Page 207 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER TEN

The Cryptographic Unit

10.1 VIA NAZIONALE 75, ROME

The change of Tasks

Following the reorganization of the Intelligence Service started on 5 October, Sacco, and some of
his colleagues, were seconded to Rome to create a Cryptographic Unit, within Section R (Rome)
of the Service, located in via Nazionale 75 .
1
The Sacco’s Unit was initially identified with the CFR acronym (standing for “CIFRA”) which was
immediately changed into CR to become RT in early December. The acronym RT was definitively
changed to CR at the end of the war, in early December 1918 . The Unit worked in utmost
2
confidentiality and, in fact, enemy intelligence did not identify it during the entire war. As regards
Ronge boasting the superiority of his own intelligence service compared to the Italian service in
terms of secrecy, O. Marchetti points out: “if the Chief of the Austrian Intelligence Service never
heard of it (the Cryptographic Unit, A/N), it means we were able at keeping the secret” and then
3
he affirms that, during the war, the Unit was “a severe guardian of its own security” .
4
In the new office, Sacco could deal mainly with studying codes and ciphers as well as decrypting
intercepted messages, while the coordination of listening and radiogoniometry activities, still
located in Codroipo, was assigned to Lieutenant engineer Franco Magni, a well-known expert in
the field. The dispatches of the Austrian army intercepted by Magni’s team were immediately sent
to Rome by telegraph or other means.
The daily journal of military history entitled Attività e Notizie della Sezione R (Activities and News
of Section R) provides several cryptographic information starting with some remarkable results
5
achieved during the month of November, as shown in the following pages . More in general, the
6
number of decrypted radio dispatches listed in the journal of Section R in the last two months of
1916 was not impressive, because Austro-Hungarian radiotelegraphic transmissions on the Italian
front had decreased considerably so that most of the intercepted radiograms came from other
sources such as, for instance, from communications of the enemy fleet .
7
Furthermore, Sacco and his colleagues were working to organize new activities such as the study
of enemy and neutral countries diplomatic codes, and the solution of cryptographic problems
encountered by other bodies of the State, since Sacco’s and his colleagues’ expertise began to be

1 O. Marchetti, op. cit., p.145 and f.
2 In this book, the Unit will be called “Cryptographic” from now on, although it was officially named RT.
3 O. Marchetti, op. cit., p.88.
4 ibidem, p. 132.
5 The journal of Section R (AUSSME, B1, 101/S) is divided in sections: Secretariat; M.P. (Political-Military); M.E. (Economic),
C.S. (Counterintelligence); C. (Censorship): R.T. (Decryption and Radiotelegraphy); Any Other Business.
6 Royal Italian Army - Intelligence Service - Section R, Attività e novità della Sezione R dei giorni 2 e 11 novembre 1916
(Activities and News of Section R between 2 and 11 November 1916), AUSSME, B1, 101 S, Vol. 248c. From now on, for
the sake of brevity, references to the logs shall be made to Section R Logs.
7 It should be noted that, the Section R Logs only mention the most interesting radio telegrams that were transmitted out of
the Section R, after decrypting.

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