Fleet Radio Unit, Melbourne (FRUMEL) was a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
–
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
n–
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
signals intelligence
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...
unit, founded in
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a metro ...
, Australia, during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. It was one of two major
Allied signals intelligence units called
Fleet Radio Unit Fleet Radio Units (FRU) were the major centers for Allied cryptological and signals intelligence during the Pacific Campaign of World War II. Initially two FRUs were established in the Pacific, one at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, called Station HYPO or F ...
s in the
Pacific theatres, the other being FRUPAC (also known as
Station HYPO Station , also known as Fleet Radio Unit Pacific () was the United States Navy signals monitoring and cryptographic intelligence unit in Hawaii during World War II. It was one of two major Allied signals intelligence units, called Fleet Radio U ...
), in
Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
. FRUMEL was a US Navy organisation, reporting directly to CiCPAC (Admiral
Nimitz) in Hawaii and the Chief of Naval Operations (Admiral
King
King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king.
*In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...
) in Washington, and hence to the central
cryptographic
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adv ...
organization. The separate
Central Bureau in Melbourne (later
Brisbane
Brisbane ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Queensland, and the third-most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of approximately 2.6 million. Brisbane lies at the centre of the South ...
) was attached to (and reported to)
MacArthur's Allied
South West Pacific Area
South West Pacific Area (SWPA) was the name given to the Allied supreme military command in the South West Pacific Theatre of World War II. It was one of four major Allied commands in the Pacific War. SWPA included the Philippines, Borneo, the ...
command headquarters.
History
FRUMEL was established at the Monterey Apartments in
Queens Road in early 1942, and was made up of three main groups. First was Lieutenant Rudolph J. (Rudi) Fabian's 75-man codebreaker unit, previously based at the
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
's
Station CAST in the
Philippines
The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no),
* bik, Republika kan Filipinas
* ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas
* cbk, República de Filipinas
* hil, Republ ...
before being evacuated by submarine on 8 April 1942. The second was Commander
Eric Nave's small
Royal Australian Navy
The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the principal naval force of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The professional head of the RAN is Chief of Navy (CN) Vice Admiral Mark Hammond AM, RAN. CN is also jointly responsible to the Minister o ...
-supported cryptography unit, which had moved to the Monterey Apartments from
Victoria Barracks in February 1942. Nave's unit was made up of a core of naval personnel, heavily assisted by university academics and graduates specialising in linguistics and mathematics (including from June 1941 a "cipher group" of four from
Sydney University
The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's six ...
). These included
Thomas Room,
Dale Trendall,
Athanasius Treweek, Eric Barnes, Jack Davies and Ronald Bond. The third group was a trio of
British Foreign Office
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' ministries of foreign affairs, it was created on 2 September 2020 through the merger of the Foreig ...
linguists (Henry Archer, Arthur Cooper and Hubert Graves), and
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against Fr ...
support staff, evacuated from
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...
, particularly from the
Far East Combined Bureau
The Far East Combined Bureau, an outstation of the British Government Code and Cypher School, was set up in Hong Kong in March 1935, to monitor Japanese, and also Chinese and Russian (Soviet) intelligence and radio traffic. Later it moved to Sing ...
(FECB) there.
IBM (punched-card)
tabulating machine
The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later model ...
s were obtained in 1942 to replace that left behind in
Manila Bay
Manila Bay ( fil, Look ng Maynila) is a natural harbor that serves the Port of Manila (on Luzon), in the Philippines. Strategically located around the Manila, capital city of the Philippines, Manila Bay facilitated commerce and trade between t ...
on leaving
Corregidor
Corregidor ( tl, Pulo ng Corregidor, ) is an island located at the entrance of Manila Bay in the southwestern part of Luzon in the Philippines, and is considered part of the Province of Cavite. Due to this location, Corregidor has historically b ...
.
Nave and Fabian had a difficult relationship, and Nave was forced out of FRUMEL, going to
Central Bureau the joint Australian-US Army codebreaking unit in Brisbane where he was welcomed. The 1942
Holden Agreement specifically stated that Nave was not to work at FRUMEL. According to Jenkins, Fabian wasted no time in getting rid of the civilian supernumaries at Monterey, many of them British service wives who had been evacuated from Singapore. He also squeezed out the British diplomatic corps types like Cooper and Archer. But Jamieson (A. B. Jamieson, Nave's second recruit) and
Ath Treweek had cordial relations with the Americans and stayed at FRUMEL throughout the war.
Fabian or his deputy John Lietweller were always in the office, 24 hours a day. Fabian was "a highly professional officer with an air of authority and a hint of Central European sophistication", although he was born in Butte, Montana, in 1908. But he "regarded co-operation with anyone who was not in the US Navy or under its command as poor security". One senior British officer said the atmosphere at FRUMEL was "What is yours is mine, and what is mine is my own", and Fabian (backed by Redman and Herbert Leary) was not interested in any exchange of material with the Army's Central Bureau. Once Fabian burnt a document in front of MacArthur's Intelligence Officer (G-2), Major General
Charles A. Willoughby
Charles Andrew Willoughby (March 8, 1892 – October 25, 1972) was a major general in the U.S. Army, serving as General Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence during most of World War II and the Korean War.
Early life and education
Willough ...
, to demonstrate that only MacArthur himself and Sutherland could be present at FRUMEL briefings and that Willoughby was not allowed to see it (see
Central Bureau).
Intercept stations
The major (naval) Intercept Stations which carried out intercept and D/F (
direction finding
Direction finding (DF), or radio direction finding (RDF), isin accordance with International Telecommunication Union (ITU)defined as radio location that uses the reception of radio waves to determine the direction in which a radio stati ...
) but not cryptographic work were:
*
Park Orchards in Melbourne
* near
Canberra
Canberra ( )
is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...
* near
Darwin
See Also
*
USN Supplementary Radio Station Adelaide River
*
Naval Base Melbourne
Victoria Barracks, Melbourne HQ for the US and Australian armed forces
Naval Base Melbourne was a United States Navy base at Melbourne during World War II. Naval Base Melbourne became the South West Pacific Area Command Headquarters aft ...
Notes
References
*
*
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Further reading
*
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Frumel
Military units and formations of Australia in World War II
History of Australia (1901–1945)
Australian intelligence agencies
Signals intelligence agencies
History of cryptography
Cryptography organizations
Locations in the history of espionage
Military communications of Australia
Signals intelligence of World War II