LURED TO HIS DOOM

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIV, Issue 269, 27 October 1934, Page 10

LURED TO HIS DOOM

Von Spee at Falklands A BOGUS MESSAGE That a counterfeit signal dispatched by the British naval intelligence service to Admiral Spee at Valparaiso just after the battle of Coronel lured the admiral to his doom at the Falklands is the startling statement of a reader who claims to know the facts, writes Hector C. Bywater in the London “Daily Telegraph.” His letter is one among the many I have received from readers interested in the disclosure as to how the finding of a secret German code in Australia enabled the Admiralty to set a. trap for Admiral Spee’s squadron at the Falkland Islands, According to the reader mentioned above, Mr. George 11. Abbott, “the German naval codes were most certainly in the possession of our naval intelligence staff, and what happened was this: A British agent in Berlin had secured the forms and stamps which the Germans used for sending code messages to their men-of-war. He, therefore, sent to Admiral Spee a message—the wording of which was dictated by Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, chief of the British Naval Intelligence —directing him to proceed to the Falklands. “After the Coronel battle it was common knowledge that Spee and his squadron were at Valparaiso, and it was to that address that the fateful telegram was dispatched, with instructions to destroy the wireless station at Port Stanley. The rest is clear. Spee duly carried out his ‘instructions’ up to a point, and his fleet was destroyed.” SECRET CODE DRAMA. Captain W. H. Thring, R.N., who was intelligence officer at Australian Naval Headquarters on the outbreak of war, sends me a detailed account of the seizure of the code referred to previously. “In preparing the ‘War Book,’ ” he writes, “1 had noted that German merchant vessels were believed to have a secret code issued to them, and that these codes were to be searched for. Therefore, I sent to our district naval officers orders to search for the codes when they seized German merchant vessels.

“Captain Richardson, at Melbourne, seized two of the codes, one of them in dramatic fashion. He lay down in the captain’s bunk and simulated sleep, his revolver at his side. After some hours the cabin door was stealthily opened and two men entered. They proceeded to force open a raised foot-rest under the desk. Then Captain Richardson flashed on the light, with ‘hands up I’ enforced by his threatening revolver. His guard came to the door, the German captain and his carpenter were taken prisoners, and the code books were duly found “I cabled to the Admiralty that we had these books, and I was surprised to hear trom them that no others had been seized. Thus all messages in this code had to be sent to us to be decoded until we could get the books copied and distributed. I added Dr. Wheatley to my intelligence staff, as ho knew German well, and put him in charge of the decoding.” ADMIRALTY “MYSTERY.” Captain Thring then states that on September' 14 he received a German signal intercepted in mid-Pacific. It was in the captured code, but had been transposed. Eventually, after some suggestions from Captain Thring and a chaplain who was something of a crytographer. Dr. Wheatley succeeded in reading the signal. It appeared to be highly important as it gave Easter Island as a rendezvous for all German cruisers in the North Pacific, and the message was instantly cabled to the Admiralty,

“I confidently expected thev would order the battle-cruiser Austrafia (then at Fiji) to pursue the Germans,” he continues. “She could have joined Admiral Cradock, or have demolished the Germans single-handed, long before the battle of Coronel. But the Admiralty, for reasons unknown to me, would have none of it; thev refused to let the Australia proceed.” While Captain Thring does not remember a vital message referred to by Dr. Wheatley—that which gave the Falklands as one of Admiral Spec’s ports of call and, it is claimed, led to the destruction of the German squadron —ho admits that he was a busy’ man at the time and may have forgotten that such a signal passed through his hands. “Our good fortune in obtaining these codes,” he adds, “was actually due to Admiralty foresight, as they had informed us that such codes were probably in existence.” SECRET CODE CAPTURED. A well-known London shipbroker writes me an interesting account of the seizure of what was, in all probability, another German secret code. Just before the outbreak of war the British steamer Zambesi was on time charter to a firm at Nauru—a German Island in the Pacific—whose acting manager was a German-born subject. This official instructed the Zambesi’s captain to proceed to another German island, Rabaul, many hundred miles distant, and also to convey two German passengers there.

The captain had no reason to disobey these instructions, since his last knowledge of world affairs dated from June 25, 1914, when ho had left Sydney, the wireless station at Nauru being, of course, under German control. When about half-way to Rabaul the Zambesi was stopped by 11.M.A.5. Australia. When it was found that two Germans were on board, who had with them a steel case with a leaden seal impressed with the German Eagle, the Zambesi was sent under armed guard to Sydney, where she was arrested and condemned as a prize, but subsequently released to her owners. “During the case,” goes on this reader, “a great point was made of the steel canister in possession of the Germans, but on grounds of public policy the Judge ruled that its contents should not be made known, and it was understood to be a matter of the greatest importance. Private advices which we received from our agents hinted that, in fact, this canister contained the German secret naval war code which, it was assumed, was being sent by the Governor of Nauru to the substation at Rabaul.”