Room 40 - Signals Decryption and Intelligence Analysis in Bowler Hats
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- Опубліковано 7 чер 2024
- Today we take a brief look at a history of Room 40's operations in World War 1, and era of literal line tapping and very loud Germans.
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
how come the japaness navy and army are in such terrible relationship during the its existence until after the war
Hi drach! Could I ask a question about turbines and vibrations. I read that all turbine ships such as the Cunard liners had lots of problems with vibrations, while the white Star liners had triple expansion and low pressure turbines. Was this problem (turbine vibrations) also an issue in warships?
@Golden Eagle that's even stupider than I had imagined. I know the British were shocked by American interservice rivalry, but I can just imagine both the British and Americans congratulating each other on having obtained such a stupid opponent as the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.
You can send back one of the Royal Navy's current active duty ships to Portsmouth, Jan 1940 plus one relevant supply ship. Unmanned, but with instruction manuals, which ship would you send to have the greatest effect? I'm excluding the Vanguards from this scenario, because I don't trust Churchill not to draw up a list entitled: "German and Italian cities that exist" and start crossing them off.
Which navies had the worst secret codes in World War One and World War Two
The book having 35000 instructions and being insanely large and overly complicated is the most German thing I've heard today. :D
To quote Bottom: "No wonder they lost the bloody war!"
Bigger code books are more secure. They allow more words or numbers or dates or phrases to be represented by a single code group, rather than having to spell them out. That also makes the messages shorter. In addition, they make it easier to have multiple code groups for a single common word.
At what time did the RN have operational direction finding? Could HMS Minotaur have trailed Spee's squadron when it left the neutral port in China? The Minotaur's records show multiple occasions on which different German vessels left port.
as a German, that made me happy
I bet they a had a book of instructions instructing instructors how to look up instructions.
Germans: It's an older code, but it checks out
Apparently it wasn't just the nazis they took the inspiration from.
Lower the force fields.
Just fly casual!
When the French Navy caught a civilian British cable-ship searching for underseas cables off the French coast in the first days of WW1, he threatened to arrest them. Once the British commander explained what and why they were trawling for the German cables, the French Captain sent over champagne and "good fishing!"
Cable ships in San Francisco Bay near the floating dry docks see 'em from 3rd street.
stanthology There is an Old one there now?
16:43 - The sound of a British guy taking a deep breath before attempting an impossible German word. Drach is a trooper, of course, and went for it, lol.
Absolut perfect pronounciation!
Dilly Knox was a famous and brilliant member of the Room 40 codebreakers who did some of his best analytical thinking in a bathtub (installed at his behest in Room 53).
Associate Frank Birch rhapsodized about this:
“The sailor in Room 53
has never, it's true, been to sea
but though not in a boat
he has served afloat -
in a bath in the Admiralty”.
As a Cyber Security Engineer.....this is AWESOME. This should be required viewing as part of Cyber Security subject matter. And Ewing? He deserves more recognition!
@BC Bob thank you!
Another director of naval education gratefully received your reply, best of luck Jim.
@Jim : I agree :-) The WW2 exploits are now well understood but I had never found a similar account about WW1. And yes, it burns to be German in this case...
The problem of telegraph decoding precedes navies. When telegraphs first started to be used commercially, messages were charged by the letter. This was very expensive, especially for transatlantic cables, and prompted various commercial entities, including Western Union, to come up with number blocks and code books so entire phrases could be transmitted using a single code block of five numbers or letters. This didn't provide signal security since codes books were widely available. However, large business soon developed their own encoding techniques and private code books so competitors wouldn't be able to read their messages if they were intercepted. This was the beginning of using codes for operational security.
Perhaps the most intriguing and technically impressive of telecommunications developments of the early 20th century is the German "Feld-Hell" system, which took an alternative approach on how to broadcast unreadable messages effectively in the clear. And, it did exactly as you said at the end -- it foresaw the need of a system without a code book, but which would still be fundamentally secure; the Enigma eventually made perfect a mechanical system that used code books only for daily settings, to keep everyone on the same page, as it were.
Plus, Feld Hell didn't much care if it was using a cable, or a radio.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellschreiber
@@jamespfp Pretty amazing for the 20's, and led directly to FSK and PSK for we amateurs. The only problem was the large bandwidth and slow speeds. Attempts to send faster speeds really hogged the bandwidth, but it was only system that could remotely print out a message. I'm sure there were many errors when messages were sent by CW under poor conditions and we had to depend on humans operators to get it all right while it was in code. I know I couldn't do it.
@@sarjim4381 Part of the charm of Feld Hell, like the Enigma machine, is the mechanical *AND* patented part, an actual machine that took care of the tricky stuff. The main things for the operators to understand would be (a) how to rig it for wire or wireless, (b) tying in additional systems after the advent of Enigma, and (C) being capable of fixing these mechanical parts in the field. The Germans obviously took the communications end of technological development more seriously than almost anyone else; some would say, to the detriment of other fields of research, including nuclear.
Radio-guided bombs is another stellar example developed by the Germans, and almost without competition from the Allies. It is curious to note that Allied autopilot schemes for aircraft in the period of WW2 considered remote radio guidance a standard, which is certainly more complex than a simple guided bomb. Even so, internal inertial guidance proved to be far more reliable for that purpose.
@@jamespfp They also invented Kurier, a system of flash messaging the could send 600 WPM. NOt only was it fast, but the messages were sent on a deviation from center frequency of as much as .200 MHz. That made it difficult to detect the transmission with a standard AM receiver. A Navy study of German submarine communications after the war found out about Kurier, but they never knew it existed during war, so it was never DF'd. As the study noted, if Kurier had been in operation earlier in the war the Allies would have been in serious trouble when it came to knowing where U Boats were.and what they were up to.
@@sarjim4381 The more we know, eh? XD
Germany: We want you to declare war on the United States
Mexico: No hablo Alemán
Having worked in the US Army's Military Intelligence (never mind the oxymoron) branch for almost a decade as a signal/voice interceptor and German linguist, I found this video very enlightening and entertaining. Always liked working with my Brit counterparts. Well done.
What did you think of Trump handing over our secrets (Given to us from Isreal) about the Syrian conflict over to Russia? Was is a mistake or as being president it's in his right to do so??
@@Wallyworld30 I'm not in the field, but as Drach said, "Context". Outside of sheer stupidity of Trump being blindsided by his ego, we may never know the why of it.
Are you familiar with MI5's covert manipulation of American public opinion?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Security_Co-ordination
Did you like the fact the Brits kept spying on America long after?
@@Wallyworld30 ; His absolute right to do so.
It still boggles my mind to see anything about the laying of communication cables under the ocean. The sheer distance, the incredible depth, and the need for accurate navigation makes these operations some of the most astounding yet unsung engineering feats in human history. Especially when you see these maps of the various networks and realize that we started to wire this planet up even before we developed aircraft. It's amazing.
Google operation Ivy Bells. U.S. taps Soviet undersea cable. simply incredible.
8:15 There was a disappointing lack of proper Oom-pah music for the German radio network. 8.8/10, would scuttle in Scapa Flow.
Yes!!... or some German techno
As a German I find your attempt to speak a German dialect hilarious, it's really amusing to hear
I am amused by the pronunciation of Rosyth, The y is pronounced like 'eye', At least that's what I thought.
And some said that the German sense of humour was no laughing matter.
@@EdMcF1 "klopfen klopfen"
"
Qui est là?"
"Gespensterdivision"
@@EdMcF1 Don't malign the German sense of humour...that's how you get Funnybot. And that doesn't end well.
I'm thankful to this day that many British, French, and American people have a hard time with German pronunciation. For reasons that are probably obvious.
My wife's mother was Korean, and spoke and read Japanese better than Korean. That's what happens in a long term occupation.
Probably why your English is so good?
Great content!!! Thank you.
As an engineer of 30+ years who did his degree in Communications Engineering this is a fabulous reminder of the progression of radio telegraphy and other signalling, plus the practicalities of actually using the available technology.
I'm well acquainted with the role of radar both in naval and airforce operations but didn't realise the lead (pardon my pun!) the British had in terms of telegraphy infrastructure at the start of ww1 and the effect this had.
An excellent intro to anyone interested in the Room 40 story. There are a number of books out there on that topic and others that touch on radio intelligence to some degree or other. It's worth noting that not all the Germans were so apparently clueless. After MAGDEBURG was lost, Prince Henry (Kaiser's brother and commander of Baltic ops) voiced some concern about the codebooks being compromised. He was assured this could not be the case. Meanwhile in the Rufiji Delta, Max Looff of the KONIGSBERG was having suspicions about the security of the codes and tried to warn the Admiralstab. He went so far as to arrange a fake rendezvous with a supply ship and sent some crew to the meeting place to see if anyone showed up: three British cruisers (Heilige Schiesse!). However, if the crown prince down the road was ignored by the Admiralstab what chance was fregatten-kapitan in Africa going to have? (Sigh!)
May I suggest Captain Hall as someone worth reviewing? Someone who knew how to use intel material and seems to have engaged in some very interesting skullduggery regarding the Falklands and who seems to have spooked invasion fears on both sides of the North Sea.
Wow Drach is a fan of
The Last Airbender. Cartoon I hope and not the M Night Shyamalan movie
lol, yeah, that 'Ung' but did get on my nerves a bit. the cartoon was better in many ways.
please let the Netflix life action not suck, please let the Netflix life action not suck
I don't believe that air is a bendable item. It sounds just as difficult as folding soup...😀
@@CB-fn3me Maybe that's why the air nomads went extinct so promptly.
Room 40 was the origin of much of the Royal Navy's edge over Germany in both world wars. In both wars, the Germans assumed their encryption was practically unbreakable. They knew codebooks were vulnerable (especially in WWI) and the WWII Enigma machines were nearly identical to the British Typex radio encryption devices, so it's hard to understand this assumption. Dilly Knox worked in Room 40 (WWI) and Bletchley Park (WWII). Churchill at Admiralty oversaw much of the Room 40 setup and was very personally involved with using Bletchley Park decrypts. Many don't realize that the Germans were readily decrypting British merchant naval messages in WWII, giving their U-boats great info. Bletchley Park finally helped the British figure this out in 1943 and the codes were finally improved.
Fact is that many German cryptanalysts had doubts about enigma as it was about 20 years old in its various forms by 1940 and some of them put two and two together when the number of U boat losses dropped after 4 rota enigma was deployed. Difference is that OKW and most high ranking officers refused to listen to them, particularly as most cryptanalysts were treated as low level soldiers rather than top level operatives. Room 40 and Bletchley on the other hand were broadly left to their own devices and eccentricities which meant that people who weren’t any good dealing with military hierarchy but were excellent academics could thrive.
@@jamesthurstans1378 In "The Theory That Would Not Die," there is a lot of coverage of Enigma and naval warfare in general (finding U-boats). Somewhere I read that the Germans eventually ran a deep analysis to see if Enigma had been cracked, but many historians believe the Nazi head of counterintelligence, Admiral Canaris, wanted Germany to lose. He was eventually executed by the Nazis. The Germans readily cracked their Italian allies' codes as well.
Samuel Thompson going to have to look that one up :) Thing about that analysis is that it was run by cryptanalysts acting independently rather than with orders from the OKW. As a result it was rejected out of hand. Canaris is interesting, a professional and a patriot but not a fan of his rivals in the nazi controlled intelligence forces so he ended up fighting them more than fighting the enemy. Finally the Italians form part of the perfect storm of why enigma wasn’t replaced, the Germans convinced themselves that code breaches in the Mediterranean were down to Italian incompetence and “proved” it by routinely breaking their allies codes!
@@jamesthurstans1378 Ironically the Italians did the right thing by replacing the Enigma-D with the C-38m in 1940. The C-38 was not really more complex than Enigma, so obviously could be cracked, but British cryptanalysts were more set to decipher Enigma coded messages, and gave precedence to them, so a C-38 coded message could last days, or even weeks. The main source of information for the British in the Mediterranean and North African teaters were the messages of the Luftwaffe, encrypted with the three wheel Enigma.
@@neutronalchemist3241 It was largely British codebreaking that led to do many sunken Axis supply ships and the Palm Sunday Massacre where squadrons of Allied fighters just happened to intercept a fleet of incoming German transport aircraft loaded with supplies for Rommel. I know replacing Enigma would have been difficult, but there are photographs of them in action on command vehicles during the 1940 invasion of France. The American equivalent machine, CIGABA, was kept far more securely away from deep penetrations raiders and served into the 1960's.
Suddenly there was an ominous knock at the door! Could this be the end of our beloved Drach? Tune in next time to find out!
It's the creepy computer voice wanting his job back.
Microsoft Sam vs HMS Splendid Drach. Who's your five quid on?
The end of the video was perfect, WELL PLAYED SIR WELL PLAYED!
8:00...even secret signals are delightfully British! "I say chaps! The maid has served the tea to the bishop; no jam on the scones. Pass it on."
"John has a long mustache."
My son is Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm, although he comes from a long line of over 100 years of British Army infantry soldiers. Love your channel.
99IronDuke is he being stationed on one of the elizabeth classes?
Don't worry Drach: if they arrested you after the release of this video, it would suggest some of the released information was public. They are likely to understand that most would ignore the sensitive information hidden in plain sight, and that most would be upset about the disappearance of a youtuber.
Scotland Yard, open up!
THIS ISN'T EVEN BRITISH SOIL! WHY ARE YOU HERE?
This was not the first time British broke ciphers. In the Peninsular campaign from 1809 to 1812 the was a commoner in the quartermasters corp named George Scoville. He had organized a group of Spanish and Portuguese irregular cavalry to waylay French messengers and bring the messages to him. He quickly broke the ciphers the French were using and read their messages, providing Wellington with regular reports of what the French were up to.
The French reacted by creating 'Le Grand Cyphre' which they thought was unbreakable. It was a 1000 x 1000 matrix with many blanks and multiple possible encryptions for common letters such as 'e'. Some French encrypters were lazy and sent part of their messages in clear and part encrypted. Within a few months Scoville had cracked 'Le Grand Cyphre' and Wellington again had a fairly complete idea of French troop deployments and plans. Since the three French marshals in Spain were jealous rivals of each other, they didn't share this information with each other. Wellington had a better idea of what the French were up to than the French did.
Isn't Scoville the same one who came up with a heat scale for food?
@@theatagamer90 Not that I know. He invented a breakdown anvil that could be carried on donkeys and used to re-shoe horses at night. He also came up with the idea of military police to stop stragglers from abusing Spanish civilians.
You got Soult, Suchet and Jourdan.
there were more, before 1812 such as massena
Sometimes I seem to sense a SLIGHT level of sarcasm in your narration....It's freaking hilarious...The Brits I worked with were ALL comedians....laughed till I pissed myself...2-3 times a day..lol
Hmmm, " the Brits I worked with..." now where did you work I wonder?
A detail that's really outside the scope of this video but is pretty important to the larger picture of how the British and the Germans dealt with signals in WWII is that Winston Churchill wrote a detailed memoir of his actions in WWI, including lots and lots of info about Room 40. This was part of why the Enigma Code, which was too complex for breaking it by hand to be practicable on a large scale, was introduced, as well as other, similar mechanical and electromechanical systems used by Germany and Japan.
This also meant that after WWII, Britain kept a tight hold on knowledge of what had really happened at Bletchly park, with things only coming out in the mid-1970's. This contributed to things like the persecution of Alan Turing, since nobody was going to cut him any slack for his critical part in saving Britain when they didn't know about it. It also tarnished the reputation of George Patton for the wrong reason, as the cover story for his removal from command was his striking a soldier who had PTSD, rather than the real reason, which was he wasn't following the strict rules for using information from Project Ultra.
I am glad you covered the point that while it is great to get and read all the messages there needs to be a method for turning them into something useful for operational and tactical purposes. Jellicoe was of course let down by this failure.
*Sees title* You've had me at bowler hats.
I think this maybe the last video we get from Drach in sometime, unless he can find an embassy to hide in for a few year.
Indeed, the response time of the British Black Helicopters appears to be much quicker than that of the American versions. Only took them about 34 minutes to be knocking (in a polite British fashion) on his door.
He's sharing a cell with Julian Assange right now.
2:17 "All of this changed when the Fire Nation attacked." 😂😂😂😂😂 👌🙏🖖
Excellent BTW!:-)
Love the ending😂😅😄
Knock knock ... "I'll be right back." ... ;) Fortunately it appears they didn't haul you away.
It was Porthcurno where all the transatlantic cables came ashore. I was trained in telegraphy and telephony at the Cable and Wireless college at Porthcurno in 1967. We were not told then that there was a big communications centre hewn into the cliffs there, right next to the entrance to the college. It was used in both WWs and was still secret. Now it is a museum and you can visit it.
Your work is informative, educational, and amusing. Thank you.
Another cracking episode. This channel is seriously good. I salute you Drach
"Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson talks a lot about Alan Turing and Bletchley Park and illustrates how intel was actually used in WWII.
BTW, great video! I thoroughly enjoy how you weave all the realities together (economics and personalities in particular) to show how wars are won and lost based on more than ships' statistics on paper, Uncle Drach.
That is an excellent but fictionalized account of the Second World War from the point of view of a close contemporary of Alan Turing, *PLUS* Stephenson goes out of his way to show how the smartest Germans in the War weren't as gullible or over-confident in Engima as the Army High Command, or the Kriegsmarine.
If you liked "Cryptonomicon", Stephenson released a series of Baroque-period novellas called "The Baroque Cycle" which does more to explain the *WHOLE* of the story of why the 20th Century was as it was, by focusing on all the key developments of that period which made the Information Revolution of the late 20th century possible. And he still finds time to talk about Economics, Mathematics, Damascus Steel, Japanese swords, Naval Combat and age of sail ship designs, Pirates versus Privateers, and basically all of the key "Elements" or "Symbols" that he put into "Cryptonomicon". Enoch Root? Yeah... he's in there too.
jamespfp, "The Baroque Cycle" is amazing!
He wrapped up so much pertinent to our modern day concepts in such beautiful prose.
BTW, the first book my better half and I downloaded to our kindles was "The Diamond Age."
Several parts of this story remind me of that old Mad Magazine section: Spy vs Spy. If it did not involve an actual war and lost lives, it would truly have been funny. Thanks again for another update to my education.
The ending was very good. Thank you for the very informed content. Greetings from România.
An age of well done spy and state craft. Thank you.
Massive communications hub = and 10x8 shed with lots of cables coming up through the floor.......
Quality content, delivered with a wry smile, well done. How long 'til next Wednesday?
Great work, that was an absolutely fantastic video. Keep up the good work!
Brilliantly informative video on a fascinating topic. Well done, sir.
Your best video yet, very interesting and informative.
Hey Room 40 hope y’all are doing well!🤔😜😳great video on this fantastic topic!
Superb video. On of Drach's most entertaining and interesting.
Excellent, just excellent, your program explains so much. Like why Grand fleet Captains failure to inform the Admiral Jellicoe of ship movements and sighting durning Jutland battle.
(over use of radio discipline ). Even today because of secretiveness, intelligent services are loath to give up important needed information because of consequences. (see steel report for agent uncovered, lost of contacts or pre-911 intelligent. I always wondered how the British got the big jump on ship message intercepts, well explained. Thanks much
Please more Naval things other that the very interesting Naval architecture.
There are three aspects of Naval Communication: Accuracy, Speed, and Security.
The operator may of necessity sacrifice Security for Speed, or
Speed for Security, but Accuracy cannot be Sacrificed for either of the other 2
.
LOL for the fire nation! :P That got me by surprise!
Any chance you would cover the US Navy's Signals Intelligence in the second World War? Was a real insight into how intel works. Traffic Analysis is as important as Signals Analysis.
Yes, it's the first part of the picture, without it you are well behind the 8-ball!
Traffic Analysis is the direction of signals?
@@kaveebee Traffic Analysis is deriving intelligence through the amount and context of messages sent from specific stations. You can learn a lot by how much or how little somebody is talking even if you have no clue what they are actually saying.
@@johannaldbrecht1594 Thank you. My hobby is gleaning information, I use it in one of the political groups I am affiliated with. Over time I have found great success in saying very little so that the opposite number feels drawn to fill in the gaps. Works well at times.
@@johannaldbrecht1594 I've given it some thought , what you say here. Your idea has merit.
equal measures of ingenious, fascinating, farcical and hilarious. You couldn't make this stuff up and expect people to believe it
Oh Drach?James...a mister Bond is here to see you! "Yes please,Shaken,not stirred"
Very interesting, I learnt pretty much every thing you revealed about 50 years ago, and I got to say your presentation was great, and in the end very humorful. Thank you
The knock on the door at the end was the best
But would they have just knocked?
One of your most informative vids. Fascinating........
Excellent I really enjoyed this one. Thank you.
i love the detail and yet your explanation was very understandable.....kudos.....
The Bowler Hat: Secret weapon on which the world depends.
First time I have seen a video about room 40. Have a couple of good, out-of-print books. Thanks much.
great video as usual
For historical accuracy yo should mention that wireless communications in 1914 and for a decade later, were by Morse code not voice.
That fire nation thing had me in tears lol
Great video.
Imagine the Admiralty Ops room prior to radio. Smudges where ships might be.
"Somewhere in this ocean, maybe"
@@Drachinifel "Probably not sunk."
@@diestormlie "If they went this way our best Intel suggest dragons or Kraken, possibly both, and maybe some French"
Still better than the 2ed Pacific Squad. Not sure if the ops chart was a smudge or a vast empty space. Or on the Kamchatka...
"Here be torpedo boats"
very informative, i knew much about it but I found much good stuff here
That was awesome! loved it!
Fantastic material and very beautiful archival photographs...the famous room 40 🇬🇧is an absolutely fantastic and interesting story.
Great respect from 🇵🇱
🕊️🤝
#Education #History
#International cooperation for protect education, culture, tradition and history
Good morning, Drach! 😃
I have long been a casual fan / history buff of the Bletchly Park efforts and the American code-breaking efforts of WW2.
This was most entertaining and revealing, so this is VERY much appreciated, fine job!
The end was hilarious!
Excellent. Super interesting.
Great video. Thanks
The Fire Nation joke won my subscription. That was fantastic
Drach, just in case you (or anyone else watching this) haven't read it, I strongly recommend the fantastic book _Battle of Wits_ by Stephen Budiansky. It's the finest account of WW1 and WW2 Allied codebreaking I've yet read, and one of the few to give a detailed mathematical description of how both Enigma and Purple were broken. It's also relatively recent, so it includes newly-declassified material.
Love the ending!
Ah, The Great Eastern, the largest cable layer of its time.
Very absorbing. Anyone interested in this subject who may be visiting Cornwall, might like to pop into the cable station museum at Porthcurno, as seen at time mark 29:45
Loved this thanks.
that damn Fire Nation
This vagueness when passing on information carried on into WW2. Montgomery had this problem in North Africa and he decided to just ignore any information passed on to him from Bletchley Park. Crete was lost for the same reason as the information passed to those involved was so meaningless that it was of no help. If sufficient information had been given to those in charge the Germans would have been defeated.
It makes you wonder why, between the wars, people from intelligence and the armed forces did not sit down and work this out.
Big Blue, there's always been that question of whether any particular battle is worth giving up the intelligence source for. Frequently, plausible alternative sources of intelligence were devised (a recon aircraft sent after a ship or convoy you already know about through codebreaking). The one battle that might have been important enough to risk giving away the secret, a chance to ambush four of the six Japanese fleet carriers at Midway, is also one for which, to my knowledge, the Americans never crafted a cover story. No conveniently stationed submarine to report on movements of the Kido Butai in late May, no stray patrol planes just happening to spot the Japanese fleet with enough time for carriers to plausible get from Hawaii to Midway.
The different reactions to enigma info by commanders is curious and maybe telling. Montgomery and Mark Clark were seemingly indifferent. Patton loved it and used it to the max. But he presented a problem. He didn't hang around his HQ, he was always out in the field near the front. It was policy only to give enigma info directly the to commanding General in person. In Patton's case they had to make an exception so some of his senior staff were authorized to receive it.
It was a golden rule to never use Room 40 or Bletchley Park for tactical purposes. Only for strategic, long term advantatge. Otherwise it would be too easy to spot something shady was going on. The Germans had its own intelligence service and competent people doing the same job, but their relationship with the army or the navy was even worse than the British.
@@kemarisite I think the japanese naval codes were somehow weak and old at that time, and IJN was changing them often, so it was not a big deal to burn that bridge. And there was little margin to set up a cover since sending subs to be seen by the kiddo butai was a suicide mission.
Great video. Was aware of WWII but not WWI efforts.
2:18 Well played, sir. I was amused.
Thanks for another exceptional video. A subject that’s rarely covered is the breaking of British naval codes by the opposition in both World Wars. I’ve read that in WW2 the Axis powers had the capability to decrypt and decode RN traffic and this was known to the RN. However the administrative difficulties of changing to a more secure system for a globally deployed fleet was such that the RN decided to live with the risk, the argument being that, without automation, by the time the signals had been decoded, their operational value had passed.
Of course when you know they are listening and they don't know you know then you can feed them disinformation. I seem to recall the British did not always act on information gleaned from the breaking of Enigma for fear of letting the Germans know it was broken.
It becomes immidiately obvious why there are legitimate concerns over who installs who's internet infrastructure.
"All this changed, when the Fire Nation attacked.." 🤣🤣😅😅🤣
Just had to pause the video and go check and something I've built at work has been installed at GCHQ.
That's very cool
I find the part of the video with the crickets chirping rather amusing.
19:10 top ten naval betrayal
Listening in on your enemies conversations may be far more important, but listening in on your friends' is WAY more entertaining!
enjoyed this video
Fascinating
Love the avatar reference!
I've always wondered just how bad it would have been for Scheer if Jellicoe had all the information available to meet him off the Horns reef
Jonathan Evans, if you mean cutting them off from base at the Horns Reef, then it think it would look a lot like Tsushima with the Germans trying to break through a British fleet positioned along the one place they have to go.
@@kemarisite Well the Horns Reef is only an entrance to the German minefield that protects the German coast but yes they have to either break through or it a chase to the entrance at the Jade Estuary. Anyone know if the German destroyers would have torpedoes left for another massed attack to allow the battleships to disengage?
"Rather british beginnings"
Best line to start an explanation on anything involving tophats and bowlers
Good vid.
London calling to the faraway towns!
😈
Aiiiih live by the river.
At 21:00 you show a pair of German WW2 radars. Also direction finding normally looks for the minimal signal as that tends to be the sharpest indicator.
thank you so much
j ford, australia
I like the joke at the end! :)
2:16 what an epic memer
Somehow this is the first time I'm reading the full text of the Zimmerman telegram. My reaction: "Good Lord." *pinches nose, facepalms*
Henry L. Stimson : Gentlemen do not read each other's ma
Me : STHU and get with the program the British perfected ya rube!