned that the air offensive had uncovered a weak spot in the German economy and led to [the] exploitation of this weakness to the fullest extent." On the level of tactical intelligence, during the execution of Operation Overlord, Ultra also provided immensely useful information. Intercepts revealed a clear picture of German efforts and successes in attempting to repair damage that the Allied air campaign was causing to the railroad system of northern France. A mid-May staff appreciation signed by Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, commander in chief West, warned that the Allies were aiming at the systematic destruction of the railway system and that the attacks had already hampered supply and troop movements. Ultra intelligence made clear to Allied tactical air commanders how effective the attacks on the bridge network throughout the invasion area were and the difficulties that German motorized and mechanized units were having in moving forward even at night.  Cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park Ultra also gave Western intelligence a glimpse of the location and strength of German fighter units, as well as the effectiveness of attacks carried out by Allied tactical aircraft on German air bases. Furthermore, these intercepts indicated when the Germans had completed repairs on damaged fields or whether they had decided to abandon operations permanently at particular locations. Armed with this information, the Allies pursued an intensive, well-orchestrated campaign that destroyed the Germans' base structure near the English Channel and invasion beaches. These attacks forced the Germans to abandon efforts to prepare bases close to the Channel and instead to select airfields far to the southeast, thereby disrupting German plans to reinforce Luftflotte 3 in response to the cross-Channel invasion. When the Germans did begin a postinvasion buildup of Luftflotte 3, the destruction of forward operating bases forced it to select new and inadequately prepared sites for reinforcements arriving from the Reich. Ultra intercepts proceeded to pick up information on much of the move, which indicated bases and arrival times for the reinforcing aircraft. Another substantial contribution of Ultra to Allied success was its use in conjunction with air-to-ground attacks. Ultra intercepts on June 9 and 10 revealed to Allied intelligence the exact location of General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg's Panzer Group West headquarters. Obligingly, the Germans left their vehicles and radio equipment in the open. The subsequent air attack not only destroyed most of Panzer Group West's communications equipment but also killed seventeen officers, including the chief of staff. The strike effectively eliminated the headquarters and robbed the Germans of the only army organization they had in the West that was capable of handling large numbers of mobile divisions.  Why were the British able to break some of the most important German codes with such great regularity and thereby achieve such an impact on the course of the war? The Germans seem to have realized midway through the conflict that the Allies were receiving highly accurate intelligence about their intentions. Nevertheless, like postwar historians, they looked everywhere but at their own encrypted transmissions. Enthralled with the technological expertise that had gone into the construction of Enigma, the Germans excluded the possibility that the British could decrypt their signals. After the sinking of the great battleship Bismarck in May 1941 and the rapid clearance of the supply ships sent out ahead of her from the high seas, the Kriegsmarine did order an inquiry. Headed by a signals man (obviously with a vested interest in the results), the board of inquiry determined that the British could not possibly have compromised the Enigma system. Rather, the panel chose to blame the disaster on the machinations of the fiendishly clever British secret services. By 1943, the success of British anti-submarine measures in the Atlantic once again aroused German suspicions that their ciphers had been compromised. In fact, the commander of U-boats suggested to German naval intelligence that the British Admiralty had broken the codes: "B.D.U [the commander of U-boats] was invariably informed [in reply] that the ciphers were absolutely secure. Decrypting, if possible at all, could only be achieved with such an expenditure of effort and after so long a period of time that the results would be valueless." One British officer serving at Bletchley Park recalled that German "cryptographic experts were asked to take a fresh look at the impregnability of the Enigma. I heard that the result of this 'fresh look' appeared in our decodes, and that it was an emphatic reassertion of impregnability."  The Germans made a bad situation worse by failing to take even the most basic security measures to protect their ciphers. In fact, a significant portion of Bletchley Park's success was due to procedural mistakes that the Germans made in their message traffic. Among basic errors, the Germans started in midwar to reuse the discriminate and key sheets from previous months rather than generate new random selection tables. If that were not enough, they (particularly the Luftwaffe) provided a constant source of cribs, which were the presumed decrypted meanings of sections of intercepted text. They enabled the British to determine Enigma settings for codes already broken. The cribs turned up in the numerous, lengthy, and stereotyped official headings normally on routine reports and orders, all sent at regular times throughout the day. According to Gordon Welchman, who served at Bletchley Park for most of the war, "We developed a very friendly feeling for a German officer who sat in the Qattara Depression in North Africa for quite a long time reporting every day with the utmost regularity that he had nothing to report." The German navy proved no less susceptible to such mistakes. Dönitz's close control of the U-boat war in the Atlantic depended on an enormous volume of radio traffic. The volume itself was of inestimable help to the cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. Although the Germans introduced a fourth rotor into the Enigma in March 1943, thereby threatening once again to impose a blackout on their North Atlantic operations, the new machines employed only a small fraction of their technical possibilities. Unfortunately for the U-boats, there was also considerable overlap between old and new Enigmas. As a result of these and other technical errors, the British were back into U-boat radio transmissions within ten days of the changeover. Furthermore, at about the same time, Bletchley Park decrypted a signal to U-boat headquarters indicating that the Germans were breaking the Allied merchant code.  One final incident should serve to underline the high price of German carelessness where security discipline was concerned. Bismarck had broken out into the central Atlantic in May 1941 on a raiding expedition. After sinking the battle cruiser HMS Hood, the battleship managed to slip away from shadowing British cruisers. The pursuing British admiral decided at 1800 hours on May 25 that the German battleship was making for Brest. Within an hour, the Admiralty had confirmation of that opinion through a Luftwaffe, not Kriegsmarine, intercept. Luftwaffe authorities had radioed their chief of staff, then visiting Athens during the German invasion of Crete, that Bismarck was heading for Brest. Obviously, there are important lessons that we can draw from these German errors. To begin with, as Patrick Beesly, who worked closely with the naval Ultra throughout the war, notes, "While each nation accepted the fact that its own cryptanalysts could read at least some of their enemy's ciphers, they were curiously blind to the fact that they themselves were being subjected to exactly the same form of eavesdropping." Above all, the Germans seem to have been overly impressed with their presumed superiority in technology. Thus, not only did they make elemental mistakes in their communications discipline, but they arrogantly refused to believe that their enemies might have technological and intelligence capabilities comparable to their own. In recent years, considerable interest has arisen regarding German operational and tactical competence on the field of battle. There is an important subheading to that competence. While historians and military analysts tell us that the Germans were extraordinarily proficient in the operational and tactical spheres, we should also recognize that the Germans were incredibly sloppy and careless in the fields of intelligence, communications, and logistics, and consistently (and ironically) held their opponents in contempt in those fields. We would be wise to examine the German example closely in all aspects of World War II. We can learn much from the Germans' high level of competence in the tactical and operational fields. Equally, we have much to learn from their failures in other areas. Above all, the German defeat in World War II suggests that to underestimate the capabilities and intelligence of one's enemies is to suffer dangerous and damaging consequences to one's own forces. |
To disagree, in part, with this last portion of the article, one of the less palatable, and less mentioned truth about Ultra's success, is that even with the Allies "reading their mail", and having advanced knowledge of German operational plans, it took five years [from 1940-1945] to defeat Germany, and the Allies suffered a whole lot more deats and setbacks than they should have during that period. In some ways, the German military, especially their Army, was superior to the Allies.
That same evening, Kariel's 13-year-old sister Chantel was at another church, where someone asked her if she knew Jesus as her Savior. She told the person she did. Early the next morning, fire swept through Kariel and Chantel's home, and tragically, they both died. They were in heaven with Jesus at sunrise. No one has the promise of tomorrow. The crucial question is: Have we admitted our need for God's forgiveness of our sin and trusted Jesus as our Savior? (Romans 3:23; John 1:12). Our sin separates us from God and requires judgment, but Jesus gave His life in our place (Hebrews 9:27-28). Make sure you have the same confidence that Chantel and Kariel had. Then, when your time comes to die, you'll be in heaven with Jesus at the next sunrise. —Anne Cetas
When I shall rest at the close of life's day, When "Welcome home" I shall hear Jesus say, O that will be sunrise for me! —Poole © Renewal 1952, The Rodeheaver Co. Sunset in one land is sunrise in another.
Where Do We Go From Here? |
Clambcb Zskn for the Freeper Foxhole
vox_pl is right in that the Poles don't get half the credit that they deserve in the breaking of the Enigma ciphers.
Another overlooked part in the chain is the part of the French prior to the May of 1941. IIRC the French were able to turn a rather greedy German civil servant to the French side and the German was able to provide the French Secret Service with a number of codes. This gave the French and to a lesser extent the Brits some insight on how the codes worked.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
On This Day In History
Birthdates which occurred on July 14:
1602 Jules Mazarin France, cardinal, French 1st Minister (1642-61)
1818 Nathaniel Lyon, Brig General (Union volunteers), died in 1861
1830 Richard Henry Jackson, Bvt Major General (Union volunteers)
1831 William Dwight, Brig General (Union volunteers), died in 1888
1834 James Abbott McNeill Whistler artist (Whistler's Mother)
1862 Florence Bascom US, 1st American woman PhD
1862 Gustav Klimt Austria, Art Nouveau painter
1865 Annie Jones Virginia, bearded lady
1869 Owen Wister US, novelist (The Virginian)
1874 'Abbas II last khedive (Ottoman viceroy) of Egypt (1892-1914)
1893 Spencer Williams Vidalia La, actor (Andy-Amos 'n' Andy)
1903 Irving Stone US, author (Love is Eternal, Lust for Life)
1904 Isaac Bashevis Singer Yiddish novelist (Enemies-Nobel 1978)
1906 Tom Carvel ice cream mogul (Carvels)
1910 William Hanna animator (Hanna-Barbera)
1911 Terry-Thomas England, actor (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)
1912 Woodrow Wilson "Woodie" Guthrie folk singer (This Land Is Your Land)
1913 Gerald R Ford [Leslie King], 41st VP (1973-74), 38th pres (R-1974-77)
1913 Jimmy Hoffa, missing labor leader
1917 Douglas Edwards Alda Okla, newscaster (CBS Evening News, FYI)
1918 Ingmar Bergman Uppsala Sweden, director (Cries & Whispers)
1918 Jay Wright Forrester invented random-access magnetic core memory
1923 Dale Robertson Harrah Ok, actor (Death Valley Days, Walter-Dynasty)
1926 Harry Dean Stanton actor (Alien, Cool Hand Luke, Repo Man)
1927 John Chancellor Chicago Ill, news anchor (NBC, VOA)
1930 Polly Bergen Knoxville Tn, actress (Rhoda-Winds of War, Baby Talk)
1931 Donald Eugene Webb Okla City, murderer (FBI Most Wanted List)
1932 Roosevelt Grier Cuthbert Ga, NFLer (NY Giants)/actor (Movin' On)
1934 Leo Joseph Koury Pitts, murderer (FBI Most Wanted List)
1936 Robert F Overmyer Lorain Ohio, Col USMC/astronaut (STS 5, STS 51B)
1938 Jerry Rubin, activist (Chicago 7)/stockbroker
1941 Tatyana Dmitryevna Kuznetsova, cosmonaut
1952 Chris Cross rock singer (Arthur)
1952 Jerry Houser LA Calif, actor (Slapshot, Summer of '42, Class of '44)
1976 Yesim Cetin, Miss Turkey Universe (1997)
Seen this?
I Got To Get One of These (F14 Model)
big-boys.com ^ | 13 july 05 | Self
Posted on 07/13/2005 9:41:07 PM CDT by F14 Pilot
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1442464/posts
The title of the Big-Boys.com piece is "I Gotta Get Me One of These!" If you're into airplanes at all, one look at the video for this 6' long jet-powered F-14 Tomcat in full test-flight mode will have you uttering similar sentiments.
Just the thing for dealing with those pesky neighbors!
Very informative discussion going about today's thread . . . I gotta front row seat.
DOWN IN FRONT!
If anyone is interested in more on this
"Intelligence In War"
Knowledge of the enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda
INTELLIGENCE IN WAR - SIR JOHN KEEGAN
This book sets out to answer a simple question: how useful is intelligence in war?
http://homepage.eircom.net/~odyssey/Quotes/History/Intelligence_War.html
BTW, the only reason I sat in the front row is because the girls in my classes were always a distraction. It's hard enough understanding what the prof. is lecturing about without having halter tops, mini skirts, etc. distracting my field of view. Life has it's challenges.
The flu bug is making the rounds here in Southwest Oklahoma. I'm one of those that has it right now.
Be careful not to catch it.
...and the score continues to rise. :)
This is very interesting stuff about Ultra, etc.
When all else fails, my hand-writing could be considered an encrypted message - even I have trouble reading it. :)
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Kariel was riding home from a children's program at church with her neighbor friends. Admiring the sunset, she said to Gini, the driver, "That sunset is so beautiful it looks like heaven!" So Gini asked her, "Do you know how to get to heaven?" Kariel, who was only 5, answered confidently, "You have to have Jesus as your Savior—and I do!" Then she began to ask her friends in the van if they knew Jesus too.