GERMAN NAVAL CDDE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3444, 12 November 1932, Page 7

GERMAN NAVAL CDDE

STORY OF THE DISCOVERY. BATTLE OF THE FALKLANDS. The important and exciting work of unravelling the secret code used by the German Pacific Squadron in the early months of the war was described by Dr. F. W. Wheatley, in a recent lecture to the Royal Empire Society in Sydney. At the outbreak of the war Dr. Wheatley was transferred from the Naval College to the war staff of the Navy Office in Melbourne, and was placed in charge of all intercepted wireless messages. Dr. Wheatley told first of his experiences in Germany six months before the declaration of war, when he accompanied the German Army in manoeuvres for a month, and had conversations and dined with the Crown Prince, Admiral von Tirpitz, and General von Hindenburg. This enabled him to perfect his knowledge of German and helped him to deal successfully with the intercepted messages in that language. Numerous messages, said Dr. Wheatley, were received i'n the strange code just before the battle of Coronel. He explained how he worked night and clay trying to discover the key. The method adopted was shown by means of a chart, and he described the joy of the members of the staff when the solution was found on Melbourne Cup day, 1914. The decoding of the message revealed the itinerary of the German Squadron, with the result that the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, sent the Invincible and the Inflexible to the Falkland Islands and the Allies gained their first big naval victory. Many messages of international importance were deciphered, and copies of the code book and key were forwarded to the Admiralty and to every man-of-war in the Empire. This was all done by confidential clerks in the Navy Office under the direction of Dr. Wheatley.