Australian Code Breakers

The extraordinary story of a headmaster turned cryptographer, and our top-secret war with the Kaiser's Reich.

On 11 August 1914, just days after war had been declared, Australian Captain J.T. Richardson boarded a German merchant vessel fleeing Melbourne's Port Phillip and audaciously seized a top-secret naval codebook. The fledgling Australian Navy had an opportunity to immediately change the course of the war. But what exactly had they found? Enter the Australian code breakers ...

Recruited by savvy top brass, maths whizz and German speaker Frederick Wheatley worked night and day to fathom the basic principles of the code and start tracking the German Navy's powerful East Asia Squadron, led by the brilliant Maximilian von Spee. Soon Melbourne was a hub of international Allied intelligence.

This is the untold story of how a former Australian headmaster and his mostly female team cracked one of Germany's most complex codes, paving the way for the greatest Allied naval victory of World War I.

James Phelps is an award-winning senior reporter for Sydney's The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph. He began as an overnight police-rounds reporter before moving into sport, where he became one of Australia's best news-breaking rugby league journalists. James was then appointed News Corp Australia's Chief National Motorsports Writer and travelled the world chasing Formula 1 stories, as well as covering Australia's V8 Supercar races. As well as writing bestselling and critically acclaimed biographies of Dick Johnson and Johnathan Thurston, James established himself as Australia's number-one true crime writer with his bestselling prison series, including Australia's Hardest Prison, Australia's Most Murderous Prison, and Australia's Toughest Prisons. His most recent books are Australian Heist (2018), a dramatic retelling of the true story behind Australia's largest gold robbery, and Australian Code Breakers (2020), a gripping account of how Australian cryptographers helped bring about the most vital Allied naval victory of World War I.

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