OBITUARY : Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Jones

Tuesday 22 Nov 2011

OBITUARY : Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Jones
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Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Jones, who has died aged 95, was awarded a 
DSM for his service with the Royal Navy in 1940 and ended his career as a 
headmaster in Sussex.

In April 1940 Jones was a signal rating in the Lowestoft drifter Tritonia 
( which had been taken up from trade for minesweeping duties and was based 
at Scapa Flow ) when the captured German trawler Schiff 26 was brought 
into harbour.

Disguised as a Dutch ship, Schiff 26 was carrying arms to the German Army 
which had invaded Norway when she was captured by a boarding party from 
the British destroyer Griffin. Naval intelligence officers found important 
papers, among them pages from an Enigma cipher pad. These presented one of 
the first major hauls of the German naval code, including the key for five 
days ( April 22 to 27 ) and the procedures for scrambling the rotors on 
the encryption machines.

Using clear text and cipher text found in Schiff 26, Bletchley Park was 
able to read April's naval Enigma traffic and tested the first bombe ( a 
high speed key-finding aid )...../snip/


....He published his wartime memoirs, Signalman Jones, in 2010; it 
included a foreword by one of his former pupils at St Andrew's, 
Rear-Admiral John Lippiett.

Geoffrey Jones married, in 1944, Gladys Page, who survives him with their 
two daughters.


Lt-Cdr Geoffrey Jones, born September 12 1915, died September 10 2011 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/naval-obituaries/8905417/Geoffrey-Jones.html

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