The Silent Listener: British Electronic Surveillance Falklands 1982

By D J Thorp

On 2 April 1982 Argentina launched Operation Rosario, the invasion of the Falklands. The British, caught off guard, responded with Operation Corporate. Deployed alongside the rest of the British Army was a small specialist intelligence unit, whose very existence was unknown to many commanders and whose activities were cloaked in the Official Secrets Act. Trained during the years of the Cold War, the OC of the unit, D J Thorp, was tasked with providing electronic warfare support - interception of Argentinian electronic and radio signals - allowing the British to be in real time receipt of enemy plans long before execution. He personally briefed Col H Jones before the Battle of Goose Green. For the first time in print, The Silent Listener confirms the existence and role of the Special Task Detachment during Operation Coroporate and provides details of the deployment and operational role of a dedicated ground based electronic warfare (EW) weapons facility. It also details the development of electronic warfare during the Cold War period, including the establishment of a communications intercept site on East Island following the cessation of hostilities in the Falklands, and D J Thorp's top secret role in the investigation into the sinking of ARA General Belgrano.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jul 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9780752466866

Book preview

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

1 The Training of Professional Communicators

2 Apprentice to Veteran

3 My Career as an ACORN

4 The Corridors Linking East and West

5 The Special Task Detachment

6 Preparing for War

7 The Transition from Peace to War

8 Action Stations

9 Life in Bomb Alley

10 Battle for Goose Green

11 Arrival of 5 Brigade

12 Communication Procedures

13 The Planned Counterattack

14 The Surrender

15 Formation of a Permanent Signal Unit

16 Transition to Post War Life

Appendix 1 ‘La Gaceta Argentina’

Appendix 2 ‘Counterattack’

Glossary

Plates

Copyright

PREFACE

The objective of this book is primarily to give the reader insights, alternative answers and in some cases the truth relating to certain events that took place during the Falkland Island War of 1982. In addition its content is aimed to broaden one’s knowledge of a very small number of Armed Forces personnel employed in specialist duties during the period 1940–1990, who, because of the restraints placed on them by their signing of the Official Secrets Act, have seldom attracted the attention of the general public. I have deliberately liberally peppered my ‘real war’ memories with an overview of my military career in general during the period 1955–1988, in order to give the reader an insight into an aspect of Army life that seldom hits the headlines.

After 1990, mainly because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the more relaxed relations between the super powers after the Cold War, the role of these specialist personnel changed and through these changes, and more open reporting by the media, their existence has become more widely known. My specialist knowledge and expertise only came about after years of experience employed in the clandestine world of the electronic intercept of communication systems used by the potential enemies of Great Britain and her closest allies.

The specialists to whom I refer were actively employed 365 days a year. When on operational assignments their place of work was often hostile and on occasions very dangerous; they could be employed in the air, on the ground or at sea. Where they worked was also varied; they could be deployed to any continent in conditions, from the opulent and palatial to living and working in chicken coops, as they once did in Kenya.

Classified information pertaining to Official Intelligence Activities in all its forms and Signals Intelligence in particular, is not subject to any fixed timetables for release, such as the so-called ‘Defence Notice’ (D Notice) or since 1971 its replacement the ‘Defence Advisory Notice’ (DA Notice) and the ‘30-Year Rule’. The D Notice was established in 1912, bolstered by the Official Secrets Acts, to define subjects that are not cleared for public broadcast. With the progress of technology, today’s DA Notices cover media broadcast content via radio, films, television and the internet, and may be applicable to other government information under the Public Records Acts. In addition, the Freedom of Information Acts do not apply to the intelligence agencies; the Acts explicitly exempt them from any obligation to provide information concerning any units of the Armed Forces ‘which are for the time being required to assist the Government Communications Headquarters [GCHQ] in the exercise of its functions’.

In February 2010, the British Government presented their ‘Review of the 30-Year Rule’ to Parliament and the general public. Amendments to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill were tabled.

The reduction of the 30-Year Rule through amendments to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill is perhaps one of the first steps towards transparency in the field of dissemination of past highly classified information into the public arena. No sooner had the ink dried on this Bill – now an Act – when in June 2010, details of the 1946 UK–USA (pronounced ew-koo-sa) Secret Agreement was released to the British National Archives by GCHQ. This agreement, brokered with the US, led to the sharing of all signals secret intelligence between the two countries. The agreement was later extended to include the three former British dominions, Canada (1948), Australia and New Zealand (1956). The UKUSA Agreement was a follow-up to the 1943 BRUSA Agreement, a Second World War agreement on cooperation over intelligence matters – this was a secret treaty, allegedly so secret that it was kept from the Australian prime ministers until 1973 – and formalised the intelligence sharing agreement in the Atlantic Charter, signed in 1941, before the entry of the US into the conflict. While rumours suggesting the existence of such an agreement had persisted for many years, outside of GCHQ the actual document, or its content, has never been published before. The agreement itself states ‘It will be contrary to this agreement to reveal its existence to any third party whatever.’ With top secret codeword protection, the document was drawn up and signed by members of the forerunners of the National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ, the State-Army-Navy Communications Intelligence Board, known as STANCIB, and the London Signal Intelligence Board.

The Silent Listener confirms the existence and role of the Special Task Detachment during Operation Corporate and provides, for the first time in the history of British warfare, details of the deployment and operational role of a dedicated, but limited, ground-based electronic warfare weapons facility under the direct control of the Land Force Commander; a significant development in military history that appears to have been omitted by Professor Lawrence Freedman in his Official History of the Falkland War.

The content of The Silent Listener has been shown to and commented on by authorities at both Government Communication Headquarters and the Ministry of Defence; in consequence all requests from these Government Departments for changes to meet the terms of the Official Secrets Acts have been complied with. Failure to have done so may have caused damage to Great Britain’s strategic and tactical military capability and aims, and risked British servicemen’s and women’s lives in current and future conflict.

The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act means that over the next 10 years national archiving after 20 instead of 30 years will be required by law. Though within the Act, in Freedom of Information 46 (2) it states: ‘The Secretary of State may by order make transitional, transitory or saving provision in connection with the coming into force of paragraph 4 of Schedule 7 (which reduces from 30 years to 20 years the period at the end of which a record becomes a historical record for the purposes of Part 6 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000).’

INTRODUCTION

The art of intelligence gathering has been practised almost since the beginning of human societies. The need of individuals, organisations and nations to know more about others than the others know about them is insatiable. The ways and means of gathering intelligence are vast and varied, as are the reasons why groups feel the need to gather such information.

Throughout history much has been written about the world of intelligence gathering on a national level, where the target array varies from the activities of an entire nation, down to the individual on the street gossiping over the garden fence. While some people, through the press and other forms of media, like to feel they know a little about the nation’s civilian intelligence gathering organisations such as MI5, MI6 and perhaps the Government Communications Headquarters, it is generally only those, because of security implications and the policy of ‘need to know’, who have been employed or actively involved in the various aspects of military intelligence that have any real knowledge of the role and capabilities of the Intelligence Corps and in particular that element whose specialist duties are in the collection, transcription, translation, cryptanalysis and eventual reporting of signals intelligence. In the twenty-first century it has more commonly become known as ‘electronic warfare’.

The Crimea War (1853–1856), although best known for the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Thin Red Line during Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854, also made history as the first modern war to introduce the tactical use of the telegraph. With advances in telegraphic equipment and technology by 1901, when the Italian Guglielmo Marconi first discovered he could transmit and receive signals across the Atlantic Ocean, that department within the British Army responsible for its communications has frequently been at the forefront in the exploitation of radio transmissions. From early in the twentieth century, continual research and development within the field of electromagnetic radiation has allowed military commanders to communicate worldwide over secure means by the use of the high frequency wave bands for Morse code (less susceptible to interference) for long haul, and very high frequency wave bands for voice transmissions over shorter distances. In 1920, the Royal Corps of Signals was formed to provide communication specialists for the British Army and to this day it continues to be the Army’s leader in information technology and communications.

Technology pertaining to electronic communications has undergone a radical transformation even in the last decade. The use of Morse code in the passage of radio communications is all but defunct. In a modern age of communication satellites, secure cellular telephones and the World Wide Web, radio communications via terrestrial transmitters and receivers are slowly being forsaken for state-of-the-art equipment and techniques.

1

THE TRAINING OF PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATORS

I was born into a service family; my grandfather was a regular soldier during the First World War and eventually retired with the rank of Warrant Officer 2 (WO2) and my father retired after 30 years as an officer in the Royal Corps of Signals having served prior to, during and after the Second World War. My older brother served twelve years, including active service in Cyprus, and my younger brother served for 27 years, including several years in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Continuing the tradition, my eldest son served nine years and completed tours of duty in Belize and with the United Nations Peace Keeping Force in Cyprus. We all served in the Royal Corps of Signals – as miners’ sons went down the pits so the Thorp sons enlisted into the British Army. Upon leaving school in February 1955 at the age of fifteen I agreed to serve for three years with what was known then as the Army Apprentice School (AAS), Harrogate, North Yorkshire, followed by a further nine years with the colours in the Royal Corps of Signals.

The AAS Harrogate was established in 1947 to provide the British Army both with a small cadre of regular soldiers suitably institutionalised from a young age to fulfil the roles of future senior non-commissioned and warrant officers, and also full apprenticeship training in a variety of trades including carpenters, painters, quantity surveyors and radio mechanics for various regiments and corps. This apprenticeship training was occasionally extended to servicemen from colonial and other armed forces – during the period from the late 1940s to early 1950s the largest single contingent of foreign apprentices to serve at Harrogate was from Myanmar (Burma), with the majority training as communication mechanics (later changed to technicians). The ‘apprenticeship’ in most cases was of three years duration, specialised trade training culminated in the passing of City and Guilds and other specialised trade-associated examinations, alongside training in military skills and education to include General Certificate of Education ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels.

The School was renamed the Army Apprentice College, Harrogate in 1966; by this time the only corps training its ‘apprentices’ at Harrogate was the Royal Corps of Signals. To coincide with its change of name, the College badge was also changed to that of the Royal Corps of Signals. The final graduation parade at the College took place in August 1996.

In addition to its apprentice school, the Army also recruited ‘boys’, officially referred to as Junior Leaders – young men aged between 15 and 17½ years of age. While these ‘boys’ received full-time military training, the specialist skills relating to trade training they received was very basic. Unlike an ‘apprentice’ who spent three years, unless he was ‘back-squadded’ through illness or lack of progress before transferring, a boy entrant on reaching the age of 17½ years was automatically transferred to ‘man-service’.

Having passed the apprentice written entrance exams and through a medical examination board been declared fit to serve in Her Majesty’s Forces, I received instructions that I was to report to a central recruiting centre by 0900 hours on 8 February 1955, for induction into the Army, prior to travelling to the AAS in North Yorkshire.

At this time my father was a serving officer stationed at the War Office – he commuted daily by car from our family home in Chingford, Essex, to his office in Whitehall. Knowing that I would need assistance with travelling arrangements, I made the grave mistake of assuming he would take me with him at least as far as Whitehall, although secretly wishing he might drop me off at the door of the recruiting centre; after all I was only fifteen years of age and leaving home for the first time. No such luck, he informed me the evening prior to my enlistment that he would give me an early call the following morning to ensure I left in good time to catch a bus. With a small suitcase containing the minimum of personal items – I was instructed to take only items for washing, shaving and cleaning my military clothing and equipment, all clothing and other items of a personal nature would be issued on arrival – I left my parents home at the crack of dawn on a very cold and wet Tuesday morning in February to catch a Green Line bus that would take me to the Army Recruiting Office, Great Scotland Yard, where, after swearing allegiance to the Queen and receiving the Queen’s Shilling, I was given a rail warrant to take me from King’s Cross to Harrogate. The journey north was reminiscent of several years previously, when my older brother and I, each carrying gas masks and small cases containing most of our personal belongings, were evacuated during the Blitz to stay for several months with a family in Thornaby-on-Tees.

On arrival at Harrogate railway station, I along with other potential ‘apprentices’, some of whom had been waiting several hours, was met by the Duty Corporal. He checked our details against his records, confirmed no other trains were expected within the next couple of hours, then escorted us outside where our onward transport was waiting. In the pouring rain and strong winds, the small group of us were taken in an open 3-ton truck without seating to Uniacke Barracks, Penny Pot Lane, Harrogate, which was to be my home and place of learning for the next three years.

Some events and occasions, for better or worse, will always remain in people’s memories and my arrival at Uniacke Barracks is one such memory. Debussing at the Apprentice School, all passengers were directed to a single-storey wooden structure known as a Spider. The Spiders – single storey construction, built from wood larch lap style panels under a gable roof, externally coated with dark brown creosote for protection against the harsh weather of the North Yorkshire Moors – both at Uniacke and across the road at Hildebrand Barracks (permanent staff accommodation) – were originally erected prior to the Second World War as temporary barrack accommodation for soldiers, with a change of use to a US field hospital during the war years.

The barracks consisted of six or eight large rooms constructed in a three or four, left and right ‘herringbone’ formation, with a very large central area and covered corridors linking the middle to the ‘legs’ of the Spider. The centre, the body of the spider, housed the ablutions, toilets, baths (no shower facilities), wash hand basins, ‘Blanco rooms’ and drying rooms, while the ‘herring bones’ or legs, were large dormitory rooms to accommodate up to eighteen occupants, nine on each side of the room. Each one of the eighteen bed spaces was furnished with a cast-iron framed bed, a single horse-hair mattress about six inches deep placed over a wire and metal support, a wooden wardrobe and a bedside cabinet.

Windows on both sides of the room were dressed with curtains in a plain khaki colour; we later discovered these curtains were for cosmetic purposes only and were never pulled for privacy. Occupants that claimed a bed space below a window were later to regret their choice because on kit inspection parades, if an individual’s kit was not up to standard, it was easy for the inspecting officer to jettison the offending items – sometimes one’s entire issue of military clothing and equipment – through an open window irrespective of the weather, whereas those not in close proximity to a window only had to contend with retrieving their kit from the floor around the bed.

The aisles were bare planks of wood and they were polished with brown wax polish – to maintain its shine, the floor was polished with brushes from boot cleaning kit for twenty minutes each morning by the room’s occupants. The planks of wood to the left and right of centre were coloured black. I soon discovered that the colour was obtained by mixing brown wax polish with Zeebo Black Polish (normally used to polish black cast-iron fire grates); Zeebo Polish contained lead and after walking barefoot on the floor for several months we wondered why we had ‘foot rot’. The floors of the surrounding corridors required regular scrubbing with soap and hot water. A punishment regular dispensed by the permanent staff (a regular soldier or National Serviceman as opposed to ‘boy’) was to scrub these corridors using only a toothbrush (personal property of the offender), soap and water.

No personal possession was allowed to be openly displayed and absolutely nothing was to be stuck, pinned or stapled to the walls; all notices and orders were placed in a display cabinet in the adjoining corridors. Only personal family photographs were allowed to be affixed to the inside of personal lockers. The one exception to these rules was a week before breaking up for Christmas leave, and festive decorations were permitted – there were prizes for the best decorated barrack rooms.

I previously mentioned that the barracks was once used as a US field hospital. This did not go unnoticed amongst the apprentices and this period of the camp’s history was regularly the subject of many a yarn concerning the patients and staff, all based on rumour and with the inclusion and embellishment of gory details. One such story involved a US pilot who, having been shot down by enemy aircraft, was brought to Uniacke Barracks as a patient and accommodated in the same Spider as myself and other members of my term. Unfortunately, very soon after being admitted one of his legs was amputated and failing to make a full recovery he eventually died in the hospital. His legacy to the apprentices that occupied his ward was the ‘Ghost of Stumpy’. Imagine some four or five years after his death, six dormitories, each with eighteen impressionable fifteen-year-olds with vivid imaginations, believing they had heard, seen or even spoken to ‘Stumpy’. After rumours of such encounters it was not surprising that at night not many of

Reviews for The Silent Listener

[jespercfs2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It may not be a 'hype' subject but for me this book was a small 'eye opener' of sorts. It's not only 'spooks' and the like who collects information, naturally. Intelligence is also collected in the battlefield by specialized units via SigInt and other sources. And is undoubtedly very important to any battlefield commander. And as I am currently in a 'Read about the Falkland War' mode this book fell in well.

But something in the narrative somehow irks me. The author leaves the impression of being a bit stiff and priggish in a war of flexibility, can-do attitudes and makeshift solutions. And a bit righteous in some of the tales he relates. But that may just be me.

Bottom line: Two stars is what this book gets from me

[davidmullen_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Very brief. The author gives a summary of his career in the British army as a signaller which lead into electronic warfare and the intelligence corp. At the time of the Falklands war he was in command of a small troop, less than 10, who were available to be sent anywhere to intercept and possibly harass enemy radio signals. Consequently he sailed aboard HMS Intrepid and ran an interception operation from there. He does not go in to great detail. However he does mention intercepting the Argentine signals from the raid on Pebble Island. He gave a briefing to Colonel Jones prior to the attack on Goose Green and does emphasize that he followed the battle from the Argentine signals and the British HQ were told how large the Argentinian reinforcements were. He also intercepted Argentinian plans for a counter attack from West Falkland against San Carlos planned for the day after what turned out to be the Argentine surrender. Major Thorp thought that it would have given the British forces a lot of trouble.