Posted on 03/27/2014 2:30:35 AM PDT by Winniesboy
Raymond 'Jerry' Roberts was one of elite team who helped decode messages sent between Hitler and his high command. ne of the last of a team of wartime British codebreakers who deciphered Hitler's messages at Bletchley Park has died after a short illness.
Raymond "Jerry" Roberts, 93, from Liphook in Hampshire, was part of a group that cracked the German high command's secret code.
Roberts joined Bletchley Park as a German linguist and was among four founder members of the Testery section, named after its head Ralph Tester.
Their target was a system known as Tunny, which carried messages between Hitler and members of his high command, as well as Mussolini. It was less well known than the Enigma code used for standard military communication, partly because it was only declassified in 2002. Eoberts told the BBC he took delight in reading Hitler's messages, sometimes even before the intended recipient.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
There really was a Colossus computer?!
RIP.
The English didn’t think computers had a future.
Without the work at Bletchley Park, the war might have ended very differently….
These people did so much to make victory possible, with little credit.
RIP, friend.
I retired from working many years at the Univ. of Illinois at Chicago in the Mathematics Department. One of my dear office friends, and one of the few conservative professors in the department, was an older British gentleman who was here in the U.S. for years, but never gave up his British citizenship. Few Brits ever do give up their British citizenship it seems. He was a true and charming eccentric, bearded, clouded glasses, baggy pants, a sweater turned inside out half of the time, stained coffee cup, and as an aside, a brilliant mathematician. He also an excellent musician who played the large pipe organs, and being an Episcopalian (the old fashioned kind), would play at Sunday services at various Episcopal churches in the Chicagoland area, primarily in Oak Park, Illinois where he lived.
When young and out of college he told me, he too went to work as a code breaker during the war while still living in England. He didn’t tell me what section specifically he worked for. I wonder if it was this one. He died a few years back, and I will always remember him fondly. He would come into my office frequently to chew the fat, let me clean off his smudged glasses for him occasionally, and would discuss conservative politics of the day with me.
He’s still to this day breaking codes up in heaven. Has his own office in the cloud.
There’s a movie called The Imitation Game” about Alan Turing. I don’t know the release date.
He also an excellent musician = He was also an excellent musician. The sin of omission above.
Did you happen to catch "The Bletchley Circle" when it ran last year? If not, do try and find it...and even better, a second season is due for release soon. The Brits do these period dramas so very well.
“There’s a movie called The Imitation Game” about Alan Turing. I don’t know the release date.”
Interesting, I will keep an eye out for it. Quite a few years back, Masterpiece Theater on PBS had the movie version of the play “Breaking the Code” about Alan Turing’s life, primarily his homosexuality at a time when it was illegal, and the problems it caused him personally and with his government. Turing eventually committed suicide, as you probably know. What he should be remembered for is breaking the Enigma code and thus his great contribution to helping end WWII.
I had to look up the dates 1986-1987. Derek Jacobi,a favorite of mine,played him on Broadway. I didn’t go. Stupid!
I knew nothing of this, The Bletchley Circle; however I followed your link and it looks like great fun. I love Brit dramas, especially whodunits. Maybe Amazon has it on Prime. Otherwise, I don’t think it is on my cable package. Thanks for the heads up. I hope I can find the series somewhere to watch it.
Derek Jacobi,a favorite of mine,played him on Broadway. I didn’t go. Stupid!
Yes, I have to agree, stupid ..., lol. Jacobi is a superb actor.
A tidbit from Wiki you might find interesting. Check out Wiki for more about it:
“Colossus Computer
Colossus was the world’s first electronic digital computer that was at all programmable. The Colossus computers were developed for British codebreakers during World War II to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Without them, the Allies would have been deprived of the very valuable military intelligence that was obtained from reading the vast quantity of encrypted high-level telegraphic messages between the German High Command (OKW) and their army commands throughout occupied Europe. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean operations and calculations.
Colossus was designed by the engineer Tommy Flowers to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. Alan Turing’s use of probability in cryptanalysis[1] contributed to its design. It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Turing designed Colossus to aid the Cryptanalysis of the Enigma.[2] Turing’s machine that helped decode Enigma was the electromechanical Bombe, not Colossus.[3]
The prototype, Colossus Mark 1, was shown to be working in December 1943 and was operational at Bletchley Park by 5 February 1944.[4] An improved Colossus Mark 2 that used shift registers to quintuple the speed,[5] first worked on 1 June 1944,[6] just in time for the Normandy Landings. Ten Colossi were in use by the end of the war.
The destruction of most of the Colossus hardware and blueprints, as part of the effort to maintain a project secrecy that was kept up into the 1970s, deprived most of those involved with Colossus of credit for their pioneering advancements in electronic digital computing during their lifetimes. A functioning replica of a Colossus computer was completed in 2007, and is on display at the The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.[7]”
It’s amazing that they were able to keep Bletchley Park a secret during the war, and even more so that they were able to continue to keep much of their work secret for many years after the war.
There is a book called Code Breakers which came out in 1993. The various chapters in the book each deal with some narrow aspect of the work at Bletchley, and each chapter is written by a person who was involved in that particular work. It’s a little rough reading because not all of the contributors are great writers, but it has the advantage of being accounts by the actual participants.
There are two chapters in the book concerning the work on Tunny.
Was Ayers at U of I Chicago when you were there?
It’s amazing that they were able to keep Bletchley Park a secret during the war, and even more so that they were able to continue to keep much of their work secret for many years after the war.I blame the internet. Before 1995 or so the average joe didn't have a cost free publisher for his juicy stories. News was generated by gatekeepers who toed the regime's line reliably. Now, you have blog pimps flogging all manner of text to anyone who reads. Messy, but overall it's an improvement.
Fight the Free Sh☭t Nation 
Great line.... NEAT the way 'they' encrypted his name in his 'OBIT'.
Between Bletchley Park and our teams(Rochefort, Layton etal) in Hawaii, we pretty much 'read the enemy's mail' for the entire war.
Kept us a HUGE step ahead.
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