Cryptographic History of Work on the German Naval Enigma


Chapter III.


April 1941 - August 1942.

The Hey Day of Banburismus.

1. The capture of the February 1941 keys changed the whole position. A month's keys were sufficient to enable the bigram tables to be built up completely and the latter half of February and most of March were spent in "Einsing" and in examination of the decyphered traffic. The senior staff had been increased by Wylie and myself, Wylie joining in January and I in March. In April we all settled down to an attempt to break the traffic as nearly currently as possible.

2. Various changes took place in the organization of the section. The crib room was started by Wylie, helped by three girls, and from now on we were responsible for our own cribbing, much helped of course by information and suggestions from Naval Section.

3. Another major change was the starting of teleprinting of traffic from Scarborough. Until now traffic had been sent by bag to Naval Section who had passed over complete days to Hut 8 when the letter wished to work on them. Henceforward all "Home Waters" traffic (DOLPHIN) was teleprinted direct to us, while the remainder of the traffic continued to be sent by bag to N.S. To deal with this current influx of traffic a registration room (the "R.R.") was set up under the joint control of Owen and Amys, assisted by Jill Medway. Owen and Amys had arrived during the Summer of 1940, their abilities were administrative rather than technical and consequently they had had rather a dreary time during the research period, being employed almost entirely on testing results from the bombes. The formation of the R.R. gave them more scope, and the smooth and very satisfactory way in which this worked was almost entirely due to them.

-28-


< previous

next >