ENIGMA 2000 Newsletter - Issue 30

September 2005
Articles, newsreports and Items of interest :enigma2000-owner@yahoogroups.com

ENIGMA 2000 Article - "A room in Berlin"

"A room in Berlin" by ‘Anon’

A room in Berlin

It was in the room behind the upper top right window in the mid 1950's that three RAF Junior NCO's spent more than a year listening to 'numbers' before moving to a different location. This photo was taken during a return visit to Berlin in 2003

In the spring of 1955, three RAF Corporals, all experienced WT intercept operators were selected to proceed to Berlin to take over a task currently being performed by three civilian Radio Officers from GCHQ. Before this could take place however, and at the insistence of GCHQ the nominees would have to undergo the same training as had the present incumbents in order to bring them up to their standard (bloody cheek).

The civilian R.O.'s Course duly completed at the CTS (Central Training School) Bletchley Park it was off to Berlin, or was it? The trio got as far as Scharfoldendorf in West Germany and were informed that they were to return to the UK and proceed to Cheltenham for a briefing. Three days of briefing followed outlining the role to be played in Berlin, exactly where to send any results of their efforts and what methods to use to despatch such results. Briefing over, a weekend at leisure in the UK and it was off to Berlin via Harwich and the military train from Hanover.

The first two weeks were spent 'double banking' with the 'civvies' who provided a very nice hand-over whilst introducing their replacements to some of the delights of Berlin. This included taking all three as guests to an establishment known as 26 Mess. This was a club for, and frequented by, the intelligence community. Above the stairs leading down to the bar in the basement was a large shield featuring a cloak and dagger figure, a bit like the 'Sandeman' advert' really but sporting a dagger! It was in the bar here that a well-built guy, with beard and known to all as 'The Dutchman' was pointed out to the three new arrivals. Some years later the identity of this fellow was revealed to be George Blake one of the most infamous spies of the 20^th century.

With the civvy ops departed, reluctantly no doubt, (one of the Corporals was to meet up with one of them again in Singapore in 1964) it was down to work. There were two operating positions, referred to, as "a paltry one and a half positions" in chapter 7 of Peter Wright's Spycatcher. The figure of one and a half arrived at simply because only three operators were allocated to the task. Each position consisted of a pair of HRO receivers, great sets, as all that have used and loved them will know. Between the two positions sat a large Ferrograph reel to reel tape recorder and a field telephone connected to a DF site about five hundred metres distant. The hours worked were to some extent dictated by what was received and subsequent skeds that were derived from such intercept. These three operators were left to make all their own arrangements, their movements were never questioned and they were exempt from any other duties. There was a C.O. in situ but his role was purely administrative as far as they were concerned. He lived along the corridor along with a number of RAF and Army Linguists, the latter being Intelligence Corps personnel but badged Royal Signals whilst serving in this location.

The task was to search for, log and whenever possible, DF, Soviet Diplomatic/Illicit morse transmissions, emanating from the East and in the case of the outstations, or agents wherever they happened to be. The control always had a thumping great signal, many times with key clicks that encouraged jokes about the possibility of the guy being in the boiler house a short distance away down the road. It is more than likely however, that most 'Control' transmissions originated in East Berlin or Moscow.

The Morse traffic was in the form of what is now referred to as 'numbers', five figure groups of numbers in messages of varying length preceded by in this case, a three-figure callsign. I believe the encryption method was of the 'one-time-pad' type and this is borne out by subsequent arrests of agents and material found in their possession in the years following. Referring to the previous mention of deriving skeds from this traffic. This was arrived at by deducting the day and date from the last two groups of the message, the resultant figures giving one the date and time of the next transmission presumably the frequencies were already known to the agents. Most of the time the frequencies were not hard to locate anyway as they were always in a band appropriate to the time of day. It has always been a source of amazement however, that an outfit that went to the trouble of using a secure method of transmission and then used such a simple insecure schedule notification system within their traffic. Incidentally, None of the three RAF operators claim the credit for discovering this flaw in the system; their predecessors in the job simply passed it on. No doubt some crypto' wizz kid back at Q had worked that one out.

Two types of traffic were experienced; one being simply a message from the control in a similar method as traffic heard to this day. The other was where the control would call up for some time maybe 5-10 minutes. This latter event would instigate a frantic search on the other HRO. Often, Instead of sending traffic or a group of five short zeros (TTTTT) to indicate he had no traffic, he would transmit another five figure group, it may have been 33333 or 55555 or may have been a three figure group. (Here the author must apologise for his memory not being what it used to be after a lapse of more than 40 years) Whatever, it was it was an invitation for the agent to send his traffic. This was where the fun started and a spare set of hands would have been useful. A frantic search on the other HRO listening for what was referred to as 'Revs', a fast series of machine sent dits, these revs, thankfully could last maybe up to 20 or 30 seconds and would quickly be followed by a super fast 'Burst' transmission. Switch on recorder, crank the handle of the field telephone (hopefully all this during the revs) and pass the frequency down the phone, log the details and hope for the best. Sometimes, when their luck was in, a good recording was obtained to send off to Cheltenham via 'The Bag' that night and, when very lucky a bearing, this being notified to the same destination using OTP and transmitted via the RAF telecommunications network.

Imagine however, the surprise one day when halfway through a fairly lengthy message the sender stopped, paused and then switched to voice, Russian! One operator hastily legged it down the corridor and had one of the Russian linguists write down, phonetically the Russian numerals 1 - Ø, Odin, Dva, Tree etc. Armed with this aide-memoir they were then ready for any future transmissions of this type which did indeed take place from time to time.

Access to this 'room' was via two flights of stairs, at the top of the first flight there was a metal gate guarded and controlled by an RAF Regiment Gunner armed with a Sten Gun. One particular night the Sten discharged a round that penetrated the glass doors at the foot of and opposite the stairs then ricocheted down the corridor taking small chunks out of the wall en-route. At the subsequent inquiry the lad said he had accidentally dropped the weapon and it “went off”. It is well known that this particular weapon was prone to this when dropped but would, it is said, normally empty the magazine! If the truth was known maybe the poor fellow was just bored out of his mind, especially in the dead of night when there was little or no traffic on the stairs. He probably just squeezed off a round to relieve such boredom.

Opposite this tiny set room there was another small room which, as far as could be seen, contained a bed and not much else. Only a mysterious gent in civilian clothing ever used this room. This fellow used to arrive, almost always in the dead of night lugging a heavy suitcase (from which on occasion loud 'clanging' noises were heard). This guy never spoke to anyone or acknowledged any greeting and was always very careful to lock the door behind him once he entered the room. After a while it became a bit of a game as this chap, who, for want of a better title was referred to as a 'Queens Messenger' would try to have a peek into the 'set room' prior to letting himself in his own room. Whoever was on watch at the time would then very pointedly close the door to preventing him seeing in. Daft maybe but it was a case of tit for tat, you show us yours and we'll show you ours, so to speak!

This 'messenger' used to depart from Gatow on the regular RAF flight to Northholt but never used the passenger terminal. He was picked up by an RAF Corporal driver in a Volkswagen Beetle and boarded the aircraft on the taxiway. This corporal driver was also something of a mystery. He did not seem to belong to the MT section on the station and never drove anything or anyone else. He often spoke with one or other of the three operators telling them that he was attached to the station from 'down the zone'.

Since those days and with a large amount of 'sensitive' material being released to the public domain opinions have been formed about the mysterious gent and his driver. The betting is that both were BRIXMIS (The British Commander in Chief's Mission to the Soviet Forces of occupation in Germany) personnel. (BRIXMIS by Tony Geraghty - Harper Collins ISBN 0 00 63867 3)

BRIXMIS was the very successful British Intelligence gathering organization operating out of Berlin and into the Soviet Zone of Germany consisting of personnel from all three services and a few civilians with temporary 'local' Army ranks. Not only did they gather information on what they saw and photographed (at great risk to themselves) but actually obtained bits of Soviet aircraft, both spent and live ammunition and at one time, it is written, a complete unexploded bomb! All this material was sent back to the UK for examination and analysis. It is believed that such items (except the large UXB of course) may have made up some of the contents of the suitcase carried by the mysterious gent when he locked himself in his room whilst awaiting the next RAF flight out of Berlin.

After a most enjoyable and interesting two and a half years in the 'numbers racket' all three operators, now sporting another stripe on their arms were posted back to the UK. All applied for an extension of tour but this was refused, no doubt someone in the corridors of power thought that they had had enough of a good thing so it was off to pastures new to monitor someone and something else but never again exclusively numbers.

[Tnx Anon!]