The British Army and Signals Intelligence During The First World War

Ferris, John (Editor)

ISBN 10: 0750902477 / ISBN 13: 9780750902472

Published by The Army Records Society, Stroud, Gloucesterhire, 1992

About this Item

Publications of The Army Records Society Volume 8. Red hard cover in bright and clean condition with gilt titles on spine and gilt motif on front. Contents tight and clean with no inscriptions. Dust jacket also very tidy and it is not price clipped. The spine is slightly faded. Slight foxing to inside of jacket and to top page edges. Nice copy.

Seller Inventory # 026696

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The British Army and Signals Intelligence During The First World War
• Publisher: The Army Records Society, Stroud, Gloucesterhire
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0750902477
• ISBN 13: 9780750902472
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Historians have paid little attention to the British Army's experience with signals intelligence during the First World War. However, this was one of the Army's most important sources of information about crucial matters such as the order of battle and intentions of the German and Turkish Armies. Britain's successes and failures in signals intelligence profoundly affected battles ranging from the race for the Channel Ports, first Somme, third Gaza and Amiens, among many others.
While efforts to weed the records on these topics have created major gaps in the sources, surviving evidence throws an entirely new light on the British Army in the Great War. It allows one to trace the evolution of the Army's signals intelligence organisations, to determine many of their successes and failures, to show how this intelligence affected various operations and, indeed, to demonstrate that signals intelligence influenced the operations of the British Army as much as those of the Royal Navy.
The material reproduced in this volume includes excerpts from reports by Army Headquarters in France, Italy and Mesopotamia and the Military Intelligence Directorate. It includes the memorandum "Enemy Codes and their Solution" by the G.H.Q. codebreaking section in January 1918, which is one of the two best sources known to exist about the techniques of "codebreaking"; surviving reports on the enemy radio networks in the Balkans and Anatolian Turkey, which are the most illuminating evidence from any theatre on the approach toward "traffic analysis" and a report on the breaking of German and Turkish Army ciphers in Mesopotamia during 1917, which is the best source known about the techniques of "cryptanalysis" used by an Army in the Great War.