[Ralph Erskine]

A lot of the material in DEFE 3 that is on microfilm is now available on-line in pdf format - free! Most, but not all of the 1020 files in DEFE 3 are on microfilm, and so should be downloadable.

About 500 files are decrypts of German and Italian naval traffic (mainly encrypted on Enigma and Hagelin, plus a few with hand ciphers such as Reservehandverfahren). Few readers of this list will be interested in those files. The quality of the naval files is generally good. There are also some decrypts of Japanese naval air traffic.

To use the on-line material you really need first to make a full list of what is available, starting with DEFE 3/5 (continuation of JP series, continued as KV series); that batch finishes at DEFE 3/19.

For some reason about half of the DEFE 3/5 pdf file consists of poor mirror images of the previous page. I don’t know if other non-naval files are like that.

I can post a list of the naval files (eg DEFE 3/332-499 consist of ZTPG decrypts) if any one is interested. If you were making a list of the files with messages sent out by Hut 3 (Sigint on the German army and air force) you would not then have to download information from the catalogue on those files.

These are big files – generally around 200 kbs. The server seems to be quite fast.

Apologies if this information has already been posted.

Ralph Erskine