The Bletchley Park Codebreakers

by Ralph Erskine (Editor), Michael Smith (Editor)

Overview

Bletchley Park was the site of Britain's main decryption center, the Government Code and Cypher School. This extraordinary book includes essays by some of Britain’s foremost historians and academics and traces the legacy of Bletchley Park from the innovative work which led to the breaking of Enigma and other wartime codes to the invention of modern computing and its influence on Cold War codebreaking.

Crucially, it also features contributions from former Bletchley Park codebreakers, whose personal reminiscences and very human stories of life and work in wartime Bletchley make compelling reading.

Michael Smith is the author of Killer Elite.

Ralph Erskine is one of Britain’s leading historians of wartime codebreaking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849540780
Publisher:	Biteback Publishing, Ltd.
Publication date:	12/13/2011
Series:	Dialogue Espionage Classics
Pages:	560
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.50(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

Letter from the Bletchley Park codebreakers to Churchill x

Dramatis Personae xiv

1 Bletchley Park in Pre-War Perspective Christopher Andrew 1

2 The Government Code and Cypher School and the First Cold War Michael Smith 13

3 Reminiscences on the Enigma Hugh Foss 35

4 Breaking Air Force and Army Enigma Ralph Erskine 40

5 Hut 6 From the Inside Derek Taunt 65

6 Breaking Italian Naval Enigma Mavis Batey 79

7 A Biographical Fragment: 1942-5 John Chadwick 93

8 An Undervalued Effort: How the British Broke Japan's Codes Michael Smith 107

9 Solving JN-25 at Bletchley Park: 1943-5 Edward Simpson 127

10 Most Helpful and Co-operative: GC&CS and the Development of American Diplomatic Cryptanalysis, 1941-2 David Alvarez 147

11 Breaking German Naval Enigma on Both Sides of the Atlantic Ralph Erskine 165

12 Hut 8 From the Inside RolfNoskwith 184

13 Bletchley Park and the Birth of the Very Special Relationship Stephen Budiansky 195

14 Mihailović otTito? How the Codebreakers Helped Churchill Choose John Cripps 217

15 Traffic Analysis: A Log-reader's Tale James W. Thirsk 240

16 Bletchley Park, Double Cross and D-Day Michael Smith 251

17 How Dilly Knox And His Girls Broke the Abwehr Enigma Keith Batey 270

18 Breaking Tunny and the Birth of Colossus Shaun Wylie 283

19 Colossus and the Dawning of the Computer Age B. Jack Copeland 305

20 Enigma's Security: What the Germans Really Knew Ralph Erskine 328

21 From Amateurs to Professionals: GC&CS and Institution-Building in Signals Intelligence Philip H. J. Davies 341

22 Cold War Codebreaking and Beyond: the Legacy of Bletchley Park Richard J. Aldrich 355

23 Bletchley Park in Post-War Perspective Christopher Andrew 378

Appendix I The very simple cipher which 'Snow', the first Double Cross agent, was given by his German controllers 386

Appendix II Wehrmacht Enigma Indicating Systems, except the Kriegsmarine's Kenngruppenbuch System 389

Appendix III The Naval Enigma Kenngruppenbuch Indicator System - used with the main wartime ciphers 393

Appendix IV Cillies 396

Appendix V Enciphering by JN-25 400

Appendix V Recovery by Differencing 402

Appendix VII Bayes, Hall's Weights and the Standardising of Judgements 406

Notes and references 410

Glossary and abbreviations 471

Notes on Contributors 480

Index