HMAS Sydney – An End to the Controversy

Author

Mearns, David L and Captain Peter Hore, RN

Subjects

RAN operations, WWII operations

Tags

Kormoran

RAN Ships

HMAS Sydney II

Publication

December 2003 edition of the Naval Historical Review (all rights reserved)

Another error concerns the substitution table for numerals, which was used within the coded text. The table given by the Australian decoders in the covering letter to their work dated 20 July 1943 is: A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, H=7, I=8, J=9 and D=0. ((Australian Archives (VIC) B5823/1: in the substitution table there are 30 letters: the alphabet is used with the addition of A, B, C, and D.))

There is an obvious mistake here: while using ‘G’ to replace ‘7’ in the decryption, the Australian decoder has both missed out the letter ‘G’ from the table, and overlooked the use of ‘I’ and ‘J’ as one letter. In addition the German coder used A and Ä indiscriminately for the number ‘1’ and sometimes used the letter ‘K’ instead  of ‘D’ for  zero.  Thus  the correct substitution table for numerals is: A or Ä=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, I or J=9 and D or K=0. This corrected table alters our understanding of parts of the deck log. In an important entry the deck log says ‘AGAE Kreuzer laeuft [läuft] stbd [Steuerbord] querab mit abstand IHM’ this is translated as ‘1715 Cruiser cuts across starboard at range of 8 h[undred] m[eters]’ ((The contents of all square brackets in this text are the author’s.)). A better translation and accurate number substitution would be ‘1715 Cruiser opens out on [to the] starboard beam at range 900 meters’. A comparison of the three versions under discussion makes this clear (See Table 2 below).

Table 2