Naval Intelligence

The aim of this presentation is to give a brief overview of the nature and organisation of the German intelligence network in South Africa during the Second World War. I will first talk about the initial German contacts with South Africa, and in particular the Ossewabrandwag, between 1940 and 1941, whereafter I will use the case of Lothar Sittig to discuss the larger ambit of the maritime intelligence war waged in southern Africa. I will conclude with some general remarks on the effectiveness of the German intelligence network in South Africa during the Second World War. The erstwhile historian and archivist of the Ossewabrandwag , Piet van der Schyff, argued that two pertinent questions arise regarding the Ossewabrandwag and its possible contact with Nazi Germany during the war. First, was there definite contact between the Ossewabrandwag and Germany during the war? Second, if such contact existed, what was the nature and extent thereof? The answer to the first question is straightforward. The Ossewabrandwag maintained regular contact with Germany throughout the war. The second question, however, needs further investigation, especially as to how it related to the maritime intelligence war waged in southern Africa.

This paper follows the growth of America's understanding to the threat that Japan's great battleship, the Yamato, posed to the American fleet in World War II.  The Yamato, which should have been the greatest battleship ever built, in truth was already obsolete when launched in 1941—fire control radar and especially seaborne aircraft had changed the nature of combat at sea.  Yamato’s mystique depends on what might have been, rather than what was.  In reality, she had been often reduced to ferrying men and material to threatened points in the Empire.  Her grand moment, her last desperate sortie to redeem not just the Yamato herself but the entire concept of big-gun capital ships as the centerpiece of fleet strategy, led only to a valiant but futile death.  This paper largely tracks with J. Calvitt Clarke III and Mariko A. Clarke, “Yamato wo meguru Bei-Kaigun no Joho-Katsudo” [Intelligence Activities of the US Navy Concerning the Yamato], in Senkan Yamato [Battleship Yamato], edited by Youichi Hirama (Tokyo: Kodan-sha, 2003), pp. 162-96.

The role that Admiralty communications intelligence played in the Battle of Jutland has been given mixed reviews in histories of the battle. Historians acknowledge the superb performance of the Admiralty's cryptographic organization in efficiently decrypting German naval communications before and during the battle, yet the fact that communications intelligence did not reach Admiral Jellicoe in usable or recognizable form had led historians to judge this a failure. This article argues that contrary to the accepted history, the dissemination system performed as planned, since the Admiralty placed a higher premium on the security of the intelligence source over its operational use by the fleet at sea.

This essay looks at the future of naval intelligence. It assesses the emerging threat environment and determines that future maritime services will face a range of full spectrum threats including insurgents, criminal armed groups (CAGs), and proxies.  These threats may involve irregular conflicts, crime wars, and full-scale wars.  New technology, drones and artificial intelligence and new operations areas--urban littorals--complicate the threat horizon.  Ne partnerships and modes of intelligence production involving partnerships *(co-production) are needed to address these diverse operating challenges.

This article (published in the Special Libraries Association Geography and Map Division Bulletin No 147 March 1987)  is a sequel to my survey of the World War II handbooks published in Bulletin No. 140 (June 1985). Section 2 lists 78 items produced by the Naval Staff Intelligence Department during and after WWI. Section 3 provides a comparative tabulation of the WWII series against the WWI series described in Section 2.

While the Indian-Pacific Ocean, and in particular the South and East China Seas, have attracted the most media and scholarly attention in recent years, the use of limited force in contested maritime spaces can also be observed in other corners of the world, even among NATO allies. The case of Gibraltar is interesting, among other reasons, because it features the collection and distribution of open source intelligence by local citizens. In a world where the lines between the military, coastguard and police forces, other state agencies, and private sector operators, are increasingly blurred, this initiative should be of interest to anybody who follows maritime and naval issues.Welcome to OpWest, a non-for-profit private initiative.

Winifred Lamb completed Part 2 of the Classical Tripos at Newnham College in 1917. She initially went to work in a military hospital but in December 1917 she was invited to attend an interview for 'an interesting job' by the wife of the diplomat, George Young. She was offered a place in Room 40, part of Naval Intelligence based in the Admiralty. She worked alongside Lt-Commander J.D. Beazley RNVR. They were able to attend the London sales, and in one instance they jointly purchased an Athenian amphora that was presented to the Ashmolean Museum. Beazley introduced her to Sir Sydney Cockerell, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Lamb was invited to become Honorary Keeper of Greek Antiquities. In April 1940 she was approached, at the prompting of Sir Leonard Woolley, to join the BBC. From 1941 she worked in the Balkans section, and in the spring of 1942 she moved to the Turkish language section where she was responsible for preparing regular monitoring reports. This was a crucial period when the Allies were seeking to maintain Turkey's neutrality. In October 1944 she was seriously injured during a V1 rocket attack. She returned to work in late April 1945, monitoring the broadcasts to Turkey from Moscow. Lamb resigned from the BBC in February 1946 and joined a group of scholars, including John Garstang, to create what was initially called The Anglo-Turkish Institute of Archaeology at Ankara.

Dal 1729 al 1768 la Repubblica di Genova deve affrontare, suo malgrado, circa quarant’anni di insurrezioni e conflitti civili nell’appendice insulare dei suoi domini: la Corsica. Militarmente e finanziariamente debole e orfana del tradizionale alleato ispanico, Genova si muove alla ricerca di nuove alleanze e tenta più volte di risolvere la questione còrsa ricorrendo ora all’azione militare ora alla negoziazione. Il coinvolgimento di avventurieri e diplomatici stranieri, ufficiali còrsi al servizio di stati esteri, mercanti, uomini d’affari, patroni di bastimento, mediatori e altri soggetti interessati ai traffici di contrabbando attraverso cui i rivoltosi alimentano il proprio sforzo bellico, unitamente agli interessi di Francia e Gran Bretagna, danno al conflitto una marcata connotazione internazionale. In un contesto siffatto la capacità di raccogliere informazioni assume un ruolo strategico fondamentale. I ministri residenti presso le corti estere, i consoli nei porti del Tirreno e del golfo del Leone, i giusdicenti e i militari di stanza in Corsica e i capi fazione còrsi lealisti permettono al governo della Repubblica di avere costantemente un quadro più o meno dettagliato e aggiornato di quei convulsi avvenimenti militari, giochi di potere, logiche di fazione, di prestigio e di profitto che caratterizzano un conflitto intestino, e di quella complessa costellazione di interessi strategici ed economici che, a livello internazionale, ruotano intorno alla questione còrsa. Nell’ambito di questo quadro la documentazione d’archivio rivela la centralità delle notizie raccolte attraverso canali informali – “partitanti”, “persone di confidenza”, informatori ben remunerati, disertori in cerca di un miglior stipendio, doppiogiochisti, “pentiti”, amici e parenti – e, più generalmente, prestando orecchio alla voci e, nei porti, alle “novità di mare”. Lo scopo dell’intervento è quello di mettere in evidenza come la dimensione informale e quella istituzionale interagiscano nell’attività di intelligence, producendo, trattando e trasmettendo enormi masse di informazioni