G15 – Papa November West German BND Numbers Station

G15 was a West German BND numbers station. It was first logged in the 1960’s/1970’s.  The station was nicknamed Papa November for its ID that sent out messages to many different agents. Group counts were usually very small. It had the set up the same as G14 and G16 besides the 2 letter ID.

G15 transmitted on four frequencies at the same time on 2707, 5015, 7404 and 11108 kHz which provided a wide geographic coverage.  It was possible it could have been a world wide operation.  It was a very professional numbers station with few errors and a routine schedule.  On one occasion, G14 was sent out over Papa Novembers frequencies which confirmed they are a part of the same organization.  The station went silent in November of 1992.

Message Sample

Due to the German alphabet being different ‘November’ is pronounced as ‘Noh-fem-bur’ in the call up.  A declassified polish counter-intelligence document includes information about the cryptography, encryption, and decryption of the station.

Note: In the Conet Project with this station and other number stations in Family 6 there is an inaccurate transcription of the message announcements. In the notes of the Conet Project they list this as “Es folgen talon für”. This is not the proper term, and is badly translated German. The actual announcement is “Es folgen Mitteilungen für”, meaning ‘messages for … are following’.

Schedule

G15a

G15a was a variant of G15 where the ID was read over the music tones.