[GreenKeys] Interesting images and reading! KL-7

[Steve Garrison]

Trained on these machines in the AF in 1966 and actually worked on them at a duty station in Okinawa during 1968 and 1969 for the AF Security Service.  Very interesting piece of equipment.

 

Steve G./N4TTY

 

From: greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:greenkeys-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Bill
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2012 3:42 PM
To: Christian Gauger-Cosgrove
Cc: Robert Laag; greenkeys at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] Fwd: Re: Interesting images and reading!

 

Well, guess I was right the first time. It was a KL-47. Not sure where I got the "B" tho. The memory gets a little fuzzy after awhile.
Bill Cain

On 1/7/2012 8:36 PM, Christian Gauger-Cosgrove wrote: 

Going on the information of Dirk Rijmenants and other locations on "the intertubes", the KL-47 was the name for a KL-7 with attached five-level reader/punch. The straight-up KL-7 did print to tape though.

Speaking of Dirk Rijmenants and his page, you can find it here: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/ Where you can also find a nice simulator of the KL-7, as well as pages on aforementioned numbers stations, OTP, a simulator of the German Enigma, the US M-209, the Hagelin CX-52, and more.

Christian




On 7 January 2012 22:31, Bill <bill at blcain.com> wrote:

Some correction here....I guess it was called a KL-7 - not 47. It did not punch the tape but printed on it. But I still seem to remember it punching tape so you could xmit it and for some reason I recall a tape reader also. It would read the tape and print out the results. 
It was "fun" copying those code groups over CW!

Bill 



On 1/7/2012 6:54 PM, Bill wrote: 

In the Navy, we used a KLB-47 crypto machine to produce this code and to decypher them. It used rotating drums that were set up with the code for the message. Can't remember if it was using the date-time-group or the first line of the message or both. (been a looooong time!) I remember that it took some time to type in the 5 letter code groups...you had to be real accurate...the 47 would then punch a tape and you would have to run it off on an ASR to get a copy. Then you had to type it onto a message form for distro. What a pain! If you typed the groups in wrong...guess what?...had to type them in again. Sometimes it was very easy to get lost as to where you were in the message. One knock on the crypto room door and you almost always had to start over. What a blessing when we switched over to covered broadcast. No more 47's.

Bill Cain

On 1/7/2012 6:26 PM, DR HOUSE wrote: 

Hi Bob, 

 

Five letter code groups were used by just about everyone.  One reason was they got the maximum amount of information across public telegraph networks at the lowest possible cost.  The second reason was that the code groups were meaningless unless you had a current decode table.

Industry used this as well as the military.  One of the most successful espionage efforts in history was the long standing VENONA operation the Soviet Union used from the 30s to the 70s for their spies to send secret messages to Moscow.  A British intelligence officer and an American mathematician who could think in Russian figured it out or they might still be using it today.  If you get a chance to see SECRETS, LIES, AND ATOMIC SPIES on PBS NOVA watch it.  Our museum helped produce the segment.  If you watch closely you can see my fingers on a M14 strip printer and our executive director's stomach next to an IBM card sorter.  I have a first generation VHS tape sent to me by the director that I need to convert to DVD before the tape turns to noise.  There is also a good book The VENONA PAPERS published by REGNERY

 

Best,

Don

aka TTY MAN

 

 

On 7 Jan 2012, at 7:32 PM, Robert Laag wrote:

 

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