Should The Germans have realized their code was broken?

[Ron Clifton]

The following is an excerpt from the English translation of Admiral Scheer's book Germany's High Sea Fleet in the First World War (chapter VI, last page) about the Battle of the Dogger Bank:

"The unexpected presence of the English ships on the morning of the 24th [January 1915] leads to the conclusion that the encounter was not a matter of chance but that our plan in some way or other had got to the knowledge of the English."

 

It is certainly possible that Room 40 had access to a codebook, quite possibly that seized from the German destroyer S.119 in November 1914, but not the Magdeburg codebook mentioned in post 22, whose capture seems to post-date the Dogger Bank action.

 

Ron

Edited 26 March , 2019 by Ron Clifton

[Talesofaseadog]

On 14/03/2019 at 02:34, specster said:

I am new to this forum...please bare with me.  I tried to find this question by a search and couldn't.  Should Hipper have known after Dogger Bank that their code was broken?  I know he suspected something was amiss and I believe that was the main reason of going out on the   23 January 1915.  At that time he thought fishing trawlers were giving the British information and he resolved to cause some havoc and on his return to Germany escort the destroyers while they interrogated the Trawlers for signs of spying  (Radios,  Code books, etc.).  He was suspicious prior to this action, shouldnt he have been convinced after that the code was broken?  The British showed up in force with a converging force of two substantial fleets which combined were superior to his - significantly superior but not the whole British fleet - (Jellicoe did not believe in losing the entire fleet in one battle).  Should the Germans have known by then the code was broken???

There is a really informative book 'The Eyes of the Navy' written by Admiral Sir William James which is A Biographical Study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall.

'Blinker' Hall as he was known was the leader of Room 40 for most of WW1 and he was a genius in devising ruses to deceive the German High Command.

We know so little about Room 40 because so much information was destroyed at the end of WW1, thus this important work could continue in the future such as at Bletchley Park in WW2.

In fact I believe that he really was the father of Bletchley Park because most of what they did had already been done by him, we owe our thanks to this man.

[Hyacinth1326]

1. 5 hours ago, Talesofaseadog said:

   We know so little about Room 40 because so much information was destroyed at the end of WW1,

 

The files in ADM 137/3917 so far as I can glean by comparing their information with Spindler's 'Handelskrieg', provide a reasonably accurate track of U-boat activities. There is a wealth of surviving primary source information at Kew.

[edwin astill]

"Room 40" by Patrick Beesly, Hamish Hamilton 1982 may be worth reading.  I don't know enough on the subject to judge its worth, but it seems to be quite detailed.   Doubtless fresh information has been made available since the 80's.

 

Edwin

[Talesofaseadog]

18 hours ago, Hyacinth1326 said:

1.  

 

The files in ADM 137/3917 so far as I can glean by comparing their information with Spindler's 'Handelskrieg', provide a reasonably accurate track of U-boat activities. There is a wealth of surviving primary source information at Kew.

I believe that U-boat tracking was one of Room 40's most important jobs and could have been key to the success of convoys.

[Talesofaseadog]

17 hours ago, edwin astill said:

"Room 40" by Patrick Beesly, Hamish Hamilton 1982 may be worth reading.  I don't know enough on the subject to judge its worth, but it seems to be quite detailed.   Doubtless fresh information has been made available since the 80's.

 

Edwin

Thank you, I have ordered a copy.

[Hyacinth1326]

I am only qualified to discuss East coast convoys (I am excluding the HZ/OZ series of Norwegian convoys in 1918) but I have yet to see  evidence that U-boat tracking played any significant role in their protection - but am happy to be proved wrong with sourced material.

Edited 4 November , 2019 by Hyacinth1326

[Michael Lowrey]

Worth remembering that the High Seas Fleet (HSF) and Flanders command used different doctrines during the war. The HSF boats tended to radio a lot; Flanders boat's very rarely used their radios. The lack of radio intercepts from the Flanders boats made these virtually impossible to track and explains the many errors in the Royal Navy's sinking attributions for Flanders U-boats.

[Talesofaseadog]

Primary source of U-boat tracking and convoy course control would be fantastic to find.

So far I have only found information in 3 books which leads me to believe that this was done.

Both sections of Room 40 were situated close to each other and easily able to communicate very quickly.

It just makes sense to me and Bletchley Park certainly did this in WW2.

One day I might find the proof if I am lucky but I suspect that direct proof does not exist, only a correlation of convoy course changes associated with known u-boat positions which would not be an easy task.

[Hyacinth1326]

There were serious issues with regard to the amount of information released by room 40 to units beyond the remit of C in C Home Fleet in 1918.  Vice admiral East coast lamented vociferously that information was not being shared.  The same was true of Auxiliary Patrol units.  

Edited 5 November , 2019 by Hyacinth1326

[Howard]

On 14/03/2019 at 02:34, specster said:

 Should the Germans have known by then the code was broken???

Oh yes but not by suspicion, by testing.

 

In the 2nd war, the Abwehr became suspicious of a break and had several enquiries into the safety of their encryption but looked the wrong way, they looked to see if they could break their code and assumed their failure to do that meant the enemy couldn’t either. A more subtle approach is to transmit several fake messages only over an encrypted channel to see if and how the enemy reacts. If they do react then despite the “confidence” in the maths of the encryption technique, the channel is compromised.

 

It would seem sensible to me to test all communication channels for leaks all the time as a matter of routine. I hope the current encryption techniques are tested but looking out as well as in.

 

Howard