Page 213 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER TEN

Until the end of 1916, the Cryptographic
Unit sent to the Italian navy at least 20
decrypted dispatches of this kind and on
one occasion, it transmitted the ‘related
encoding alphabet’, which was evidently
well known . Very often, telegrams were
27
also distributed to the Ministry of War,
to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and to
Allied Missions. Picture 10.3 displays
a page included in a report of Section R
comprising the plaintext versions of fifteen
radio telegrams, in German language and
translated into Italian, intercepted, and
decrypted between late 1916 and early
1917 .
28
The two telegrams shown in the picture
refer to a radio communication event,
namely the building in the Middle East of
a new radiotelegraphic station to facilitate
communications with the German troops
still operating in Africa. Some other
information on the same station was
included in a report of the Codroipo office 10.3 A page of the report comprising 15 radio telegrams
and inferred from radiograms exchanged encoded with the R2 Code and decrypted in November 1916
between German officers stationed in
Constantinople and their colleagues who were building the station. Details are provided concerning
the features of the station such as the height of the antenna, supported by two 120-metre towers,
and the transmission power. Whether this station was completed remains uncertain .
29
Other information from the cryptograms included in this group concerned the detection of a fuel
depot in Aleppo - of which the Allied were promptly informed - and the activities of some middle
east political personalities.
The nature of R2 is not certain. It should be noted, however, that the list made by Sacco in
the previous summer included two Turkish-German ciphers (line 4 and 5). The former is an RT
dictionary used by radio stations, while the latter is a transposition-based alphabetical cipher with
5-letter groups in the cryptograms. Some clues may lead one to suppose that R2 coincides with
the RT dictionary of line 4 in Sacco’s list. Considering what has already been said with reference
to the breaking of transposition methods, also the “Turkish-German cipher” of line 5 in the list
could be easily solved by Sacco.
Finally, it is possible that some of the dispatches, mentioned in the Section’s logs, received from,
or addressed to Turkish radio stations, might have used different ciphering systems, such as the

27 Section R Logs, 12 December 1916, AUSSME, 101S, Vol. 251c. This was a dispatch from Thessaloniki that had been
th
intercepted on the 10 .
28 Intelligence Service, Section R, Radiotelegrammi decifrati, Cifrario RT Germano - Turco (Decrypted radio telegrams,
German-Turkish Cipher), March 1917, ISCAG, Coll. 223.
29 Radiotelegraphic Branch of Codroipo, Relazioni sul servizio d’ascolto e di radio goniometria, mar. - apr. 1917 (Reports
on the Radio goniometric and listening service, March-April 1917), ISCAG, Racc. 223. From Constantinople, Major Schlee
was coordinating the station implementation assigned to someone called Blume.

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