Did loose lips actually sink any ships?
That is to say, did the loss of an Allied vessel ever directly result from inadvertent civilian disclosure of military secrets? A difficult question, but that’s why there’s a Cecil. — Curtis Edmonds, Hillsborough, New Jersey Cecil replies: Huh. And all this time everybody’s been blaming my mom and dad. Concern about maritime blabbermouths arose in Britain during World War I when enemy U-boats started going after merchant ships. And with good reason — Britain was awash in German spies, or at any rate suspected spies. By the end of the war British counterintelligence was reading the mail and cables of more than 13,500 individuals. While this undoubtedly reflected wartime paranoia to an extent, authorities turned up enough evidence to try 31 alleged spies between 1914 and 1917 and deport 1,700 suspicious characters. A primary goal of German espionage early in the war was finding out about ship movements, and eavesdropping on dockside scuttlebutt was the best way to do that, given the prim
