Page 351 - The Secret War in the Italian front in WWI (1915-1918)

ANNEX A

A third initial letter in the code groups refers to a row of the auxiliary table. For example, ‘ta’ is
encoded into ‘HO’, while ‘tra’ become ‘CHO’ as per the sixth line of the auxiliary table. The letter
‘I’ at the beginning of a three-letter encoding group indicates the use of a second position within
each cell (sub-row) where the terms currently used in the Army, Arabic and Roman numerals, and
some recurrent terms without endings, such as ‘inform’, are found.
In table rebuilt by the Austrians analysts, the number of sub-row positions was initially less
than 38%. Among these, the terms commonly used in the Army were limited in number, but
the knowledge of the rest of the cipher could still allow to interpret the meaning of the Italian
cryptograms.
The first key used and shown in the table was the word ‘FLICAZONI, which appear in the first row
without repetition. The letters of the reduced alphabet not included in the keyword until the 14
th
positions are filled in the row positions following the end of the key. In the first vertical column of
the two tables, the inverted key is inserted while the remaining positions are occupied by the letters
of the reduced alphabet, from top to bottom. The Austrians did not identifie this first keyword used
by the Italians, which we have rebuilt and shown it here.
When the Austrians discovered the way to reconstruct the keyword starting from commonly used
Italian words, the result was quite ironic. The keyword was ‘CAPITÓMBOLANO’ (Italian for
‘they tumble down’).
Ronge recalled the similarity of the C1 cipher to that described by Andreas Figl in his book and
called Zweispaltige einfahtable, i.e., a cipher with 3-letter groups other than those within the Italian
reduced alphabet, a main table, and an auxiliary table with 13 x 9 x 12 combinations in total .
3
As shown in the text, some C series ciphers adopted after C1 can be described in the same way
as C1, but with a greater number of positions in the main table, as in the case of C2, or using a
“dictionary”, as in the case of CF.
All tables are equivalent to codes that include, for example, a number of pages equal to the number
of columns of the equivalent table i.e., in the C series, a maximum of 17 pages identified by one of
the letters of the reduced alphabet. Each page contains as many rows as those in the table, which
were identified by a second letter of the alphabet, and as many columns as there are rows in the
auxiliary table.

3 M. Ronge, op cit., p.52. The reference is on page 173, Annex 32 to the book written by Captain Figl.

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