# Did The germans Tap TransAtlantic Phone Cables in WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 20, 2003, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099 "2003-12-20T02:03:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/21 "2011-06-02T23:10:58Z")
Apologies, **wevets**. I mis-read a post further back and thought it said the cable ran through Iceland, rather than to Ireland, which would have meant that Allied shipping would have to be skirting along the norther boundaries of the Atlantic in order to be near the cables. And while I had no idea where the cable was laid, I knew the ships didn’t do that. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/22 "2011-06-02T23:21:07Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > The Great Circle Routes are pretty wide. Say you sail one convoy 50 miles north or south of the most recent one - you’re still on the same path, and on a world map it’d be hard to tell the difference. But 50 miles away from the nearest U-boat lookouts/radar is pretty far for World War II technology. I doubt a U-boat could have detected a ship 50 miles away. > > The important question is what level of geographic “neighbor” did Col. Sarnoff use to determine if sinkings were “too” close to the trans-Atlantic cable to be coincidence. Convoy detection is one of the most important reasons the Germans began using Wolf Pack tactics. They strung them out in a line to maximize the chances of finding the convoys, and the first sub to make contact would radio the location to back to fleet headquarters and other subs in the area. When the allies later got better radio detection equipment called “huff duff” these location signals often pointed the escort ships straight toward the transmitting subs ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/23 "2011-06-02T23:24:53Z")
Re Sarnoff, I’m gonna take a WAG and say he had no evidence at all, but if Roosevelt and the high command believed the cable was compromised, they would pour a whole lot more money into radio gear – which was his specialty. I don’t think we’ve seen any evidence yet in this thread that it the cable was actually compromised, just that there was fear that it could be. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2011, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/24 "2011-06-02T23:26:21Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > I would certainly believe that Churchill & Roosevelt would have been speaking in English. > > Hitler was a rather uneducated former housepainter. I’ve never heard that he could speak English. So I rather doubt that this is true. > > Also, the 1940’s transatlantic cable went from Newfoundland in Canada to Ireland. Where exactly was Hitler supposed to have tapped into this cable? Germany was a few hundred miles north & east of this. Hitler was also an art painter and reasonably good at landscapes and buildings. Although he did bizarre things like have the sun come in at different lighting angles. He is not considered talented. Churchill also liked art painting. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/25 "2011-06-03T02:00:52Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > Convoy detection is one of the most important reasons the Germans began using Wolf Pack tactics. They strung them out in a line to maximize the chances of finding the convoys, and the first sub to make contact would radio the location to back to fleet headquarters and other subs in the area. > > When the allies later got better radio detection equipment called “huff duff” these location signals often pointed the escort ships straight toward the transmitting subs That’s a great point. One of the fascinating things to me is the use of mathematics in Operations Research to determine best practices for ASW search, optimal zig-zagging and other elements of antisubmarine warfare. There’s a lot of detail that I’m sure we miss from our perspective 70 years down the road. No sweat on the Ice/Ireland thing. I get the miscommunication now. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2011, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/26 "2011-06-03T02:33:56Z")
> [@focusoninfinity](#): > > At the beginning of WWII, my grandfather, Edward Yonge Wootten, of Wilmington, N.C., said he could sit on the Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Yatch Club porch and often see more than one US coast-wise transport burning on the horizon at night. This before coast-wise convoys, and many overhead aloft, aircraft anti-sub spotters. This part is true, and widely-reported. As **Boyo Jim** says, the “second Happy Time” was a period between the US entry into the war and the organization of effective anti-sub measures along the East coast. At first, there weren’t even blackout orders ans U-boats could see coastal shipping silhouetted against city lights. > [@focusoninfinity](#): > > I as always a skeptic that Esso (Exxon) owned refiners in the Caribbean provide fuel to Nazi submarines off the Carolina coast sinking Esso tankers; but I once read a book detailing such was so. What corporations will do for the Yankee dollar and/or German coin! This part is pure fabrication. There were refineries in the Dutch East Indies (Aruba and Curaçao) but those islands were occupied by the United States during the duration of the war. There’s even a statue in one of the public squares of Aruba’s capital, Oranjestad, honoring American troops stationed there. These oil supplies [were the target of German U-boats](http://www.uboat.net/maps/caribbean.htm), not resources for them. ---
**Author:** ![focusoninfinity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d26b3c/32.png) [@focusoninfinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/focusoninfinity)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/27 "2011-06-04T00:05:51Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > Does he discuss the use of other factors in the book or is that it? On that limited subject, that’s it; but it is a quality book about a quality man and has other WWII science in it. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/28 "2011-06-04T00:27:47Z")
> [@paperbackwriter](#): > > This part is pure fabrication. There were refineries in the Dutch East Indies (Aruba and Curaçao) but those islands were occupied by the United States during the duration of the war. The refineries in the Dutch East Indies were more likely occupied by the Japanese… ---
**Author:** ![paperbackwriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@paperbackwriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/paperbackwriter)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/29 "2011-06-04T00:30:33Z")
D’oh! I of course meant Netherlands Antilles (aka Dutch _West_ Indies). Thanks for the catch. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/30 "2011-06-04T01:11:32Z")
> [@alexphobos](#): > > Short answer:no > At that time, the only transatlantic cables were for telegraph; telephone calls were only possible by radio. From Arthur C Clarke’s “How The World Was One”, a history of global communications published in 1992: I’m finding several cites confirming this. Transatlantic cable did not allow telephone conversation during WWII. [Wiki says 1956](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_telecommunications_cable). [This telecomm history group says the same](http://strowger-net.telefoonmuseum.com/tel_hist_tat1.html). It notes there were 36 circuits, 30 to the US and 6 to Canada. [Here is a very suspicious cite](http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/fdr_churchill.html) claiming that the Germans were able to intercept and decode radio telephone conversations between Roosevelt and Churchill. Why suspicious, you ask? Because the transcript included has Churchill providing advance warning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. [And here is another story](http://www.americanheritage.com/content/churchill-roosevelt-forgeries), which seems more legit to me, confirming that at times the Germans did indeed intercept such conversations, but the pre-Pearl Harbor conversation is fabricated. Both quite interesting. ---
**Author:** ![focusoninfinity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d26b3c/32.png) [@focusoninfinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/focusoninfinity)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/31 "2011-06-04T11:12:27Z")
I’d heard that Esso had supplied German subs, and that was a fiction. I could not believe a corporation would help sink it’s own ships. But then I read a paperback book on it and it seemed real to me. Are the galvanic (vs. fiber-optic) cables still in use? Are both galvanic and fiber-optic one-way? Does this mean each cable must be dedicated to one direction, or all traffic one-way must stop, to transmit in reverse? Do shielded underseas cables have to be switched in-parallel over the distance like land pole cables were/are? to lessen “cross-talk” (my b1914 dad was a linesman before Bell Labs). Dad was on a team that designed the (forgot name) circuit in phone handsets, that tapped of 10%-20% of what one spoke into his mouthpiece and fed it back into his own ear. Dad said this was for phone conversation psychological reasons; it helped speakers unconsciously time their interruptions with each other better. In WWII Manhattan, NYC, he worked in the pre-war TV lab, on battleship radar magnetron tubes (I’m not a technical person), tasked with keeping the hot lit filaments from breaking when the big guns fired. He wanted a photo of the breaking-up. Conventional high speed leaf-shutter cameras could not capture it, so he got Doc Edgerton of MIT to use his. I could not grasp dad’s description of Edgerton’s camera. How would I design a super high-speed film camera? In a darkroom closet with a light-hole or lens, I’d have two big wheels geared together for identical speed sync. The one behind the lens would have a series of flat mirrors on the wheel’s edge, reflecting image flashes onto the rim of the other spinning wheel with un-exposed film on it’s edge. The bigger diameter, the faster the spinning edge, the more film needed. Would this work? ---
**Author:** ![focusoninfinity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d26b3c/32.png) [@focusoninfinity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/focusoninfinity)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/32 "2011-06-04T11:29:17Z")
I believe it was Boyo Jim that had the link to Wiki that mentioned intentional misinformation. Did you know that the USIA had a Soviet Disinformation Dept.? My dear late friend and distant kinsman, Dewitt Samuel “Peter Rabbit” Copp, was an USIA Soviet disinformation investigator. “Cousin Pete” wrote a “Few Great Captains” and “Forged in Fire” amongst his tomes, and lessor known small books, one of which I especially liked was about the death of Newcome Mott? in the Soviet Union. I did the paperwork for the Medal of Honor tombstone of our kinsmen, Capt. Charles Dearborn Copp, and alas, misspelled his middle name. My own ancestor was also killed at Fredericksburg leading in-reserve, surprised company K, 57th N.C. Troops, in a counter-charge down Deep Run Creek. Copp fell before Maye’s Heights worst hand-to-hand combat; my Capt. Alfred Alexander Miller fell in the second worst hand-to-hand combat where the creek passes under the F&PRR tracks at the end of a Shannon airport runway. Two brave men. Capt. Miller is buried at Bethel Lutheran, Franklin, Rowan Co., N.C. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/33 "2011-06-04T17:29:50Z")
> [@focusoninfinity](#): > > On that limited subject, that’s it; but it is a quality book about a quality man and has other WWII science in it. I’m not suggesting the **book** is wrong; I’m suggesting that **Col. Sarnoff** offered particularly poor evidence in favor of his thought. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2011, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/34 "2011-06-04T20:23:51Z")
> [@focusoninfinity](#): > > I’d heard that Esso had supplied German subs, and that was a fiction. I could not believe a corporation would help sink it’s own ships. But then I read a paperback book on it and it seemed real to me. > > Are the galvanic (vs. fiber-optic) cables still in use? Are both galvanic and fiber-optic one-way? Does this mean each cable must be dedicated to one direction, or all traffic one-way must stop, to transmit in reverse? Do shielded underseas cables have to be switched in-parallel over the distance like land pole cables were/are? to lessen “cross-talk” (my b1914 dad was a linesman before Bell Labs). Dad was on a team that designed the (forgot name) circuit in phone handsets, that tapped of 10%-20% of what one spoke into his mouthpiece and fed it back into his own ear. Dad said this was for phone conversation psychological reasons; it helped speakers unconsciously time their interruptions with each other better. > > In WWII Manhattan, NYC, he worked in the pre-war TV lab, on battleship radar magnetron tubes (I’m not a technical person), tasked with keeping the hot lit filaments from breaking when the big guns fired. He wanted a photo of the breaking-up. Conventional high speed leaf-shutter cameras could not capture it, so he got Doc Edgerton of MIT to use his. I could not grasp dad’s description of Edgerton’s camera. How would I design a super high-speed film camera? In a darkroom closet with a light-hole or lens, I’d have two big wheels geared together for identical speed sync. The one behind the lens would have a series of flat mirrors on the wheel’s edge, reflecting image flashes onto the rim of the other spinning wheel with un-exposed film on it’s edge. The bigger diameter, the faster the spinning edge, the more film needed. Would this work? I interviewed for position involving a fiber-optic link station; the world map I saw suggested that virtually all of the links are now fiber. But I could be wrong. My dad worked the Atomic Energy Commission back in the early 50’s (now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission). The description you provided matches what my Dad told me 20 years ago. In this case it was ultra-high speed recordings of nuclear explosions. ---
**Author:** ![Retief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Retief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Retief)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/35 "2011-06-05T03:38:37Z")
As a retired 50 year worker on the technical side of the telegraph biz, I can assure that except for the very earliest submarine cables, they were able to send/receive both directions simultaneously. On the early single core submarine cables an electronic circuit called a bridge is used at each end together with balancing circuits to allow this to happen. Early cables were one single channel, later electro-mechanical devices were designed to allow interleaving of 3 or 4 channels on to the cable. These were called time-division multiplex and were bloody hell to keep in sync, especially in the caribbean where I worked (and still live). When co-axial cables were laid, the old non-loaded cables were very quickly abandoned. The co-axial cables had a much much greater bandwidth and allowed many simultaneous telephone conversations at the same time. The catch was that the co-axial cables need to be loaded, with amplifiers/repeaters every so many kilometers. the first type of undersea cables worked ( in our station ) from 1888 to 1972 or 84 years The co-axial cable lasted about 30 - 35 years (not sure of the actual dates as was operated by our competitors, and we leased circuits on it) before it was replaced by a fiber optic submarine cable In both cases the existing cables were working when they were abandoned and almost all abandoned submarine cables are still lying on the ocean floor. Retief ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/36 "2011-06-05T04:47:38Z")
> [@Retief](#): > > In both cases the existing cables were working when they were abandoned and almost allabandoned submarine cables are still lying on the ocean floor. That’s a fair amount of copper laying there. Who owns it? Given the current high price of copper, would it be worth it for someone to pull those cables up for the copper? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/37 "2011-06-05T04:57:39Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > That’s a fair amount of copper laying there. Who owns it? Given the current high price of copper, would it be worth it for someone to pull those cables up for the copper? I can’t imagine the amount of copper would be worth the charter fee of a ship large and specialized enough to go haul it up, spending possibly weeks at sea doing so. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/38 "2011-06-05T05:16:37Z")
> [@Retief](#): > > On the early single core submarine cables an electronic circuit called a bridge is used at each end together with balancing circuits to allow this to happen. > > the first type of undersea cables worked ( in our station ) from 1888 to 1972 or 84 years > Retief I’ve a Masters Degree in Instrumentation and Electronics, but could you describe a bridge? 84 Years is outstanding! ---
**Author:** ![abel29a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@abel29a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abel29a)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/39 "2011-06-05T16:49:02Z")
> [@wevets](#): > > The Great Circle Routes are pretty wide. Say you sail one convoy 50 miles north or south of the most recent one - you’re still on the same path, and on a world map it’d be hard to tell the difference. But 50 miles away from the nearest U-boat lookouts/radar is pretty far for World War II technology. I doubt a U-boat could have detected a ship 50 miles away. In optimum listening conditions, a uboat could generally detect a convoy at a range of around 50km, via the hydrophone. However, to acieve this, they would have to make frequent dives, which slowed them down. However, from 1943 onwards, they started getting radar warning receivers, which allowed them to detect escort ship radars at quite long range even when surfaced. However, this would require that the escorts actually ran their radars. Altough uboats themselves did get radar installed later in the war, these were short range affairs, and rarely used - simply because it gave away the uboats position. They were prey, by then, not hunters. ---
**Author:** ![wevets](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9a140/32.png) [@wevets](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wevets)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2011, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099/40 "2011-06-05T23:27:47Z")
> [@abel29a](#): > > In optimum listening conditions, a uboat could generally detect a convoy at a range of around 50km, via the hydrophone. However, to acieve this, they would have to make frequent dives, which slowed them down. So for 50 km = 50 km \* 0.6 mi/km = **30 miles**? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-germans-tap-transatlantic-phone-cables-in-wwii/220099.md?page=3)