Abstract
Australia, founded in 1901 as a federation of once self-governing colonies, proceeded to establish its Army and Navy over the next decade. During WW1 the RAN carried out some direction finding activity. But Sigint capability remained low until the late 1930s, when, following strong pressure from Britain, it began to be developed.
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Notes
- 1.
Thus much of the WW2 archival material is stored in Melbourne, with access available upon notice at the NAA, 99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne. In general, there is little pattern in the division of files between the Melbourne NAA, the Canberra NAA and the Australian War Memorial (AWM). At least they all share a common electronic index called Recordsearch, accessible through the NAA website.
General reference should be made to the book Breaking the Codes by Desmond Ball and David Horner, Allen and Unwin, 1998.
- 2.
Eric Nave is the subject of Sect. 3.3 and the biography (A Man of Intelligence, Rosenberg, 2006) by Ian Pfennigwerth. A Man of Intelligence complements the earlier book (The Intrigue Master, 1995) by Barbara Winter on the wartime DNI, Commander Rupert Long, RAN. Winter makes very clear the importance of Long in the Australian preparation for and effort in WW2.
- 3.
Jennifer Brewster of Monash University has written a useful paper on The Teaching of Japanese in Australia 1917–1950. It is complemented by Colin Funch’s Linguists in Uniform, 2003.
Canberra NAA file A11093 320/5K5 Part 2 reveals that in May 1944, Roy Booth, the commander of the RAAF component of Central Bureau (Chap. 17), learned that there were four RAF and two RCAF officers in London able to translate Japanese and tried to have them transferred to the RAAF Wireless Units.
Military telegraphic Japanese presented its own problems to potential translators.
- 4.
Enough of the report on the Canadian Navy is available in the Canberra NAA as A11085 B3C/18. The quotation given in the main text would appear to refer to the Battle of Jutland (Sect. 1.6) and to the confining of the German battleships to the Baltic Sea. Some other material on Jellicoe’s visit is in A11085 B3C/7. The first three volumes of the report on the RAN are in the Canberra NAA as CP601/1 BUNDLE 1/3, May–August 1919. The fourth is Melbourne item MP1430/1 NN.
- 5.
See NAA Canberra item A1608 O14/1/1.
AWM archive AWM124 5/88 records that an experienced RN Commander, Edmund Harvey, was Director of Signals and Communications in the RAN from May 1937 to May 1939. It is not clear whether Harvey was sent out to upgrade the naval interception facilities in Australia.
- 6.
In the last few months of 1941 the task of decrypting JN-25B7 messages was divided between the FECB and Cast. (See Sect. 10.1.) The SWS then had to decrypt message indicators and send intercepts to the appropriate unit. It appears that some limited decryption of JN-25B7 was done in Australia at that time, but more information is lacking.
A letter from Lietwiler to Op-20-G on this matter survives in NARA RG 38 and is reprinted in Timothy Wilford’s MA thesis (on ProQuest). NAA Melbourne item MP692/1 559/201/989 notes that by December 1941 Commander Newman was fully occupied with ‘W/T intelligence’ leaving the other aspects of his job to his deputy.
- 7.
Squires’ involvement is plausible, but the fact remains that around this time he was sent on sick leave with terminal cancer. He had no background in signals intelligence. The original intentions of the academics remain obscure.
- 8.
As noted in Sect. 3.9, ‘Mic’ Sandford of the Australian unit in the Middle East received special training in the contemporary practice of signals intelligence there.
- 9.
More on the British Operational Intelligence Centres is given in Chap. 7, particularly Note 14.
- 10.
Of the four Sydney University academics, three—Professors T. G. Room and A. D. Trendall and Mr R. J. Lyons—retained civilian status while the fourth, A. P. Treweek, who was also a Major in the Sydney University Regiment (part of the Militia), was called up by the Army and seconded to the SIB. He was later promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Lyons returned to University duties in the re-organisation of October–November 1942, but the other three continued to make significant contributions to signals intelligence work after then. The SIB had some clerical support in 1941.
- 11.
The RAAF file A11093 311/236G survives in the Canberra NAA and has been digitised. The RAAF team was sent to Darwin in November 1941 but was then reporting to the Naval Intelligence Department. This was the origin of the No. 1 Wireless Unit usually written and pronounced 1WU.
- 12.
The NAA Canberra item A432 1940/153 has a memo of 9 May 1938 about the difficulty in obtaining court interpreters of Japanese. The Attorney-General undertook to raise in Cabinet the obvious enough remark: ‘Similarly, if Japanese dispatches were to fall into our hands, it seems doubtful if we could even translate them—at all events, with celerity.’ The Japanese language itself would be a considerable obstacle to understanding even plain-language military messages.
Canberra NAA file A571 1944/4124 is one of about six surviving records of the need to import suitable ‘Nisei’ linguists from Canada. In 1944–1945 ever-increasing quantities of Japanese military documents were being captured. Although those of cryptographic significance received the highest priority, the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS) had a great deal of work to do.
- 13.
The genesis, evolution and work of this section is well covered in the book Breaking Japanese Diplomatic Codes—David Sissons and D Special Section during the Second World War, edited by Desmond Ball and Keiko Tamura, ANU E-Press 2013.
- 14.
This memorandum could scarcely have been independent of the recommendation in the Jellicoe report.
- 15.
Halsey’s comment is given on page 285 of Feldt’s The Coast Watchers. ‘Many appreciative words were spoken by senior officers of the South Pacific command. … Most treasured were those of Admiral Halsey, who said that the intelligence signalled from Bougainville by [Jack] Read and [Paul] Mason had saved Guadalcanal and Guadalcanal had saved the Pacific.’ Admiral Halsey’s Story praises the Coastwatchers quite enough. Nimitz’ comment is in the footnote on page 253 of The Great Sea War.
- 16.
For the New Zealand story see Desmond Ball, Cliff Lord and Meredith Thatcher Invaluable Service: The Secret History of New Zealand’s Signals Intelligence in Two World Wars, Waimauku, Resource Books, 2011.
The book reprints the report New Zealand Naval ‘Y’, H/F, D/F and Special Intelligence Organisation, an apparently British report dated 17 December 1942, NARA RG38, Inactive Stations, Box 23.
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Donovan, P., Mack, J. (2014). Developments in Australia. In: Code Breaking in the Pacific. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-08278-3_6
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