The Bletchley Park Codebreakers (Dialogue Espionage Classics) by Michael Smith

Author:Michael Smith [Smith, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781849546232
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2011-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Network diagram showing the number and flow if messages passing between a headquarters and its outstations on a Stern (star) radio net.

Figure 15.2

Network diagram showing the number and flow of messages passing between stations on a Kreis (circle) radio net.

Having written the weekly reports I would get a day off-duty, which I would spend perhaps in London, Oxford, Cambridge or Bedford. Trips to the theatre or the cinema, spending hours in the bookshops, a meal at my favourite restaurant, ‘Au petit coin de France’, in Carnaby Street, Soho, were always welcome breaks from the logs, call signs and frequencies. At times the working days were long and the nights were longer. It was always a relief in the middle of the night to down pencils, stumble across the park in complete darkness and enjoy a cooked dinner in the brightly lit cafeteria, thronged with men and women from other departments.

We log-readers, about fifty in number, mostly non-commissioned officers in the army, were not allowed to go into the Fusion Room. The officers, a few NCOs and some civilians who worked there would sometimes emerge to consult us about the traffic on the networks on which we were working; they sometimes asked questions about the weekly reports we had sent in. Activities were going on which, in the interests of security, could obviously not be revealed. Among ourselves we used to talk about these mysteries, wondering whether the German messages in cipher were being decrypted. But we toiled on in our blinkered fashion, blind to the wider picture known only to those working in the forbidden rooms.

We moved from Beaumanor to Bletchley Park on 3 May 1942. Several large army trucks carried us and all the office furniture and equipment from Leicestershire to Buckinghamshire. Here was another Victorian mansion set in extensive grounds, with formal gardens now ruined by the addition of long huts. Into one of these we unloaded our precious cargo. At the end of the log-readers’ hut was another forbidden room out of bounds to us. Among senior staff at Bletchley Park there were some who thought that the log-readers should never be told that German Enigma ciphers were being decrypted. However, wiser counsels prevailed. It was decided that the work of traffic analysis would be more efficient if the log-readers knew more about the German networks they were studying. On 23 January 1943, Gordon Welchman therefore gathered all the log-readers together and told us the full story of the breaking of this machine cipher.

It was a memorable day for all of us, since our log-reading had often been a boring occupation. Now we had a new zest for the work, with access to a wealth of information about the German networks we were studying. Before we were told about Enigma we were trying to construct a picture with a jigsaw lacking many pieces; now we were allowed to see some of the English translations of German messages, which gave us information about who sent the messages, where they were located and what was their function.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.