41 Heavy Wireless Station, Hay, New South Wales, during WW2

So wrote Australian poet A. B. Paterson, on the fate of some shearers forced to spend time in Booligal, near Hay in Western New South Wales.

The highly-trained under 19 SigOps who staffed the Hay outpost of 41 Heavy Wireless Station in 1943 worked shifts to maintain a 24 hour WT link with 12 L of C Signals at Boronia Park near Ryde in Sydney, and some other stations, and in our off-duty hours we eyed off 3,000 of the enemy some 100 yards away - Italian and German POWs behind barbed wire in Camps 7 and 8 of the Hay Prisoner of War Camp.

We lived and worked in two fibro-walled, iron-roofed huts, alongside the Camp Administration and barracks - air conditioned if you left the doors open but with the frequent dust storms, not always practical. The larger hut accommodated six signallers and a Corporal technician, the smaller housed our AWA Wireless Set 133 (WS133), and an office for our Cipher Sergeant.

WS133 was first developed in 1941, and initially reserved for Land Headquarters, providing high-powered links with capital cities and long distance communication overseas. However, by mid 1942 some WS133 were finding their way to special units, for example, 33 Aust Wireless Task - Independent Sigs, one of four similar units posted to New Guinea for special tasks.

The WS133's Master Oscillator could be tuned to any frequency in the 1.5 to 12 MHz band, or alternatively five crystal frequencies could be selected. The crystal oscillator, master oscillator and buffer stage and driver were all 807 valves, and the power amplifier was a push-pull stage using a pair of 813 valves.

For reception, we were equipped with two Kingsley AR7 receivers, with a large selection of plug-in boxes that covered a range of frequencies. A stand-by generator and a fine selection of outside aerials completed the picture.

It was pretty fancy equipment for POW Camp communications: a present-day ham operator who also used WS133 during the war said 'with 450 Watt output and the right aerials you could talk to the world - Hay to Sydney would be chickenfeed!' Bill Paul - more of him later - told me that he had worked Morotai Island (above the Equator) to LHQ Melbourne on WS133 in the closing stages of the war.

A small amount of traffic was lodged with our Cipher Sergeant by POW Admin - bed-states, supplies, maintenance, and so on. No where near enough to account for the volume of five-figure cipher passed to us by the Cipher Sergeant during the day, or received in a steady stream from other stations on the network. This traffic carried various priorities and addresses, but interestingly all outgoing traffic was required to be sent as near as possible to a time marked on the top of the message, irrespective of the priority. Before finishing for the day, Cipher would leave a batch of traffic for the night shift and dog watch operators, again timed to be sent.

So what were we doing with this sort of equipment outside a POW Camp in the middle of New South Wales, with not another Army unit for hundreds of miles, other than the Garrison Battalion guarding the POWs? It was a question that sometimes crossed our minds and was usually dismissed as 'just another whim of the Army Brass, and not ours to reason why.'

In November, 1991, I spent a few days in Hay - the first time since 1943-44 - and saw the grounds where we used to be, now back to dry grass land and only marked by a plaque that recorded it as a POW site, and a memory to the 'Dunera Boys'. Then I met Mr M A Beckwith of the Hay Historical Society, who had recently published a book about the Camp and its occupants during 1940 - 1947. He said he'd never been aware of an Army wireless station at Hay POW Camp, so I made up my mind to dig into the past.

Returning home, I read an item in a Melbourne paper about the career of Capt T E Nave, RAN (Retired), acknowledged as a leader in the field of signals intelligence. I wrote to him early in 1992, telling him about our work at Hay and asking if he had any idea why we were there. He responded quickly:

'I cannot help as I was involved with interception, and this seems more like a FELO operation, which was concerned with wireless deception'.

I'd never heard of FELO, (learnt later that FELO stood for Far Eastern Liaison Office, a section of the Allied Intelligence Bureau) and gave me the address of 3rd Military District, Melbourne to pursue the matter further. From there my letter reached Lt Col J D Shaw, Directorate of Signals at Watsonia, who supplied references to Lt Col (RL) Keith Munro, Curator of the RAC of Signals Museum, Watsonia, and Brig (RL) Keith Colwill, President of RAC of Signals Association. These gentlemen led to a widening of my contacts, and to my becoming a member of the Association, and receiving Certa Cito.

Lt Col Shaw kept in touch with me and in his own browsing over 2nd Army War Diaries (1943), noted that the Cipher Section of 12 L of C Signals had been kept 'flat out creating dummy and special traffic as well as doing their normal cipher work.'

I continued to maintain contact with Eric Nave, in the course of which I learnt something of his amazing career. Born in South Australia in 1899, he had a gift for languages and a passion for secrecy. He came into codebreaking and interception by accident, as a R.A.N. midshipman in the early 1920's. It was suggested he should learn a foreign language and when he learnt that for French and German he would receive an extra sixpence a day, whereas for Japanese he would receive five shillings a day, he told me there was no question!

He did a two year term in Japan after an initial course with Professor James Murdoch at Sydney University. In Japan, he wisely cut himself off from European contact, immersing himself in the life of Shizuoka in winter and Hakone in summer. Soon fluent in colloquial Japanese, he graduated in a final exam with a score of 910 out of a possible 1000.

Then he discovered KataKana, the Japanese Morse code and mastered that, following that with a term at the Government Code and Cipher School in England. Here, with some of those who would later be at the top at Bletchley Park, he helped to break Japanese naval codes. The Pacific War saw him back in Australia as head of Naval Signal Intelligence Service, subsequently liasing with the American Fleet Radio Melbourne (FRUMEL) on interception and decryption. He played a large part in Central Bureau, the group coordinating all wireless interception and decryption in South West Pacific Area. Post-war he was liaison officer - Navy - with ASIO. Commander Nave died in June, 1993, his memoirs still unpublished as a result of a security ban.

The various enquiries I was making in Signal circles were interesting but not conclusive. The first real break came from an ASIO contact of Eric Nave's, who assured me that if I spent some time in Canberra I could find a lot of information about 12 L of C, and more particularly, about FELO, in the Australian Archives and Australian War Memorial records.

The locations and types of activities of Signals wireless units during the Second World War were wide and varied. They ranged from the Heavy Wireless units in capital cities, working on world-wide links, to Corps and Divisional units and special units like Z Special and Intercepts. Most wireless units, once formed, continued for the rest of the war, with their purpose and history well recorded. Some, though, only existed for a short while. Their purpose is often obscure and researching at the Australian War Memorial and Australian Archives often leads to dead-ends; Unit War Diaries and Intelligence Summary Forms C2118, if retained, tell very little and you just have to keep digging.

The Hay outpost of 41 Heavy Wireless Unit was a tantalising and difficult unit to track. It had its origin in early-1942, although its main activity was carried out from 25th May 1943 until early-June 1944. Some of the files I needed are still marked 'Closed', or if 'Open', have many sections blacked out, but there is sufficient material to explain why such sophisticated equipment was operating in such an odd location.

Hay WT Unit owed its origin to a decision that the POW camp should have wireless communication as well as phone links. This would provide a backup in case the land lines were ever cut (perhaps during an escape) and also allow faster access to search support from the RAAF training base at Narrandera, 170 Km east. These air searches were usually carried out in Tiger Moths and by the time the phone system called them up they had a large area to cover.

NSW L of C Sigs - CO Maj Barlow and Adjutant Capt Lutton in early-1942 - dispatched SigOps Bill Paul and K C Clarke from Sydney to set up a WS109 at the Camp. Bill wrote to me recently.

Bill eventually went back to Sydney, then on to Darwin to establish a mobile WS133 link for Z Special Units carrying out 'Operation Hawk' and other SRD activities. He also adapted a spare WS133 for use by the Flying Doctor Service in Darwin, after their radio was destroyed during one of the Japanese bombing raids. As mentioned earlier, he was later in Morotai and his last use of the 'old faithful beast' WS133 was to work directly to the 2nd Japanese Army in the Halmaheras on surrender directions and war crimes investigations.

A Directive(2) was issued on that date, outlining the composition of AIB. Briefly -

Section 'D' - Military Propaganda Section, under its Chief of Section: Cdr J C R Proud, RANVR deserves a book in its own right, but a short outline of its activities is an essential part of the Hay story. Shortly after its formation, General Blamey, C in C Australian Military Forces, saw the potential of Section 'D' and arranged for it to be placed under his direct control, and gave Proud full support.

John Charles Rookwood Proud was born in 1907 in Melbourne and educated at University High, Trinity College and Melbourne University. In 1930 - 1931 he served in the RAF in England and Australia, then as Secretary of the Australian Institute of Internal Affairs for four years. From 1937 to 1939 he was Controller of ABC Talks and Broadcasts, an experience that would later serve him in good stead in his FELO post. At the start of the Second World War he joined the RANVR, and served in a number of posts, including Singapore. Some of his correspondence to the Director, Naval Intelligence at that time shows he had a very low opinion of British staff and their appreciation of what could happen to Far East bases - 'they only work 9 till 5 and no weekends', he wrote, after a difficult meeting in which he had tried to convince them of the need to set up a system of support by local inhabitants. (5)

When Proud was in Singapore he had seen the need to establish subversive elements behind enemy lines in the event of war reaching the Far East, and to convey disinformation to the enemy, in the same way that Special Operation Executive (SOE) Europe worked. Unfortunately the war moved too fast and there was no time to set up any organisation before Singapore fell, but once back in Australia he began to implement his ideas.

Proud's first move was to mask Section 'D's true activities by giving it the misleading name of 'Far Eastern Liaison Office', shortened to FELO. His section was charged with all combat propaganda efforts and was understood to include all propaganda directed against the enemy forces in the field, or to native populations within the combat zone, or zones likely to become theatres of operations. The main objectives of FELO were:

FELO achieved its first objective by Front Line Broadcasting Units (FLBU) using loudspeakers to reach Japanese positions, alternatively firing special 25-pounder shells containing propaganda leaflet or using RAAF aircraft to drop leaflets behind enemy lines. (7&8)

firstly, by Mobile Propaganda Units (MPU) which visited native villages in regained territory. Their function was to restore the confidence of the local population and to encourage them to deny food and labour to scattered Japanese forces. In a number of cases, selected natives were brought back to Australia by Catalina aircraft and shown the tanks, artillery and aircraft being used, and the devastation such equipment could cause. (9)

Secondly, by much more dangerous means - inserting Field Parties behind enemy lines.

Fourteen such parties, some only two personnel while others included ten or more native constables, were mounted between 26 March 1943 and 15 August 1945, to influence the natives in enemy-controlled territory, and to gain intelligence. The military component of these parties was a mix of Army, Navy and Air Force members of FELO and sometimes included Signallers.

'B' Party was one such operation. Lt. Stanley (RANVR) was Oi/c with Lt. Bob Cole AIF), Signallers S/Sgt R D Milne and Sgt R I (Ian) Caporn, and Pvt. J. Conboy. They were inserted and withdrawn near Yellow River Junction, and operated from 4 July 1943 to 18 December 1943 in the Sepik Valley. (10) The party's health suffered badly and Sgt.Caporn was brought back to Melbourne to recover from malaria and scrub typhus, then for some time served at FELO's Melbourne base at 'Goodrest', 104 Toorak Road, before moving to FELO's Brisbane bases at 'Kirkston', Rupert Street, Windsor and at Camp Tasman, Indooroopilly.

I have left FELO's last objective - 'to mislead the enemy regarding our military intentions' - till last, as this has a direct bearing on the 'WHY' of Hay Station. It was achieved under the guidance of Lt McGuire.

Dominic Paul McGuire was born in Adelaide in 1903, and educated at Christian Brothers College, Adelaide and University of Adelaide. Before joining the RANVR in 1939 he had been a lecturer in History at his old University, and the writer of many books, including mystery stories (two of which were 'The Two Men' in 1932 and 'Cry aloud for murder' in 1935). McGuire brought to FELO all of his devious thinking and plotting skills, and as well as being a great administrator he was able to insulate Proud from many political or inter-service problems. He was also the person best placed to plan the ways to mislead the enemy regarding our military intentions, and FELO files in late-1942 and early-1943 contain many references to stepping up this part of their objectives.

It was at this time that the Government decided that under-19 troops should not be sent to war zones and drafts of trained signallers from Bonegilla were posted as 'under-19 supernumeraries' to various base units, especially in NSW. McGuire saw the possibilities of using a resource that would not affect operational units and provide a worthwhile use for these skilled operators. A plan was proposed to create a 24-hour radio network based on Sydney, mixing volumes of dummy traffic with deception traffic relating to training and movement of non-existent 2nd Aust Army units. The proposal required that transmissions be of sufficient strength to be intercepted by Japanese bases in New Guinea and New Britain.

On 1 August 1942 Allied Land Forces in S.W.Pacific Area, over the signature of The Director, Signals Directorate (Radio), issued SM14374 'Most Secret - Dummy Cipher Traffic Instructions'. This instruction set out the methods of creating dummy traffic without compromising our own high-grade ciphers, and how to mix it with real traffic, so as to maintain constant levels of radio activity. (11) Such a procedure meant that as military activity increased for operations, the dummy traffic was reduced, but the overall level stayed the same and made it difficult for the enemy to detect a forthcoming operation.

It seems that McGuire expanded on this procedure, recommending a plan that would mix dummy (nonsense cipher) with apparent real (but in fact, deception) messages, creating a picture of Australian army units training in New South Wales and building up our forces; fictitious units of an expanding 2nd Aust Army structure.

This type of deception was also used by the Allied forces in Africa (TORCHLITE) and for the Normandy landings (BODYGUARD, FORTITUDE SOUTH and FORTITUDE NORTH) and also prior to the Battle of Midway, when a US seaplane tender and an light cruiser roamed around the Coral Sea, imitating a large US carrier force and leading the Japanese, far to the north, into thinking they would have little opposition at Midway.

SM14374 was later followed by a letter to Controller, AIB from Director, SRD, which in para 1 said:

Indications from research are that FELO, under McGuire's guidance, provided the overall plan and Chief Signals Officer and "G" staff carried out the implementation.

NSW L of C War Diaries (at War Memorial, Canberra) (13) and ARO's Part II (searched at the History Research Section of Central Army Records, Melbourne) record a number of items at this time:

28 December 1942, a second 100 watt rack-mounted transmitter has been installed at Boronia to act as control for the Tamworth/Hay group.

8 March 1943, W/T links from Boronia to Bathurst/ Dubbo/ New Lamberton (near Newcastle)/ Tamworth and Hay (WS109) temporarily closed for upgrading, and some other links installed with land-line Morse.

25 May 1943, 41 Heavy Wireless (under command of Capt. Richard Thomas and headquartered at NSW L of C Signals Boronia Park) opened a WT channel at Hay at 1335 hours, to operate daily 1300/1700 and 1800/2200, and equipped with WS133 and Kingsley AR7 receivers.

3 July 1943, NSW L of C Signals changed name to 12 Aust L of C Signals. The file also included an Organisation Chart drawn by Cpl L Sheean and passed to LtCol D W Small - CO of NSW L of C Signals, and showing the various land line and WT links as part of the shadow HQ of NSW L of C area.

20 July 1943, high-power unit was made operational at New Lambton, to complete a 24-hour net comprising Boronia/ Hay/ Singleton/ New Lambton. (13)

FELO records covering 1943 include much correspondence between Proud and McGuire, in which various people were referred to by code names. These code names seem to have been known only to Proud and McGuire and no record of their identities could be found in the 'OPEN' files. One letter, dated 19 October 1943 and marked 'MOST SECRET' from Paymaster Lieutenant D P McGuire RANVR OIC Melbourne (based at 'Goodrest', 104 Toorak Road) to Paymaster Commander J C R Proud RANVR Director of FELO and at that time at his Brisbane base, listed 16 matters under McGuire's control. Item 2 stated: 'BANGSAWAN has referred the Hay matter to KERAMAT. This seems to me to be an attempt to avoid the proper responsibility.' It is obvious that McGuire was not happy with the discord, but in a later margin note he says he has resolved the problem. (14)

23 November 1943, 12 Aust L of C Signals was placed on the Order of Battle of 2nd Aust Army.

12 January 1944, Capt R H Philpott appointed OC 41 HW, at which time its strength was 1 Officer, 14 AIF/CMF and 16 AWAS SigOps, all housed in what had been a Jewish Retirement Home pre-war, at Boronia Park, near Ryde in Sydney. Cipher personnel, previously a part of Army Intelligence, were transferred to Signals strength about this time. (15)

I spoke with retired Captain Philpott in mid-1993 (he was then 80) and he recalled visiting Hay shortly after taking command. As to the traffic and its purpose, he said that it was all controlled by Cipher, some in Sydney and some in Melbourne and his responsibility was to make sure the links were staffed and operating at top level. He recalled that all 41HW operators, male and female, were top-class and he was sorry to leave them when he was posted to Bouganville in late 1944. He was quite certain that he had no knowledge of the purpose of 41HW - 'it was on my books and that was the extent of my knowledge' he said!

As an example of the priority accorded our station, a rather amusing incident happened in late 1943. A routine search of the POW barracks turned up a large number of sheets of toilet paper, hidden under the bedding of a German POW who had been a radio operator on a captured armed merchant ship. On the paper were neatly written blocks of cipher, which matched some of our output! Seems he had been reading the flicker in the stockade lights as we keyed our transmitter, which dragged a fair bit of juice from the system. Within a week the local electricity supply department, with the help of some Army engineers from Sydney, had set up and connected us to a separate transformer off the town's supply!

The G2 weekly reports of Allied (Alamo) forces in operation at Cape Gloucester and Hollandia (Dutch West New Guinea, now Irian Jaya) - Nos 21 to 30 - 5 January 1944 - referred to copies of Japanese intercepts that had been recoded in high-level Japanese code and transmitted to their Headquarters at Singapore. These included messages the Japanese referred to as '2nd Australian Army - unit movements.' G2 had marked this captured traffic - 'refer CSO and FELO - special traffic. (16) The files include no copies of this traffic but there is little doubt that it originated from Hay.

Central Bureau was kept very busy around this time. Towards the end of January 1944 the Australian 9th Division were clearing the area around Sio, on the northern side of New Guinea. After its capture they discovered several metal boxes dumped in a large water-filled hole by the departing Japanese. After very careful lifting and opening, in case they were booby-trapped, they were found to contain the latest Japanese high-level code books, which were flown at once back to Brisbane.

In May 1944, the 'under-19s' were called in from the various outposts of 12 L of C, to make way for a new batch arriving, and headed north to take over all the signals work of 1 Aust Corps, and units of 6th, 7th and 9th Div, who were preparing for the Borneo operations. At about the same time, Hay/Boronia scaled down and eventually closed. Its purpose during 1943-1944, based on available information, was probably achieved: to deceive the Japanese as to Army strengths and movements of fictitious unit and to waste Japanese time intercepting and deciphering dummy traffic.

My research would not have been possible without the assistance of staff at Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and at Australian Archives in Canberra and Melbourne. They were always ready with guidance and arranged for me to have files available during my quick visits to Canberra. Also, Staff at History Research Section of Central Army Records Office, Melbourne dug out ARO's from dusty corners that helped fill out the picture and some personal contacts in ASIO pointed fingers in the right direction.

1.             Hay P.O.W. and Internment Camp 1940 - 1947 by M. A. Beckwith, published to coincide with the Special
                Reunion of the Italian Ex-Prisoners of War, to take place at Griffith, November 10 - 12, 1991. Hay Historical
                Society, Proceedings No. 6.

3. 'The Shadow's Edge' by Alan Powell, Melb Ini Press; 'Special and Secret' by John Laffin;

8. AAM MP1049/5 1968/2/598 Far Eastern Liaison Office - Front Line Broadcasting Units. pp14-18

9. AAM MP1049/5 1968/2/598 Far Eastern Liaison Office - Mobile Propaganda Units pp19-25

10. AAM MP1049/5 1968/2/598 Far Eastern Liaison Office - Field Parties. pp26-38.

13. AWM52 7/23/9 War Diary and Intelligence Summary C2118 for NSW L of C Signals Dec 1942 - July 1943.

15. AWM52 War Diary and Intelligence Summary C2118 for 12 Aust L of C Signals Jan 1944 - May 1944.

17.           AAM B5436 / Formation, development and operation of Central Bureau - Section M - Ultra Top
               Secret - Intercepted and deciphered traffic from 2nd Japanese Army Staff to Tokyo and Singapore - 1945.                                    The complete file is very large and Section 'M' is only a part. It has many pages not included (CLOSED)
               as well as large sections blacked out on the pages that may be viewed.

Permission is granted to reproduce this material in part or in full, in any Signals-related publication

I'd like to thank Ralph Hislop for providing me with his above research to use on my web pages.

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