Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

nOTes
Investigations, conducted similar intelligence-collection operations prior to the war. [Aid,
‘US Humint’, pp. 33—38, and footnote 116.]
500 AWM 78, Item 358/6 — HMAS Warramunga Report of Proceedings, 28 September to 4 October
1950.
501 FO2ICFES noted that there were misgivings about reliability and validity of intelligence from
these sources. The locals were unable to provide any long-range intelligence such as enemy
intentions and that the likelihood of double agents in the system betraying UN operations
was high. [UKNA ADM 116/6228 — Korean War Report of Proceedings no. 40: 15 August to
10 September 1951.]
502 Mobile Sigint units began to be deployed in 7th Fleet ships only from August 1951, but they
never numbered more than three. [Thomas R Johnson, ‘General Essay on the Korean War’,
p.16, < www.nsa.gov/korea> (25 March 2003).]
503 This was the highest priority Allied target. The RN alone was intercepting close to 200,000
groups of Soviet transmissions per month for GCHQ by 1951. [Andy Thomas, ‘British signals
intelligence after the Second World War’, Intelligence and National Security 3, 1988, pp.
103—110.]
504 An anonymous author stated that GCHQ had cooperated with the United States in monitoring
transmissions between Moscow and the Communist capital of Yenan from 1943, and both
nations had produced ‘predictive Comint on the Chinese entry into Korea. [Anonymous,
‘Cryptologic Background to the Chinese Intervention’, Cryptologic Quarterly, (pp.5 & 9, summer 1996).] The deduction is that the Hong Kong stations were
at least partially tasked to monitor Chinese military communications to assist the UN cause
by providing information on Chinese troop movements and this is supported by Matthew
Aid, ‘American Comint in the Korean War (Part II): From the Chinese Intervention to the
Armistice’, Intelligence and National Security, 15, 2000, pp. 14—49.
505 Aid, ‘US Humint’, pp. 43—44, documented the efforts made to cover this serious gap.
506 On 29 November 1950 CTF 95 warned all west coast units of the possibility of an attack by
the PLA Air Force, and the next day a special ASW patrol was instituted in the approaches
to Sasebo, Japan. [Field, History, p. 274.] Field did not indicate on what information these
alerts were based. It may merely have been a case of prudent speculation, but Sigint is
suggested. Neither form of attack eventuated.
507 For a good description of the complications caused by the Chinese to the UN Sigint effort,
ranging from a lack of traffic on which to base cryptanalysis, higher-level codes than the
NKPA, a lack of Mandarin translators, and a preoccupation with the likelihood of a Soviet
intervention, see Aid, ‘American Comint’, pp. 22—27.
508 It was not only local enemy intelligence that was lacking; the identities and locations of UN
intelligence collection ships and parties was also not supplied, with inevitably confusion
and, regrettably, sometimes fatal results. [O’Neill, Combat Operations, p. 437.]
509 In the ad hoc intelligence collection executed by HMAS Bataan off the west coast in October
1950, the main issue was the perennial problem of competent and trustworthy interpreters.
[O’Neill, Combat Operations, pp. 416—417.] An ROK Navy liaison team often provided these,
but there was no way the UN ship could know whether the right questions were being asked,
or that the answers were correctly translated. There is a colloquial account of this dilemma
in Farrar-Hockley, A Distant Obligation, pp. 70—71.
510 This organisation titled ‘Special Activities Group’ was formed from United States and ROK
servicemen with elements of the British Royal Marines. [Farrar-Hockley, A Distant Obligation,
pp. 326—327.]
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