OCR Text |
Show HOW 'TAB1 WAS KEPT OH GERMi U-BOATS Difficult Work of British Naval Intelligence Officers Offi-cers Set Out in Detail. By FLOYD MACGR1FF, Universal News Service Correspondent. LONDON, March 1. The German U-boats U-boats were trailed and kept track of from tho moment they got Into tho zone of operations until they started back to their base, and that is tho underlying: reason why 202 of them v.'ero sunk or captured. Tho U-boats -were their own worst foes, because they constantly kept in touch with one another by wireless. While the LVrttish admiralty had ample means for ascertaining" when a U-boat left its base and when it returned, such information being obtaUicd through spies, altor a U-boat gm to pea the British had to rely upon thoir wits to keep it charted correctly. cor-rectly. This is how It was done. At certain ports were naval intelligence officers. Along" the ccasts wero listening stations, wherf wireless messages could be copied. cop-ied. Two such stations, or, perhaps, more, might pick up tho same German code message from a U-bont, read lug" "XQP Uaabo knuutgh, i"QP." The coastal station would report to the naval base frcm which d irecllon the message appeared ap-peared to come. W drawing" straight lines fram the. listening list-ening stations reporting, the lines would cross at sea, and that would give the approximat o location of the submarine. Coastal and submarine patrol boats would obtain additional information, for these vessels often were able, to get the number num-ber of a sea diver. . Survjvors. from ships torpedoed or officers of ships attacked supplied additional information. Kach naval base had a map, and on that map were f lugs for t-ach U-boat in the danger zone. The various fkigs represented rep-resented the- respective positions of the U-boat and where reported In the past twenty-four hours. The Germans were niPthodienl. Faeh U-boat worked in a certain ocean area, only a few miles in extent. Othpr U-boats U-boats old not poach upchi its neighbor's stalking grounds. This aided tho British in keeping track of the submarines. It did not take tho intelligence officers long to learn that the first three letters cf ttio code message, if like the one above o noted, blood for the number of the submarine. The irtelbgence officers could locate within a couple of mile.s any U-boat from intercepted messages, but they had to confirm the number from otht'r sourees, and, while- t his was not always easy, it generally was accomplished accom-plished within a few hours. The base int-Mligt nee officer had a complete com-plete list of code calls of every German sul; marine, and, what's more important, he had all the U-boats grouped in their respecttve flotillas. This was done by pteeiug together bits of information. Thus, the work of keeping t;il of trie U-boats U-boats was done by brain, by officers who probably did not embark on a ship once a month. |