Colossus by Paul Gannon

Author:Paul Gannon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books Ltd

chapter seventeen

Fish Dialects

Bletchley Park was a particularly unmilitary institution. In many ways, it was more like a university or a commercial research laboratory than a unit of the armed forces and the secret services. Max Newman’s Machine Section, when it came to suggesting new ideas, was run in an informal fashion, although not in day-to-day work. Anyone could suggest new techniques or improvements, and meetings were held to discuss issues where all were encouraged to contribute. The cryptographers and machine-designers worked ‘sabbaticals’ in other parts of the Fish section for a week each month so that they could learn about the methods, techniques and problems of other departments – although this required some creative administrative measures to overcome organizational obstacles to staff exchanges between the Testery and the Newmanry (see Chapter twenty).

It was the policy of the section that all its members should be encouraged to interest themselves in all its activities and to improve their theoretical knowledge. In practice, it became increasingly hard for Wrens to get a complete picture of an organization in which they might have only done one job. Moreover, the mathematical style of the Research Logs made them unreadable for Wrens, and before they (or new men) undertook Chi-breaking and Colossus-setting on their own, some other introduction to the theoretical side was needed. Screeds and lectures on aspects of the work were issued or given from time to time in 1944, but nothing was done systematically till the Education Committee was founded in January 1945. This committee of four men and 14 Wrens chosen democratically and was [it] arranged general lectures or seminars for small parties of Colossus operators or other specialized groups. All lectures and seminars were given outside working hours and were voluntary. The seminars for Colossus operators were a complete success. The less mathematical general lectures were also appreciated. The Education Committee co-ordinated the production of screeds and started a General Fish Series of papers which were duplicated and available in every room.1

One lecture given by Wing Commander Oeser of Hut 3, which translated and distributed decoded Fish and Enigma messages, was entitled ‘The intelligence value of Fish’. It was given in the run-up to D-Day when the use of Colossus machines was due to expand rapidly and it was considered that making staff aware of what their job was all about merited a temporary halt to the urgent day-to-day work of decrypting current traffic. The lecture was open to all members of the Machine Section (‘including machine-maintenance staff’) and the Testery, though they were warned not to discuss it with anyone outside the blocks housing the Fish sections. As the lecture was at 4.05 p.m., just after the start of the evening shift, attendance was voluntary for the day shift, but compulsory for the evening shift. Staff were advised that ‘permission has been given to stop the machines for half an hour in view of the importance of the lecture’.2

When the statistical methods were being developed, at one stage ‘A controversy

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