Page 285 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Probably, the artifices making the CFbis so difficult to break originated from the study carried out
by the Cryptographic Unit on the Service Ciphers in September 1917 .
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In conclusion, during most of November 1917 including the critical moments of the First Battle
of Piave river, the Austrian cryptanalysis suffered a temporary black out concerning the most
widespread Italian codes, namely the Special and CFbis, with evident consequences on the flow
of information from the Penkalas to their Headquarters. Whereupon, in the last days of November,
about at the end of the First Battle of Piave river, the Italians had almost completed their telephone
and telegraphic wire networks and the Austrians could not expect to extract many useful operational
information from radio interceptions.

12.6 THE COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY

The ‘source’ of The coMMIssIon

The harsh judgement on the Italian cryptology expressed by the the Commission of enquiry on
Caporetto and mentioned in Chapter 1 above, finds no basis in the interviews carried out because
the Commission did not ask any specific question on Communication Intelligence to the numerous
witnesses or to any captured Austro-Hungarian Officer.
As far as it has been possible to ascertain so far, the only source available to the Commission about
the cryptographic activities during the war would be the letter sent by O. Marchetti to the General
Staff of the Ministry of War on 14 March 1919 . The proof the Commission owned that letter, or at
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least parts of it, is the quotation in the final report of almost an entire sentence concerning the radio-
goniometric detection of the Italian army withdrawal paths after Caporetto. The Commission,
however, avoided quoting the paragraph that followed, where Marchetti specified the Italians
radio-goniometric service performed better than the Austro-Hungarians’ one.
The most relevant information contained in the letter was only taken from “recent disclosures made
by Officers who served in the cryptographic branches of the disbanded Austro-Hungarian army”
and outlined, during their interrogations, “the huge advantages that knowledge of the (Italian, N/A)
cryptographic secrets had brought to the Austrian General Staff”.
Obviously that document - a mere 5-page letter - could not deal with the details of the activities
carried out by the cryptographic units of the Austro-Hungarian and of the Italian armies during
the war. Nor did it contain a specific reference to the events occurred in the last months of 1917,
or to the situation of Italian cryptology when the paper was drafted in 1919, as it would seem
more appropriate given its purpose. Briefly, the author reported what some imprisoned Austrian
analysts stated, without dealing with the evolution of military codes on either side of the front or
the development of the Italian cryptologic skills which became more evident in the last part of the
war, as described in the next chapters.
In this respect, Marchetti mentioned some codes the Austro-Hungarians Officers claimed that they
had not solved, such as the D code and the SI code, conceived in 1917, as well as the regimental
R and the inter-allied code - I.A. for short, which he mistakenly called L.A. - that were adopted
in 1918 . By limiting the list only to what the Austrian Officers revealed, Marchetti neglected to
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87 Section R logs, op. cit., Studio sul Cifrario RT (Study on RT Cipher), 29 September 1917, AUSSME, Series B1, 101S,
Vol. 300d.
88 Intelligence Service, Attività dei Reparti crittografici op. cit.
89 It is worth to mention that the Commission used the expression “almost all”, in referring to the codes and ciphers known to
the Austrians, most probably considering only the four codes Marchetti said the Austrians did not break during the conflict.

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