Chapter II: The Earliest Naval Cryptologic Records
When I reviewed my mission upon arriving as Naval Cryptologic Historian in June 1968, top priority was to locate and safeguard irreplaceable existing histories and records. What I found surprised, informed, disappointed, and motivated me. Documents existed that the writers had prepared as histories and studies. They presented narratives of key events that covered a number of years, but they did not constitute a comprehensive record of our past.
As for files of documents, the Naval Security Group (NAVSECGRU) Command knew where most were stored, of course, but they did not qualify as a well-organized collection of archival records. It took years before I could reconstruct even the movements of all those records beginning with their creation prior to World War I. Headquarters and records storage personnel tried to restore the original file organization and thus enhance their reference value, but never completed that enormous task. Packing and trucking them around within and outside Washington, D.C. had scrambled their original arrangement.
Formal Histories and Studies
After multiple inquiries, I learned that several Navy Reserve officers on active duty at Hawaii and in Washington, D.C. during World War II had prepared several studies and historical accounts of critical NAVSECGRU operations. They covered activities leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941 and critical battles in the following year. Other writings captured small slivers of past events, but none of them provided anything nearing a complete historical summary, or even an outline for one.
Earliest Existing Records
Records from the State – War – Navy Building before and during World War I, as well as those from the Main Navy Building along Constitution Avenue up to February 1943, were trucked five miles north to their new, historic wartime home of OP-20- G at 3801 Nebraska Avenue, NW. From there, a decade later the records trail divided into two.
Based on personal knowledge and discussions with veterans, I reasoned that technical and operational records after World War II had remained at their wartime home in North West Washington, DC. I concluded that ownership was transferred to the Armed Forces Security Agency in July 1949 (succeeded by NSA in 1952) for its use and future control.
Research subsequently confirmed that many paper and microform records relating to the Pacific War and older historic documents dated through at least 1945 were transported out of Washington, D.C. and stored in a building dedicated to storing NAVSECGRU records. They had been moved during, or just before, 1953 to make room for new files created during the Korean War. The original files were taken off shelves at their historic wartime home somewhat randomly, their basic contents listed, then wrapped in plain brown paper packages, and each bundle numbered. Once boxed, the entire collection was shipped to the secure storage building where it was unpacked and shelved again. In this process, it lost more original organizational relationships
Our Fundamental Task: Identify and Make Usable Historic Naval Cryptologic Files
The Officer in Charge (OIC) responsible for custody of our historic records stored off site did more than guard them. We tasked the OIC and his crew with preservation and research work, and they met this challenge. In the late 1960s, our Detachment OIC and two-man crew began taking measure of the curious items stored in their building. Metal shelves held folders and envelopes, while drawers of numerous metal cabinets held rolls of microfilm. Other cabinets stored translated Japanese messages with underlined names, ships, shore stations, ports, geographic places, equipment, and other items; multiple copies of messages appeared throughout those cabinets so researchers could use this index for research to confirm when any word appeared in radio traffic. A number of three-dimensional artifacts also stood mute in that bay, testifying to experimentation with recording radio transmissions using Dictaphone wax cylinders and belts, as well as similar equipment.
Detachment OICs also dealt with their unique preservation mission. They took on the challenges of monitoring and controlling humidity and temperature of the harsh poured concrete interior. Another perplexing issue involved dealing with “measles” (redox, in which one molecule is reduced and silver halide molecules are oxidized) on microfilm, as well as its general deterioration from “vinegar syndrome” that afflicted acetate records. NAVSECGRU professionals at the facility faced many of the same preservation problems that vexed records managers and archivists throughout the U.S. and around the world.
LT Robert D. Howell exemplified the professional quality of NAVSECGRU personnel assigned to the Detachment. He not only discharged all his military and technical responsibilities, but he took an extraordinary interest in the historical value of our records. On his own initiative, he copied important administrative documents and used the copies to create files that were originated by each shipboard unit, shore station, and staff organization. With this knowledge, he wrote brief valuable guides and histories explaining the roles and importance of people, places, and events.
LT Howell built on the accomplishments of his predecessors, making the facility operate smoothly as the newly-designated NAVSECGRU Central Records Depository. Obtaining such designation with authority to manage this facility was essential for us to hold records outside the Federal Records Centers and the Regional and National Archives. It also gave us standing to sign agreements to store non-current classified compartmented documents for other Navy and Marine Corps commands outside their work sites that struggled with restricted storage space.
As the 1970s unfolded, NAVECGRU crews removed metal clips and fasteners and placed files in acid-free folders. LT Howell led his two enlisted men in making organized files of station records with copies of selected documents to enhance their success when searching holdings. This avoided negating the crude finding aids called “box lists” created in Washington years before, while making subject matter searches much more productive. His crew also worked with Headquarters programmers in trying to develop an automated system of indexing using Key Word in Context.
All this changed abruptly in 1995. The facility located outside Washington, D.C. was reclaimed for other purposes, forcing the NAVSECGRU Detachment to empty its building and go out of business. Classified records were transferred to other secure storage facilities. Many historic documents, however, were retired to Archives II in College Park, Maryland where they were reviewed for declassification to be made available to the public. And they were.
Willson’s World War I NCB was Stored in the RPS Library
The Registered Publications System Library (RPSL) held documents and other items dating back prior to World War One. The Navy Cipher Box (NCB) invented by LT Russell Willson gave the United States and the Allies cryptographic security that helped keep the texts of internal Navy and international communications from being read and exploited by the Central Powers. It was one of the “Registered Publications” preserved by OP-20-G and stored in the Library at Nebraska Avenue, NW in Washington, D.C. for many decades.
This forgotten treasure surfaced in 2004, nearly a century after its valuable service in protecting ships, supplies, and the lives of soldiers transported across the Atlantic in 1917 and 1918. Those who originally knew that a copy of the NCB was stored in the RPS Library were deceased by 1970, of course; those who likely knew about this said nothing when given the opportunity; and those who wanted to know its location for historical research learned much later where it was in an amazingly roundabout way. Here is the improbable story of several great Navy friends who played a role in how the NCB and Russell Willson were rescued from obscurity.
In the late 1970s, a retired senior Federal employee and World War II Navy shipboard linguist who served RADM Joseph J. “Jocko” Clark onboard carriers in the Pacific, asked COMNAVSECGRU for help recording his experience as a direct support officer. With the valuable assistance of a Reserve Senior Chief Petty Officer on annual training, I completed an unclassified “as-told-to” article that we published in the next NAVSECGRU periodical. Of course we gave him a copy. When he died, his widow sent a note with a Christmas card attesting that he prized the article, which he stored in his safe deposit box.
This Japanese linguist also expressed his appreciation to a personal friend, a retired Navy Admiral who lived in a retirement home near Annapolis. The Admiral played cards with nonagenarian Mrs. Eunice Willson Rice, daughter of the late VADM Russell Willson. He listened to her frustration trying to locate the NCB that her father invented. She had seen it as a child when her father developed it in 1917, and again while in training as an OP-20-G employee in the late 1930s. In early 2004, the Admiral told her about the article and suggested she contact the NAVSECGRU Historian. The social director of the home helpfully agreed to call all numbers with my name in the greater Washington – Baltimore metropolitan areas in an effort to find me. It took weeks because I had retired, but she succeeded and asked me to visit Mrs. Rice.
Several weeks later, I called NCVA in Pensacola, Florida and spoke with volunteer Jack Gustafson, a retired Master Chief Petty Officer. “Gus” searched NCVA holdings that Chief Petty Officers (and perhaps a Warrant Officer or two) had saved from an uncertain fate when the NAVSECGRU successor command closed its offices at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. One item turned out to be the NCB that had made its way from 3801 Nebraska Avenue to the remote storage site to Fort Meade. Verification took more research, but I located key documents confirming our find in a Navy Record Group at Archives II, College Park, Maryland.
Last and Only Surviving NCB from World War I, now on display at the Cryptologic Command Display.
Main Navy Building
The Navy Department occupied Main Navy, the first nine wings in the foreground of this 1918 photograph; the War Department used the rest, known as the Army Munitions Building. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt later regretted urging construction of these “temporary” buildings, but wanted them to be ugly and made of wood so they would be torn down soon after the war. Built on Potomac Flats, reclaimed marshland south of and along the west end of Constitution Avenue in South West Washington, D.C., and completed in a short five and one-half months, the concrete and steel buildings actually remained in use until 1970.
OP-20-G was created in 1922 and originally housed in the sixth wing of Main Navy. Occupied just before the November Armistice ending World War I, Main Navy never served as home to the OP-58 unit led by LT Russell Willson, however. Rather, his office upon reporting for duty in January 1917 had been squeezed into the crowded State – War – Navy Building immediately west of the White House. CDR Willson exited his tour in November 1918 as head of the Code and Signals Branch of the Naval Communications Service and as Assistant to the Director of Naval Communications for Codes and Signals, a vital role not only for the Navy but also the country.
Although not fully verified, CDR Willson’s files must have been moved from the State-War-Navy Building to Main Navy at the end of the war. Decades later in February 1943, all Naval cryptologic records were moved again from there north to the site at 3801 Nebraska Avenue, NW. There they remained until after World War II, when they were separated into several groups — some retained for current use and others sent to storage. When the NAVSECGRU Command was disestablished in 1995, those still at the 3801 Nebraska Avenue site and those in storage were moved a fourth time.
Registered Publications System Library
Although the NAVSECGRU Command relocated outside Washington, D.C. in 1995, this recent image shows where the Navy Registered Publications System Library was stored for three decades. It filled the basement of Building 17, the long, white roof structure on the right side of this picture, west of the Command Headquarters and north of the Naval Telecommunications Command Headquarters. The RPS Library had to vacate its space in the 1970s for reasons similar to the need to ship historic files out of NAVSECGRU Headquarters in 1953: to preserve those important documents as we made their previous storage area available for other uses.
The RPS Library held one copy of every registered publication (dealing primarily with Naval communications and cryptographic equipment and instructions) issued and distributed by the Navy from World War I forward; they included changes to each publication that were preserved in their original form rather than being entered into the original publication.
Publications consisted primarily of documents in folders with a flap that could be secured. Over many decades the folders accumulated layers of dust somewhat caked on by humidity. It took several weeks, but the disagreeable “dirty jobs” task of reviewing them saved irreplaceable paper documents and unique artifacts for future historical reference.