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.

The codebreaking or Y section had Japanese, Chinese and Russian interpreters, under RN Paymaster Henry (Harry) Shaw, with Dick Thatcher and Neil Barnham.

Shaw had been dealing direct with GC&CS and the C-in-C Far East in Shanghai, but found that Waller expected that everything should go through him, and paid little regard to keeping sources secret.

Colonel Valentine Burkhart found when he arrived in 1936 that the bureau was involved in “turf wars”, although they eventually accepted that they had no control over the use of intelligence reports.

A skeleton staff of a codebreaker (Alf Bennett) and four intercept operators were left at Hong Kong, and they were captured by the Japanese on Christmas Day 1941.

[3] There was interchange with Station CAST at Corregidor, which was better placed to intercept IJN messages, as FECB could only receive the Combined Fleet in home waters at night.

But the Hollerith tabulating machine (minus a key part, which had to be borrowed from the Indian State Railways in Bombay) arrived safely in Colombo.

Initially the Bureau wanted to move to Australia, but were reportedly told by the Director of Signals Communication, Lieutenant Commander Jack B. Newman that facilities were not available.

Eight Wren Typex operators were killed in February 1944, when their ship the Khedive Ismail en route from Kenya to Ceylon was sunk by a Japanese submarine.

Bruce Keith had wanted an up-country site for better reception, but the Chief of Intelligence staff for HQ Eastern Fleet insisted that the codebreakers should be within easy reach of headquarters.

[14] In the 1950s, GCHQ developed a new site that could monitor signals from all direction at Perkar to replace HMS Anderson, at a cost of £2 million (equivalent to £66,277,880 in 2023), without explaining the purpose to the Ceylon government.