call signs

paul croxson · call signs

In my brief stay in the world of Sigint I camer across B type and E type callsigns. Without asking for anything derperately significant to be given away ...were there A, C, and D callsigns and were E uype ever fully recovered. In my day if we got one a day we were pretty pleased with ourselves.
I only ask the question as I am off to Bletchley and can't help noticing, in boning up before going, the rarity of ANY mention of call signs.

Has anyone come across "SIXTA" in the context of BP? I have just bought "THe Hut Six Story" to see if there is anything there but it isn't mentioned in the index. Nothing mentioned in 'HInsley' as far as the index is concerned and I can't face ploughing through that having stalled dramatically halfway through Foot's History of the SOE. Turgid. Heard him on the wireless this morning and am amazed he is still going strong. I know what it is but wanted to learn more as I suspect the I Corps played a large part in ity

Good evening Gordon

paul croxson

By the way, I should have explained that I discovered that 'Sixta' meant signals traffic analysis. I have now discovered that Welchman refers to it as 'The Central Party' and speaks of it very highly. Also I discover from Mr W. that the Germans used alpha-numeric callsigns 3 digit too. I wonder if they were B type.
if there was an O level or whatever they call it nowadays on Enigma I might stand a chance of a C. Its fascinating re-reading it all in a different order and with hindsight. Winterbottom looks all a bit jaded in retrospect.

David Thomas

Hi Paul, Glad to see that you are trying to keep abreast of things, it’s only 19 years since the wall came down. I must admit I never heard Traffic Analysis referred to other than TA, I’d not heard of Sixta until your post. As for the GDR, I can confirm that they used 3 character call signs, as far as I can remember they kept their call signs for a month, so once we’d found them, they were pretty straight forward to follow. The “E” type call signs changed daily at midnight, but there was obviously a system of predicting what they would be, because as soon one or two stations of a group were identified, then your I Corps types could quickly come up with what the rest of the net should be. Tom will be able to tell you much more than me, because I was seldom trusted with Soviets. I spent much of my time looking for Trawlers on the Baltic, at least that’s what they said they were, but as I never found them, I can’t say for sure. All the best. Dave T.

paul croxson

When I started The Russians used only B type as did the POles and Hingarians. It was 1955(?) when suddenly these new type - 4 letter callsigns appeared and everything went bananas and we thought that war was just round the corner as we had been told that a change of callsigns and freqs were a likey precursor to the hoards crossing the Elbe. I am sure Bob W and Pete Ellis if not others will recall the time. I think RMBB 00201 was the first to be re-recognised. Its a long time ago!

Tom Neal

Hello all,
I can only rembember B and E type calls and never heard of any other type.
As we have said before the B type were three character alpha numeric and we had the B Stick to identify the ones we needed to cover.
AS far as I remember the E type came into being in 56/57 but I cannot be sure of that (It is a while ago).
AS most of us know with the E type the unit or callsign had a fixed call which changed with the daily code and the main way this was cracked was by the operators saying this is RMBB 00123 etc which then gave a way into the code.
Tom

paul croxson

Thanks Tom for the confirmation. You are slightly wrong on the date as the changeover was early '55, maybe New Year as I left Langeleben in July 56.
Its interesting in that I am reading a book by Welchman re Enigma and for the first time the work that we did is highlighted for its usefulness almost equal to the actual codebreaking in some ways. And the Germans used Alpha numerics too. I wonde if the good old 'B' Stick would have worked with them. For the youngsters, the B stick was a slide rule which enabled onr to calculate what the callsign would be and to establish what station was calling whom

kerby

Call signs changed from 3 to 4 at 00.01 hrs on 1st January, 1955. I was on the mid to eight shift at Munster when it happened. There was chaos for a few hours until someone recognised their group with a 4# call sign then guys knew what to look for. Keith

paul croxson

Thanks Keith, As Poirot would say "my little grey cells" did not let me down. If I recall it correctly it was RMBB 00201 which came to the rescue as it did so often. It had so many characteristics that you clever Signals chappies could recognise it even when drunk (which was most of the time on that watch).

fred1935

So thats what happened just as I left our main camp in Jan 1956. it was never clear to me, I had just returned from detachment and I forget which one, Langeleben or Nordholtz. I know Paul and I have discussed this before but this is better understood, by me anyway, thanks to Kerby and friends.

paul croxson

Glad to see you are still awake Fred!
You have just doubled your number of entries on the Forum and so I hope you will carry this on. Are you planning to be at KL next year?