Did the Kriegsmarine use this or any known abbreviations list? I've been reading a copy of the 1946 International Code of Signals, and I can't help but think we could have missed the message simply because the abbreviations and substitution codes would never be picked up by any normal dictionary.

---

They used some Codebooks to shorten the messages and get rid of to much predictable text passages (that part didn't work out too well) which were changed a few times during the war, for example the Wetterkurzschlüssel (~short weather code) for weather reports:
http://www.wwiiarchives.net/servlet/action/document/index/98/0

That's interesting. It looks like abbreviations such as Wetterkurzschlüssel/International Signal Code would be quite short, so a high chance of combinations being present due to random occurrence. That's a shame, because the ICS has a form of error correction which would otherwise be quite useful.

---