20th Century
By the Numbers
On Going Postal we have a number of radio hams (holders of the Amateur Radio Broadcast Licence), and lots of others who have radio equipment with that tantalising logo on the tuning dial “SW”. SW [more…]
Cryptography
20th Century
The Oshima telegram
In May 1944 the Japanese Ambassador to Berlin was Mr Oshima. He had a face to face meeting with Adolf on May 28 1944 and sent the results to Tokyo encoded using Purple which had [more…]
Engineering
Invisible Writing
Herbert O Yardley was a a code clerk in the US State Department who took an interest in codes and ciphers. He taught himself as much as he could and he proposed a cryptographic bureau. [more…]
Engineering
Rommel re-visited
General Erwin Rommel , the Desert Fox , a genius , master tactician and the man of the swift bold attack. He is a legend , ran rings around Generals Wavell , Cunningham , Ritchie [more…]
History
The greatest General of all time
This is yet more from the story of Herr Wilhelm Flicke of the German Intercept Service. It has been mentioned before that Herr Flicke’s opinion is that Signals Intelligence is of the highest importance. Few [more…]
America
The Zimmermann Telegram – Part Three
In 1917 Arthur Zimmermann, the German Foreign Minister, sent an explosive telegram to the German Ambassador in Mexico which was picked up and decoded by the British who passed it on to the Americans. The [more…]
America
The Zimmermann Telegram – Part Two
In August 1914 just after the Germans occupied Brussels , a German officer took up his billet in an aristocratic villa in the Brussels suburbs. The villa belonged to the family Czek. The following day [more…]
America
The Zimmermann Telegram – Part One
The Zimmerman telegram was instrumental in moving the USA towards war with Germany. There are allegations that it was a forgery , concocted by the British but it really was sent from Germany to Mexico. [more…]
Communism
The Lucy Spy Ring
Having looked at Die Rote Drei from a 1945 German perspective , this is the view from more recently. This bunch of spies is better known here as the Red Three and the Lucy Spy [more…]