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 ...
They couldn't figure out how to keep them from leaking oil.
(Old MG/Triumph owner joke...)
And it's probably just as cluttered!
“Was Ayers at U of I Chicago when you were there?”
Yes indeedy, he was, and still is. Along with a huge contingent of Palestinian students who would periodically march around campus in their endless protestations du jour. Also the great liberal Stanley Fish, deconstructionist supreme, who was hired as the Dean of the College of LAS, and who also hired “Deirdre N. McCloskey”, a professor of economics who had a transsexual operation. A he to she. We had quite the cast of characters on campus. The stories I could tell.
That's right. Those people literally saved the world as we know it. I believe there was a joke that if U-Boat Commanders wanted to know what their orders were, they could find out faster by calling Bletchley Park than than waiting on their chain of command.
There were also electrical problems. Old Jaguar joke.
Colossus was built by an engineer named Tommy Flowers. It was created to help decode Lorenz machine (or Tunny) coded messages.
The Lorenz was a one-time-pad machine that mechanically generated pseudo-random one-time-pad sets that were then used to encode the messages using a simple XOR operation.
The messages were not sent using Morse code like the Enigma system did, they were transmitted using an early teletype method. The Lorenz thus required only one operator at each end and was much faster.
Are you thinking of Charles Babbage’s difference engine? That was a mechanical computer that was designed but never fully built.
The allies would still have won thanks to superior numbers and resources, it just would have taken a bit longer.
That's true, but here's an intriguing thought: Some of the people whose fathers or grandfathers fought in Europe would not be here today if the war had extended into 1946. Invariably, some of those who returned home in 1945 would have been killed in a subsequent battle had the fighting continued a while longer.
I agree .totally .but it might have been a five -six year war with a very different division of Europe, Asia, etc ..might have had to use an A bomb in the Atlantic theatre also and the Germans might have developed jets in time to do more damage maybe their a-bomb .so while the “winner” would have been ultimately the same I think the ending would have been “very different” nonetheless.
Yes, I’ve heard that .amazing how the Brits used code breaking and radar on the cutting edge to stave off the Nazi’s long enough ..
I have no idea how those “Enigma” Machines were cracked(I don’t know if I could even USE one lol). I think that was actually done by some Polish scientists before their country was overrun.
“There were also electrical problems. Old Jaguar joke.”
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LUCAS, Prince of darkness.(Triumph riders would know)
This is an excellent book on the subject. I read it last summer at the beach:
Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Code-breaking Computers
A Colossus Mark 2 computer being operated by Dorothy Du Boisson (right) and Elsie Booker. The slanted control panel on the right was used to set the "pin" (or "cam") patterns of the Lorenz. The "bedstead" paper tape transport is on the left.
There has been considerable controversy about how Turing's homosexuality is portrayed, or rather, ignored in the script ( scroll down to "Controversy". I gather the GLAAD crowd wants his "gayness" extolled..they probably want his "sensitivity" to be featured as the reason for his success..
Flaglady47, check your library..they might have "The Bletchley Circle"
And the loss of of lot more lives..
My father-in-law, who recently passed away at the age of 95, was a code copier with an intellegence unit that usually operated just behind the front lines in Europe in WWII. His outfit was teamed with a British company that had the Enigma machine. He copied German traffic which was then decoded by the Enigma. His unit was overrun at the Battle of the Bulge and about half of his unit was killed. As luck would have it, he had an attack of appendicitis and was in a London hospital at the time.
I’ve seen The Bletchley Circle. We were planning a trip to Southern England and London. We wanted to make a day trip to Bletchley Park and to Liverpool.
Informative, historical, little-known input from knowledgeable, literate posters. Congratulations to all.
Leni
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