The plugboard (Steckerbrett) was positioned at the front of the machine, below the keys. In the above photograph, two pairs of letters have been swapped (A↔J and S↔O). During World War II, ten leads were used, leaving only six letters 'unsteckered'.
Posted on 11/23/2013 7:29:30 AM PST by NYer
Mavis Batey was a British student of 19, midway through her university course in German Romanticism, when she was recruited for a top-secret assignment during World War II.
“This is going to be an interesting job, Mata Hari, seducing Prussian officers,” she recalled thinking years later. “But I don’t think either my legs or my German were good enough because they sent me to the Government Code and Cipher School.”
In May 1940, Mrs. Batey — then the unmarried Mavis Lever — joined the team of code breakers at Bletchley Park, the British cryptography headquarters. Trained in the enemy’s language and endowed with a facility for words, she became a key contributor to a wartime project that remained classified for decades.
But by the time of her death on Nov. 12 at 92, Mrs. Batey was regarded in England as a national heroine. Working with Alfred Dillwyn “Dilly” Knox and other celebrated code breakers, she learned to decipher what she called the “utter gibberish” of encrypted German communications.
Battling the Enigma
Like many of her colleagues, Mrs. Batey worked on a “need-to-know” basis and did not understand at the time the significance of her efforts. In recent years, with the release of British wartime records, it was revealed that her code-breaking helped the Allies cripple the Italian navy in 1941 and assisted the 1944 Normandy invasion.
Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime prime minister, was said to have called the Bletchley Park code breakers his “geese that laid the golden eggs but never cackled.” Fueled by what Mrs. Batey described as “ersatz coffee,” they toiled in secrecy to decipher the encoded messages spat out by the Axis powers’ Enigma machines.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The entire story around Enigma is fascinating. I hope to visit Bletchley Park next year.
Alan Turing was a genius. They’re currently filming a big budget biopic..
I’ll look for it, thanks!
No doubt totally focused on his sexuality, not his genius.
It’s on Netflix Streaming!
“Frank, I know what we’re going to do this afternoon!”
Let me know if you enjoy it..
You bet!
Although the Brits did superb work at Bletchley, much of the early efforts at cracking Enigma were done by Polish cryptographers, in the months before the Nazi blitzkreig. Several of them escaped, and their work was turned over to the Brits at the embassy in Paris..The Poles have never been credited for their ground breaking work..
There’s a LOT of things the Poles didn’t get credit for.
BTW..did you see that Jerry Jones wants to be the Cowboys's GM for another 15 years..ain't no SB in that team's future..
Thanks for the Enigma code breaker post
thanks NYer.
Indeed. See “Enigma: How The Poles Broke The Nazi Code,” by Wladyslaw Kozaczuk and Jerzy Straszak, Hippocrene Books, 2004.
Of course one should also remember Alan Turing, and his pioneering cryptanalytical work at Bletchley Park. There, he improved on the Polish Bomba Kryptolgiczna, and made at least four additional significant advances in code breaking. Dr. Turing was rewarded for his innovative patriotic contributions with a criminal prosecution, and conviction for gross indecency, based on a homosexual relationship.
An amazing group - easy to get shivers thinking about their sacrifice.
The first episode was very good. I was afraid there was going to be a sudden, unrealistic wrap-up, but there wasn’t. Of course, now I have to watch the next episode!
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