Page 287 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

CHAPTER TWELVE

– The coding/decoding tables of the Special Code for Higher Echelons was only broken in the
last ten days of November;
– Radio-communications seldom relied on the Pocket Military Cipher. To this end, some
subordinate units already utilised the first version of the D code;
– In early November 1917, the CFbis service cipher - which the Austrian analysts had significant
trouble managing - replaced the C2 and C4 that the Austrians knew well, causing their decrypting
blackout that lasted about 20 days.
In short, in the timeframe considered, the Austrians had only partial knowledge of the Italian
cryptographic systems. In practical terms, it is likely that the decrypting of some dispatches
achieved by the Penkalas of the 14 Austro-German Army during the shift of the front, succeeded
th
because some Italian stations were still using C2 and C4, which remained active until the first
days of November.
In conclusion, it seems demonstrated that the entire approach of the Commission showed
approximation and poor situational awareness about radio Intelligence on both sides, especially
during the critical period of late 1917.

12.7 A DISCONCERTING REVELATION FOR THE AUSTRO-HUNGARIAN
HEADQUARTERS

The Plunder of caPoreTTo
In moving across the front and beyond, the Austrians recovered several documents attesting
the telephone listening activities of the Italian telephone interception service. Ronge himself
recognised that:

unfortunately, only in the fall of 1917, we learned that the Italians had utilized a large amount of
listening stations since 1916. In less than six months, in the area between Wippach (Vippacco)
and Mount Rombon, they had listened to about 5.200 radio dispatches by exploiting a large
amount of our deserters and fugitives who knew Italian .
92
The number of intercepted telephone dispatches mentioned by Ronge almost coincided with the
number in the upper part of picture 12.6 showing the translation of an Austrian Intelligence Service
document captured in July 1918. The picture refers to the activities carried out by the I.T. service
between September 1916 and February 1917 on the front of the 2 and 3 Armies. The total
rd
nd
number of intercepted phonograms and conversations reached about 10,000, with a daily average
of around 60.
The first comment in this respect concerns the period of the eavesdropping, which shows how
intense the work of the I.T. Service had been from 1916, when the number of intercepting stations
was lower than in October 1917. Moreover, Aurio Carletti, commenting the Austrian document,
pointed out that:

this statistical data must come from documents fallen into the hands of the enemy, which can
only consist of daily interception reports issued by the Headquarters of the Armies. If we

92 M. Ronge, Spionaggio, op. cit., p.227.

285