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ENIGMA ID: G15

Name: Papa November

Family:

Reported Activity: Inactive

Country: West Germany

Organization: BND

Group Format: 5FG

Language: German

Transmission Format:
Here is a case of "where to begin?" There are over 80 callsigns on nearly 40 different 
frequencies, all of which indicates a very big set-up. I can recall hearing these transmissions in the early 1970's
and they certainly date back further than that. I remember tuning into a station in 1971 and being almost hypnotised by the
strange interval signal (it is a different one now). It consisted of a female voice repeating "Papa November" over and over
continuously with a sort of snake charmer's flute playing in the background. This went on for five minutes, after
which a woman would start sending messages in five figure groups. When I started to actively listen to number stations this was one of the first
I studied. It is unique in that it broadcasts on four frequencies at the same time, but not simultaneously. By this I mean that
there is a time lag between the four frequencies. It is as though four different machines are started, one after the
other. Until 1989 real female voices were used, that is, a woman would be giving a list of German five figure numbers and
she would sit down and read the whole thing out into a tape recorder. The tape could then be transmitted at the appropriate
time. At the time of eventual conversion to a voice synthesiser machine, four different women were being employed
in the mind-numbing career of number reading. More about them later. The frequencies used are 2707, 5015, 7404 and 11108. The choice of frequencies
is interesting as it insures that at least one will be propagated at any given time. As it happens, the schedule is
designed to give a wide geographic coverage. The station transmits every day, even on Christmas, at 0000, 0030, 0600,
0630, 1200, 1230, 1800 and 1830. The transmissions on the hour are in the AM mode, whereas the broadcasts on the
half hour are all in upper sideband. These data suggest that maybe a world-wide operation is in force. After all, a
station that transmits on four frequencies every six hours using both AM and USB is trying to get its messages through at
any cost. On the whole this operation is very professional. The broadcasts begin precisely on the hour or half hour and
very few mistakes are made. It is not totally perfect however. Here are two errors that have been noted: (1) when the
stations were being converted to auto-voice on a few occasions both live voice and auto-voice messages were being
sent out on the same transmission. It was as though no one had told the female readers that they were being replaced
by machines. They carried on, broadcasting on top of the auto-voice, thus making the whole transmission unintelligible.
(2) On another occasion a sister station (DFD37 which is part of the same set-up - see below -) was being
sent out over Papa November frequencies instead of its normal channel of 3370. This was final proof, if any
was needed, that thy are all part of the same organisation. As will be shown later there could be some doubt about this.
After all, DFC37 is, on the face of it, a legitimate callsign of the Federal German Republic (formerly West Germany). Indeed,
certain publications have this and its twin, DFD21, in their listings as legitimate stations. Anyway, back to Papa
November: as shown, the station is pivotal to whatever agency operates it and the format it uses reflects this. This is unique amongst number stations. As with other set ups, a 3 figure identifier
is used, followed by a group count. The difference is in the daily workings of the station. Papa November has allocated
to it a series of 3 figure identifiers which are specific to the station and are not used by any of the other stations
in the network. After the callsign is sent a woman sends out the list of identifiers/group count, like this PN 1800 25 JUL91: 824 4 695 13 771 11 372 12 525 10 717 8 824, for example, is the identifier and 4 is the number of groups. This is said
as "824 824 4 gruppen, 695 695 13 gruppen", etc. Alter the last heading the message
for 824 would be sent which, in this case, is four groups of five figures, e.g. "12334,
12334, 89856, 89856, 29964, 29964, 13277, 13277 ende. Achtung! 695 695 13 gruppen" and
so on. Now, this represents one transmission (at 1800 on 25 July, 1991). The next day
a new message may have appeared. It will take the first place on the rota of messages, like this: (new message) 543 12 8244 695 13 771 11 372 12 524 10 Note also that the last message on the previous day's rota has dropped off the
bottom. If we look at the rota for several days the picture becomes clearer: SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT SUN 997 11 717 12 233 17 622 10 117 11 697 9 335 12 477 12 524 8 977 11 717 12 233 17 622 10 117 11 697 9 335 12 543 11 524 8 997 11 717 12 233 17 622 10 117 11 697 9 771 22 543 11 524 8 997 11 717 12 233 17 622 10 117 11 825 7 771 22 543 11 524 8 997 11 717 12 233 17 622 10 372 16 825 7 771 22 543 11 524 8 997 11 717 12 233 17 543 11 543 11 543 11 543 11 543 11 543 11 543 11 543 11 New messages appear daily and the old ones are discarded. This is not always the
case, however. Notice the message 543 11. It is stuck on the bottom of the rota for a few days, perhaps for as long
as three weeks. Also, message 233 17 joins it at the end. This sort of thing is a regular occurrence. Presumably the
message is retained on the rota until the agent contacts the senders to say that the message has been copied. Then the heading
will finally disappear from the rota. Certain identifiers have a tendency to stay around for a long time. For example,
543 messages can stay on a rota for several weeks. Maybe agent 543 or whomever cannot acknowledge easily so the
message has to be repeated over a period of time.


Notes:
  Traffic analysis is easy with this station as the number of messages changes considerably. 
Sometimes there may be only five messages, at other times perhaps ten. Here is a selection of headings
and group counts sent over the last few years. Perhaps the changes in traffic relate to events in the real world. Note: The three figure number is the addressee, the one or two figures after the
addressee is the group count. 21MAR90 16APR90 16MAY90 21JUN90 19AUG90 2DEC90 683 6 706 8 853 6 351 7 269 10 352 15 462 11 321 15 307 35 974 9 564 8 563 14 383 7 178 2 923 10 156 12 133 6 868 12 318 12 084 6 321 9 064 18 620 9 935 11 096 8 46411 243 12 541 13 713 7 736 7 484 11 997 8 582 7 572 13 948 5 563 4 494 8 825 23 688 16 307 19 825 10 Note how the traffic varies. Also, some of the messages consist solely of two-five
figure groups. For 20APR91 the traffic for addressee 484 was only 48285 and 36187. It is difficult to imagine what the
purpose of such a brief message might be. Addressees: Here are all of the addresses used by Papa November. The number of
different addressees will give some idea of the scale of this station compared to other stations in the same organisation. 007/0 18/040/046/052/057/064/078/084/092/096 109/1 12/126/133/144/156/160/174/178/179/18 1/197 212/217/219/220/23 1/233/238/243/269/275/280/293 307/312/318/321/337/348/351/352/367/372/376/383/399 406/422/438/448/462/464/468/479/484/487/49 1/494 525/535/541/543/544/552/563/564/569/572/58 1/585/587/595 602/6 16/620/637/657/669/678/683/687/688/690/695 706/713/717/725/736/749/765/771/799 805/809/825/843/849/853/868/877/88 1/887/891 905/9 16/923/927/935/948/965/966/974/994/997



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