Was the Panther a ‘heavy’ tank?

I’ve seen online and also in books statements of the type ‘well the Panther tank was better than the M4 Sherman and the T-34 but it was much heavier than them so it should actually be compared with Allied heavy tanks like the M26 and IS-2’.

Was the Panther a ‘heavy’ tank? Should it be compared to the Allied mediums or with their heavy tanks?

In terms of weight the Panther at ~45t was definitely heavier than the Sherman and the T-34 (28-33t depending on the model). The Panther was also considerably heavier than the standard German medium tanks Pz III (23t) and Pz IV (25t). So in that sense the Panther was a heavy vehicle.

However whether a tank was classified as a medium or heavy was dependent on its role in the battlefield. There are two reasons why the German classification of the Panther as a medium tank is correct:

1). Heavy tanks like the Tiger were used in specialized Heavy Tank Battalions (Schwere Panzer- Abteilung). These units were small (about 45 tanks) and were used at the points of main effort. The Panther on the other hand was used in the standard Panzer Divisions. The goal was to completely reequip the Panzer divisions with the Panther as the main vehicle but due to production shortfalls each division had one battalion equipped with the Pz IV and one with the Panther.

2). The Tiger I and King Tiger tanks were built in small numbers. Panther production on the other hand was substantial. In the period 1943-45 we have 6,132 Panthers which can be compared to 6,686 Pz IV and 1,761 Tigers.

Sources:  ‘Panzertruppen’ vol2, ‘Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II’, ‘Waffen und Geheimwaffen des deutschen Heeres 1933 – 1945’

More information on the Irish codebreakers

I’ve already given some information on the secretive Irish codebreakers of WWII. Mr David Mee has uploaded a few pages from the book ‘G2, Irish Military Intelligence for the period 1918-45’ by Maurice Walsh.

These mention the arrest of German agents and the examination of their cipher systems. They also reveal cooperation between the Irish unit and Bletchley Park.

There is also a nice picture of dr Richard Hayes, the top cryptanalyst, whom the British called ‘extremely able’.

New cryptology site

Retired CERN engineer and cryptologic historian Frode Weierud has started a blogsite called CryptoCellar Tales.

Frode was the first person who was able to give me information on the Russian Fish story. His knowledge of German WWII cryptology is encyclopedic.

My advice is to follow his site!

New article on ULTRA in the Med

A very interesting article regarding the effects of ULTRA intelligence against the Italian Navy’s supply convoys is available from the Naval War College Review.

The article is ‘The Other Ultra: Signal Intelligence and the Battle to Supply Rommel's Attack toward Suez’ by Vincent P. O'Hara and Enrico Cernuschi. The authors are critical of the view that codebreaking allowed the Brits to sink Rommel’s supplies and stopped the Axis advance towards Egypt.

According to the authors: ‘This article examines the impact of intelligence in the war against Axis shipping in the two months leading up to the battle of Alam el Halfa, which concluded on 2 September 1942. It demonstrates that Ultra information was not always accurate or timely and that Hinsley overstates Ultra ’s impact by crediting it with sinkings that had nothing to do with either signals intelligence (SIGINT) or traffic to Africa. It also casts light on the role of the Italian navy’s intelligence service, the Servizio Informazioni Segreto (SIS). The SIS provided intelligence that often offset the timely and relevant Ultra SIGINT that Britain did possess. Its code breakers enabled Supermarina, the operational headquarters, located in Rome, of the Regia Marina, the Italian navy, to read, often in less than an hour, intercepted low-grade radio encryptions from British aircraft, and, more slowly, first-class ciphers from warships and land bases. Supermarina’s communications and command system disseminated information in near real time, thereby amplifying the operational value of its SIGINT. This is a fact that the British were unaware of at the time and that has remained virtually unknown since.’

Biographies of famous codebreakers

Well it’s true that you can find anything online if you search for it! Site janeckovokrypto has  pictures and short biographies of countless WWII codebreakers (Americans, British, German, Polish etc). Interesting site.

Decoding Prime Minister Chamberlain’s messages

In the 1930’s Hitler’s foreign policy was focused on dismantling the Treaty of Versailles that was keeping Germany militarily weak.

First compulsory military service was reintroduced in 1935, then the Rhineland was remilitarized in 1936 and finally the Sudeten territories of Czechoslovakia were annexed by the Reich in 1938.

In the diplomatic field the Germans were able to outmaneuver their British and French adversaries mainly thanks to two factors.

One was a disinformation campaign that convinced Western leaders of the Luftwaffe’s destructive power. 

The other was their success in acquiring secret intelligence. The Forschungsamt, Goering’s personal intelligence agency, was able to decode French diplomatic communications (probably physically compromised) and eavesdrop on telephone conversations of politicians and diplomats (especially Czech president Benes and his ambassador in London Masaryk!). Thus Hitler was always one step ahead of his rivals.

In addition to these successes ‘European Axis Signal Intelligence in World War II’ volumes 1 and 7 reveal another very interesting case. Apparently during the negotiations regarding the fate of the Sudetenland German codebreakers were able to solve Prime Minister Chamberlain’s messages to London. EASI vol1, p21 says that ‘Hitler once delayed a conference with Chamberlain for several hours in order to get such decodes’.

The source for this information is listed as IF-132 ‘Das Forschungsamt des Luftfahrtminsteriums’  - Hq USFET Weekly Intelligence summary # 12, 4 Oct. 1945’.

Unfortunately page 5 of that document repeats the same story without giving more details.
 

A clue regarding the cipher system used is available from the TICOM report DF-241 ‘The Forschungsamt - Part IV’, p40

‘Of the numerous examples which might be adduced, the following may serve as an example: The additive number used by Great Britain, which ran to 40,000 elements and served for the encipherment of the 5-digit code and was replaced at definite intervals of time, offered as a rule adequate assurance of security. But if in periods of greatly increased diplomatic activity with telegraphic traffic many times the usual volume the additive is not replaced correspondingly sooner, especially since increased security is desirable in such periods, then this is a sign of deficient control’.

Thus it is possible that the German codebreakers were able to solve the British Foreign Office cipher in the 1930’s.

The official history ‘British Intelligence in the Second World War’ - vol2, p642 says that:

‘FOREIGN OFFICE

1. Main Cypher Books

Despite an extensive attack in 1938 and 1939, the Germans failed to break the long subtractor system used to re-cypher the Foreign Office's basic cypher books. Against similar tables that were in force from November 1940 to January 1941 they had some limited success, but not enough to enable them to reconstruct the book before both the basic book and the tables were again changed. There is no evidence of later success, and according to German testimony after the war the main Foreign Office systems were never broken’.

However in the notes it also says:

‘The discovery after the war in the archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs of  a 90-page volume of British diplomatic signals for the immediately pre-war period led to a  Foreign Office enquiry in 1968. This established that a number of the signals had been dispatched en clair. It also noted that there was reliable evidence that the Italians had obtained temporary possession of the cyphers of the Rome Embassy in 1935, and had photographed them, and that they had had fairly regular access to the cyphers at the Mission to the Holy See during the war, so that they might have read all telegrams to Rome up to the outbreak of war and telegrams to and from the Mission to the Holy See from the outbreak of war to the autumn of 1943. After the war the cryptanalysts of the German Foreign Ministry asserted that they obtained no information about British cyphers from the Italians’.

The British statements may have been accurate about the work of the decryption department of the German Foreign Ministry but they do not mention the Forschungsamt effort… 

The German bombe and the M-209 cipher machine

Back in April 2012 I uploaded TICOM report DF-114 ‘German Cryptanalytic device for solution of M-209 traffic’.

This report is a translation of a German document retrieved in 1947. It describes a cryptanalytic device used by German codebreakers against the US M-209 cipher machine.

The only other reference in TICOM documents is in I-149 ‘Report by Uffz. Karrenberg and Colleagues on Allied Cipher Machines’ which says:

‘A cryptanalytic party, numbering about 20 men, under Wm. ENGELHARDT also worked with Senior Signals Recce Commander Oberst KOPP. The ENGELHARDT party worked on British and U.S. systems, using, among other things, an electrically driven apparatus constructed by themselves. (This was a heavy, black-painted metal box, measuring approximately 50 x 50 X 40 cm, composed of two parts of about equal size. In front of the machine was a keyboard, like a teleprinter. The machine was fitted in the upper part with a set of indicating lamps; when a key was depressed, a letter was illuminated above, as on the German cypher machine). The construction and function of this apparatus, and the systems with which it dealt, are unknown to us. It is alleged that complete solutions (not breaks-in) were achieved by mean of this machine.’

Thankfully an article in a German magazine had an interview with one of the persons who designed and used it during the war:

 

So when I posted that report I expected that people would be interested in the fact that the Germans had their own bombe. I also thought that someone would be able to explain the operating principle of the machine but again this hasn’t happened. What’s up with that?

The secret messages of Marshall Tito and General Mihailović

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was one of the states that were created when the old Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed at the end of WWI. The country covered a large area in the Balkans but was politically unstable since it was made up of a diverse group of peoples (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins).

Yugoslavia was part of the Little Entente organized by France. Although its foreign policy was pro-Allied it did not declare war on Germany in 1939. The defeat of France in 1940 caught the Yugoslav leaders by surprise and forced them to adopt a pro Axis policy. This change however was opposed by a group of military officers and in March 1941 a coup replaced the regent Prince Paul with General Dušan Simović. This maneuver (thought to be organized by the British) infuriated Hitler and he ordered that the country was to be destroyed as a political entity. In April Yugoslav troops were quickly overrun by German forces and a period of occupation and internal strife began.

During the occupation the old antagonisms between ethnicities (Serbs vs Croats) and political movements (Right vs Left) resurfaced and led to a multisided civil war. The Chetniks of General Mihailović fought the Communist Partisans of Marshall Tito and both attacked the collaborationist government of Milan Nedic, the German and Italian occupation troops and the Croat forces of Ante Pavelić.

All sides took to heart the motto ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. This meant that at times some resistance group would make a deal with the occupation authorities and agree to leave them alone so both could attack another group. The results of this widespread conflict were mass destruction of property and loss of lives as each group attacked the villages that supported their enemies.

During the period 1941-44 the Germans mounted major operations against the resistance movements but they could not destroy them. In their war against the Chetniks and the Partisans however they took advantage of signals intelligence. The resistance groups used codes that could not withstand a serious cryptanalytic attack and their cipher clerks made many mistakes that facilitated solution. By reading the traffic of Tito and Mihailović the Germans could build up the OOB of their organizations, identify important personalities and anticipate enemy operations.

At the same time the British also used cryptanalysis in order to monitor the internal Yugoslav situation and decide which resistance group they should give supplies to. Their ability to decode the Enigma cipher machine meant that they could use German military messages to see if the information coming from the Chetniks and the Partisans was corroborated by official German reports. They also read Chetnik and Partisan messages including the clandestine traffic between Moscow and Tito (this program was called ISCOT).