Luftwaffe Personnel spying for Allies?

[RodM]

Hi Andreas,

from looking at the JPEGs, IMHO, all of the information could be explained as being from Enigma signals - operational orders/operational reports etc.

I will endeavour to post an example of a message in its original format (i.e. full text) as these exist in HW 1.

I completely agree with Nick as it is illogical that humint would go through Bletchley Park.

The reason why some unit IDs are wrong is probably because the Enigma transmissions weren't fully in cleartext. References to sender/recipient and units were coded and these had to be decoded even once the Enigma message was decyphered. As an example,

NABBE 4 = NJG 4
NABCI = I./NJG 4
BABUC = III./NJG 4
GENRO 3 = 3 Jagd Division
GEDNA = Luftflotte Reich

Cheers

Rod

[Pierre Renier]

Hi Andreas

Some years ago now I wrote an article for a local history publication in which I used material from HW5/2 and HW5/3, calling the article "Red Enigma, Boniface and the Y service - events of 27th June to 1st July 1940", in Channel Islands Occupation Review No.28, p31-41.

Red because this was the name used by BP for the first Luftwaffe enigma codes broken. These messages had a very selective distribution in Whitehall, and as the Admiralty at the time was the most closely tied with BP they insisted this had to be in a undisguised form. Problems arose because the material passed on to Military Intelligence and Air Intelligence went via the SIS who to protect sources said it originated from an agent called Boniface. From both MI and AI's perspective this meant it was a Humint source and not as was the reality Sigint, so accordingly was not given the full benefit of being highly reliable intel. Later on the true value of the "source" was properly appreciated and this led to the material being more clearly labelled with the CX indicator.

I hope this reads clearly and helps explain why being air material it refers to sources, but with the added rider of being CX material, i.e. Luftwaffe Enigma.

Kind regards
Pierre

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, Pierre

Thanks a lot for the information. Important that this discussion brought a clarification about the origin of this material.

Not strange then that they had to stop making the summaries - must have kept a couple of typists busy just with inventing where the stuff should be labeled as coming from! (It's a joke!!)

I know that Bletchley Park (at least it says so in written sources) never were 'found out' by the germans, how much of this stuff seeped back from other sources that saw it? Anyone got an idea about that?

Regards,
Andreas