The DEFE3 file series

These were the first items released to the UK National Archives. Among the many different things in the DEFE3 series are the “Teleprinted Translations of Decrypted German Naval Radio Messages” (the material quoted in Robert Harris’s novel Enigma) as well as Italian naval and Japanese material. However, what we’re interested in here is the “Main Series of Signals Conveying Intelligence to Allied Commands.”

If you thought the file numbering ran from “DEFE3/1 = start of war” to “DEFE3/1031 = end of war”, I’m afraid it’s not that simple. Just because one file follows another, it doesn’t necessarily cover the next chronological period. You have to zigzag through the index to follow the progress of the conflict.

Originally these files were available in hard copy bound volumes but perhaps because the individual messages were on such flimsy paper, now they are on microfilm. A reel normally holds from one to three files in numerical sequence. Usually, a “Main Series” file covers about three days of decrypts and includes 250 messages. The days covered by a file are not the dates of the German messages but the dates the Allied reports were issued.

Format of the messages

Each message carries an identifying number, e.g. HP 8534. There are various series including VL, HP and BT; they follow on one after another and all have 9999 messages in them (except for series KO — the European war ended before they’d used up all the numbers).

Before the message proper begins there are whole bunch of letters in pairs which seem to denote the various Allied commands the report is being sent to.

Then you get anything from Z to ZZZZZ. This is an indicator of the urgency of the message — broadly speaking Z would be information about something that happened a while ago; ZZZZZ would be about something that hadn’t happened yet. The more Zs the greater the recipient’s chance of doing something about the content of the message. Sometimes different theatres of operations get different priority, e.g. “WEST ZZZ, MED Z” depending on how important the message was to each one.

With late-war Luftwaffe material the interval between the German transmission and the Allied report is usually less than 24 hours although you’ll find the odd example with a delay of several days or even a couple of weeks. You can tell because the Allied text will often begin something like “REPORT OF SIXTEEN HOURS FOURTEENTH” then at the end is a code for the time the decrypt was issued: 021418Z/12/44. This breaks down as: 02.14 hours / 18th / December / 1944. The “Z” denotes Greenwich Mean Time and every time mentioned in an Ultra message was adjusted to that standard.

The messages have a style of language all their own, a bit like reading a telegram. The style is very terse, they use only upper case letters and numbers are often spelled out. They use a lot of abbreviations for English translations of German terms: ARC = Airfield Region Command = Flughafen Bereich. Other examples include: ABLE OBOE or AO (Air Officer, so “AO for Fighters” = General der Jagdflieger) and AMC (Air Movements Control). It’s also helpful to know the Anglo-American phonetic alphabet of the period.

ABLE, BAKER, CHARLIE, DOG, EASY, FOX, GEORGE, HOW, ITEM, JIG, KING, LOVE, MIKE, NAN, OBOE, PETER, QUEEN, ROGER, SUGAR, TARE, UNCLE, VICTOR, WILLIAM, XRAY, YOKE, ZEBRA.

For example, a reference to message HP 8534 will often say “HOW PETER EIGHT FIVE THREE FOUR.”

As for Luftwaffe units:

JIG TWO SIX = JG 26; KING FIVE THREE = KG 53; FOX ONE TWO TWO = FAG 122; SUGAR (or SUGAR GEORGE) FOUR = SG 4; NAN JIG THREE = NJG 3; TARE ONE = TG 1; NAN SUGAR TWO ZERO = NSG 20; but ROGER TARE ONE (“Replacement/Training”) = EJG 1.

JIG KING = Jagdkorps; JIG DOG = Jagddivision.

GAF = German Air Force

GAFIT = German Air Force Italy; GAFCIT = … Central Italy; GAFUIT = … Upper Italy; GAFSE = … South East; GAFGRE = … Greece.

There’s also the use of the £ (pound Sterling) sign for emphasis or confirmation: NOT £NOT£ TO TAKE OFF would mean “not, repeat not, to take off.” The same thing is done where they want to show the original German word they are translating: TAKE OFF WITH HEAVIEST BOMBS Th£SCHWERSTBOMBEN£.

The Enigma machine's keyboard did not include special German characters so "ä" was typed as "ae", "ö" as "oe" and "ü" as "ue"; "ß" was rendered as "ss" or occasionally "sz." You'll encounter these in personal names, place names and where German technical terms are included.

You will soon come across may references to STRONG INDICATIONS, FAIR INDICATIONS or SLIGHT INDICATIONS, referring to points that were uncertain. With 60-odd years of hindsight, it seems that Bletchley Park’s interpretations of these were largely accurate.

Allied Intelligence inserted comments either at the end of the message or in parentheses during it. You know it’s a comment because they always begin COMMENT.

Very rarely, you may encounter phrases such as lines from popular songs inserted into a message. My guess is that these were to defeat attempts to break into the Allied codes used to distribute Ultra intelligence. The messages were always rephrased and including unrelated text would take them even further from the original, making them more secure against breaking them via a “crib” (something the books I’ve mentioned explain better than I ever could).

Content

Anything from “FOX 122 ADDRESSED PERUGIA FIFTEENTH” through to multi-part messages reporting on the conduct and results of a particular operation.

References to earlier messages with related content are given and are very useful but you can still find some that weren’t cross-referenced.

Finding Luftwaffe material

The only way to do this is to work your way through the whole file until you find something that interests you. There is no index and the messages are just in the order in which they were issued. Heer, Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe are all mixed together as are theatres of operations.

What you want just may not be there. If a front was quiet or enough landlines were available there was less for the Allies to intercept. There’s a lot of traffic from Yugoslavia, Greece and the Aegean but almost nothing from further East after Spring 1944 (up till then there is some Black Sea and Crimea material). Italian traffic is profuse after the Anzio landings but Luftwaffe material practically peters out by September 1944. If you relied on DEFE3 Ultra, you’d barely realise that Unternehmen Steinbock had taken place.

Generally speaking, the more messages you go through, the better the picture you build up. Don’t expect such finds will necessarily be repeated, some sources report consistently over a long period, only to vanish without warning and there is no logic to it.

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