The Cast codebreakers recommenced work on rebuilding the JN25b codebook, in conjunction with Eric Nave's ‘Special Intelligence Bureau’ and Newman's naval intercept operation which in March 1942 had moved to Melbourne, Nave recalled. ‘To accommodate the US party we had to move from the navy office and a new block of flats, “Monterey”, was taken over by the Government, a section being allocated to our activities: Commander Newman and party on the ground floor, the US unit on the first floor, and my party on the top floor.’ New doors were cut in the walls between the apartments in the Monterey complex and members of the Women's Royal Australian Naval Service were detailed to work as clerical assistants. ‘A special site was chosen and an interception station established. The US operators were reinforced by WRANs, specially trained in a crash course to receive Morse and the Japanese kana. They performed magnificently.’
Nourma Gascoine was one of the first WRANs to arrive at the new intercept station in Moorabbin, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne.
A signal was sent to pick up nine ratings and as this was the first draft of WRANs to a US naval station, the powers that be had expected sailors. Our conveyance arrived – an open truck. We clung to each other for our trip through wintry Melbourne and its suburbs, all the way out to Moorabbin, arriving stiff with cold, tired out after sitting up all night on the train, not even knowing where we were going, and our welcome was just as frigid: two solitary Americans to get us off the truck and take delivery of us. With our luggage we tramped across the windswept open spaces to our quarters, a seventy-five-year-old cottage which looked as though it had not been cleaned since it was built; with two beds in each of the enormous six rooms. For the first few days, newspapers were at a premium for protecting our possessions from the filthy floors.
The naval station was manned by US Petty Officers who had escaped from the Corregidor Tunnels in the Philippines, where they had existed on a steady diet of rice for some months. Arriving in Australia in just what they were wearing, the last thing they needed was to work with ‘a bunch of girls’ and in no uncertain manner we were made aware of this. The five telegraphist WRANs had three weeks to be taught to adapt to the USN methods. We worked day and night – went on watches within that time, and were so busy we could not look sideways, let alone communicate with the Yanks. We just worked, ate and slept around the clock, adapting to the eight-, nine-and ten-hour watches. These hours were even increased during the battle operations.
When later we finally swung into full watches, we were delighted with the longer time off between the three watches, enabling us to leave the station, get to know Melbourne and enjoy our other WRAN friends stationed at Monterey. Gradually we took our places, alternating on all the frequencies, and slowly the antagonism disappeared towards us.
At no time were there more than sixteen WRANs at Moorabbin, with seventy-five to one hundred Americans coming and going for the three years, so you can imagine that each of these WRANs has many memories that she cherishes. It is true that eight of us lived through the hell of typhoid fever, but the happy moments of building three marriages and friendships with the Americans that still exist overshadow the grim realities of those eventful days.
General MacArthur, who was appointed Allied Commander-in-Chief in the Far East and Pacific, also set up his base in Melbourne. He created his own army and air force signals intelligence facility, Central Bureau, with a mixture of Australian and US codebreakers, including Abe Sinkov, who had led the first US delegation to Bletchley Park.
Central Bureau was set up in Cranleigh, a large ivy-clad house in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra. It was staffed by the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Air Force and the US Army. The intention was for the bureau to control a number of forward intercept stations in order to drag in as much Japanese air and military traffic as possible. The codebreaking staff in Melbourne itself consisted of eight officers and thirty enlisted men, of whom all but two were involved in full-time cryptanalysis. There was a fairly even split of Americans and Australians, plus Lieutenant Norman Webb, the British Army codebreaker who had escaped from Singapore with Arthur Cooper and Lieutenant-Commander Colegrave, both of whom were attached to Nave's Special Intelligence Bureau, which also included the British liaison officer, Lieutenant-Commander Alan Merry, Nave recalled.
Arthur Cooper became a useful addition. Particularly so when we received a request from the Director of Naval Intelligence for assistance in drawing and making a facsimile of a Japanese pass used by them in New Guinea. The plan was to infiltrate a man into Rabaul, the HQ of the invading Japanese Army, and DNI had a man of partial Greek extraction who was willing to return to the area in which he had lived and traded. We were to produce the drawing from which a convincing stamp could be made. Arthur Cooper entered into it enthusiastically but I didn't fancy my life hanging on its successful use and suggested it be slightly smudged when used.
Neither the Americans nor the RAAF had been fully prepared for signals intelligence and initially it was the Australian soldiers, with their experience against the Germans, who dominated the Central Bureau operation. They were assisted by the British representatives and by Eric Nave. Although still running the Special Intelligence Bureau, Nave assisted in the establishment of the new unit, teaching Central Bureau's cryptanalysts how to break the Japanese naval air codes and ciphers, recalled Geoffrey Ballard, an Australian code-breaker who had seen service in Crete and the Middle East, breaking low-level German ciphers.
One of my indelible memories of those early days in Central Bureau was of the scene in Captain Nave's room upstairs in Cranleigh with the winter sun slanting through the lead-paned windows. There, in a class-like atmosphere, Captain Nave taught a small group of us how to unravel the Japanese naval air codes so effectively that, when we were posted to field sections, we were able to read them continuously and, when the codes changed, we were able to reconstruct them with the minimum of delay.
The military intercept operators included some of the British operators who had escaped from Singapore, among them Lance-Corporal Geoff Day. They were sent to the army's Park Orchards intercept site in Melbourne and formed into the Australian Special Wireless Group, he recalled.
Initially the ASWG consisted of returned soldiers from the Middle East who had been engaged in interception of German Morse signals enciphered using the German Enigma machine. Some had had a short introduction to the Japanese kana alphabet but our job was to make experts of them. My main personal memories of this time were of the dreadfully cold wet weather, and the fact that we were under canvas. The ground was a sea of mud, and I had six blankets to keep warm at night, and still went to bed with my clothes on. Talk about a change from tropical Singapore.
The group was gradually split up into a number of sections, the majority of which were to be sent north closer to the front line to intercept the Japanese military traffic. Day found himself assigned to 51 Section, bound for Darwin, a journey that involved a five-day train journey to Alice Springs followed by another five days travelling by road to Darwin itself. ‘My main memory of the road trip, apart from the dust, was the hordes of flies one had to battle in order to eat,’ he said. ‘We finally set up camp at a place called Winelli, seven miles from Darwin. Interception of kana traffic began two weeks later and searching to establish frequencies became the order or the day. The operators worked out of two “set trucks” and intercepted around the clock.’
The unit under Captain Ralph Thompson intercepted Japanese military and air activity to the north of Australia, tracking aircraft movements and establishing patterns of activity. High-level codes and ciphers were sent back to Central Bureau for processing, along with logs of all transmissions. Army intelligence analysts like Geoff Ballard working alongside the intercept operators broke low-level codes and did on-the-spot traffic analysis. They were able to predict the Japanese schedule of fighter and bomber movements and alert the RAAF, which sent its own aircraft to attack the Japanese on the ground in Timor before they had a ch
ance to take off. When Japanese aircraft did manage to get through their numbers were greatly reduced and Australian Spitfires were already in the air waiting for them, Geoff Day recalled.
We were a close-knit group and formed close friendships between British and Aussies. Our campsite was simply an open-air affair; we literally slept under the stars (and a mosquito net). The chief danger was green ants, which infested the trees, and march flies. Both pests could inflict painful bites. There wasn't much we could do in leisure time; some went to Darwin's beach for a swim and sun bake but, as far as I know, there was no fraternizing with the locals or other troops. The need for secrecy was paramount.
A few months later Day was ordered back to the Special Wireless Group headquarters and training base at Bonegilla, around 150 miles north-east of Melbourne, where he was needed to help train the new recruits, who now included an increasing number of women. With able-bodied men wanted at the front line, the group had begun to recruit a number of members of the Australian Women's Army Service as intercept operators.
Joy Roberts, from Ballarat, sixty miles west of Melbourne, was just eighteen when she joined up.
As my eighteenth birthday approached I was repeatedly asked what I would like as a present. The only answer I could or would give was: ‘Please let me join the army.’ After four weeks of discussion and dare I say some argument – in those days girls did not argue with their parents – my really wonderful gift, their consent, was given to me. I wrote enquiring if I might enlist. The papers came back within weeks, I replied, filling them in, went for a medical, and went into the ‘rookie’ camp at Balcombe, Victoria, on 29 December 1942.
They were sent to Heidelberg, near Melbourne, for assessment and then posted to Bonegilla to be given signals and wireless training. ‘After we were taught to send and receive the Morse code, sixteen of us were sent to Australian Special Wireless Group where we had to forget about sending and concentrate on receiving, at a very fast speed, the Japanese kana Morse code. Some of those signals I still recall. We used to work four-hour shifts. How I enjoyed those days up there.’
By now the Special Wireless Group had moved to Kalinga, just outside Brisbane, and it was while there that Joy fell in love with one of the young British instructors. ‘The army took every precaution to ensure that no extracurricular activity took place between the men and women,’ said Geoff Day.
There was a road through the middle of the camp – men's quarters on one side, women's on the other, and women's huts were guarded at night. However, there was a sheltered creek at the back of the camp which would have had a few tales to tell if it could have talked. I proposed to Joy there and she accepted. She was very pretty and we were very much in love. We bought our engagement ring in Brisbane and then as word got out she was transferred back to Bonegilla – about 1,000 miles to the south. Engaged couples were not allowed in the same camp, no matter what.
They arranged to be married in Ballarat on 18 December 1943, but since both of them could not get leave until their wedding, Joy's parents had to make all the arrangements, Day recalled.
Joy was aged nineteen, engaged to someone who was not only completely unknown to her parents but wasn't even an Australian. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I arrived at Ballarat a couple of days before the wedding, meeting Joy's parents for the first time. Well, I was greeted like a long-lost son. They couldn't have been nicer. Our engagement was about as long as our courting period. But it was a very long marriage, fifty-four years. Joy died of lung cancer on 30 March 1998.
Early in the war, the ASWG supplied intercept operators to help Eric Nave's Special Intelligence Section to monitor Japanese naval messages. They included a number of Women's Australian Auxiliary Air Force operators, among them Joy Linnane, who joined up in April 1942.
While on the rookies’ course there was a call for volunteers for a special, interesting course. Since anything was better than learning to march and salute, I volunteered and found myself involved in a most extraordinary interview. I was accepted, not knowing for what, was sworn to secrecy and found I belonged to Central Bureau for the duration. The thirteen WAAAFs accepted for the job were among the first to learn kana Morse and we were sent first to Point Cook, in Victoria, where we operated from a building known as the ‘Hush-Hush Hut’ intercepting naval kana from submarines operating along our coast. Since we worked on Tokyo time, we were out of step with the rest of the station. During my six-month tour, I never ate in the mess. We collected what food was available and cooked it ourselves over a radiator in the hut. Rarely did we ever have more than two hours of sleep at one time. We had a brief course in unarmed defence and in the use of firearms. We worked behind bolted doors and shaded windows. A Smith & Wesson revolver was always kept at the door and there was an emergency button near each radio set. It was a memorable experience.
The WAAAFs were later taken off naval tasks and posted to the RAAF's No. 1 Wireless Unit, at Townsville, on the Queensland coast. The building in which they worked was built of reinforced concrete but camoufaged as a farmhouse, with features such as windows, railings and a trellis painted on, Linnane said.
We lived in a bush camp under fairly rough conditions and worked from a wonderfully camouflaged operations room made to look like a farm. No. 1 Wireless Unit was the first of seven WUs that were formed during the war, all air force personnel. Since there was a large team of male operators already there, the workload on the thirteen WAAAFs was considerably improved. At Point Cook, we worked four hours on, four off around the clock, no stand-down. At Townsville, it was eight on and eight off and sixteen hours stand-down after a week or so.
The RAAF and WAAAF intercept operators played an invaluable role in predicting Japanese air raids, assisted by four experienced US Army operators who had escaped from Station 6 at Fort McKinley in the Philippines. The Townsville operation was frequently able to provide Allied air defences in Australia and New Guinea with up to seven hours’ notice of enemy attacks, Linnane recalled.
We intercepted air-to-ground and air-to-air messages sent by enemy aircraft often on their way to bomb our bases. As each message was intercepted, it was quickly passed into the intelligence room. Enemy aircraft positions were fixed by DF and warnings forwarded to the targeted areas. It was always a great satisfaction to operators when enemy aircraft signalled ‘I am being attacked’, and we knew our warnings had got through. We were a dedicated group and gained great satisfaction from our work. We had lots of fun, too – dances in the rec’ hut, swimming trips to Magnetic Island, but always with our own unit. I soon learned not to accept invitations from outside casual acquaintances. Their interest was mostly not in me but sadly in what went on in our top secret ops room.
There were other local pests to put up with, Linnane recalled. ‘I was on the dog watch one night and it was just sunrise. I was feeling drowsy and decided to take a few minutes’ break in the fresh air and to splash some water on my face. The ablution block was some twenty yards away – a fragile hut offering a hand basin and two toilets with a timber divider, halfway to the roof.’ While there Linnane decided to use the lavatory.
Then I looked up. Gazing down at me from the top of the divider was the speculative eye of a snake. It appeared to have a goodly length of body spread along the timber. I immediately lost all interest in using the toilet and all I wanted was out. The difficulty was that each time I moved to pull up my jeans and to open the door, the snake slid another couple of inches down the wall. I was almost frozen with horror, but knew I must get out immediately as the situation could only worsen.
Dragging on my jeans, I shouted for the guard to come in. He was young and replied that regulations prevented him from entering the female ablution block. Exasperated, I sent him off to get the sergeant of the guard. The snake and I were still having eyeball confrontation when he arrived and said: ‘Oh gosh. What do you want me to do about it?’ I suggested he dispatch it with the Owen gun he was carrying, at which stage I returned to work. As I le
ft the building he called out to me: ‘Hey, Sarge. Why were you so scared?’ I wasn't scared, I said, I was terrified because the snake was eyeing me with so much interest. ‘Don't kid yourself,’ he replied. ‘He wasn't interested in you. He was protecting his mate who was curled up behind your toilet.’
10
A TRICKY EXPERIMENT
Bletchley Park's Japanese naval section was now under the control of Hugh Foss, who had grown a wild straggly red beard which only served to accentuate his eccentricity. The section had been expanded slightly, but with only thirteen members, including clerks, and a severe shortage of Japanese-speakers it had no chance of making any headway against JN25. The only traffic it received in anything approaching real time came by motorcycle courier from the Royal Navy intercept site at Flowerdown, near Winchester in Hampshire.
Juliet MccGwire was one of eight Wrens posted to the Flowerdown station as Japanese intercept operators.
We worked in the ‘Y Hut’ with sailors who were taking down Morse signals in pencil as numbers and the alphabet plus signs to account for Japanese. We Wrens typed the coded signals on special typewriters with extra keys adapted to Japanese coding and the result was sent to Bletchley. We did watchkeeping in four shifts and the sailors in three so they never had a day off. One sailor regularly missed his sleep to go to London for the Proms. My colleagues were extremely pleasant as well as conscientious and everything was busy and so secret that sometimes it was hard to focus on a reason for having to work so mindlessly. I longed for a grain of information to sustain me. But senior people did not talk to or encourage us. We lived in our own world and in some ways were happily independent.
The Emperor's Codes Page 14
