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Authors: Sinclair McKay
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Cottage, formulating means by which the Italian codes could be cracked by hand. At about the same time – the first Christmas at Bletchley Park, the ducks flapping in the freezing waters of the lake – Knox was also looking over Turing’s plans for new ‘bombe’ machines – which were to prove revolutionary in their potential.
But another obstacle for Bletchley was the fact that the different arms of the German military used subtly different versions of the Enigma system. The army Enigma machine was already fearsomely complex; the naval Enigma, as the cryptographers knew, was quite a different proposition – more complex, with extra code-wheels and more disciplined settings, using strict tables. Denniston doubted it could ever be beaten. For some of the new recruits making their way in blithe ignorance to Bletchley Park in the early months of the war, this would be the overriding priority.
6 Â Â Â 1939â40: The Enigma Initiation
From the start, one of the disorientating elements about Bletchley for a new recruit was the ambiguity of its status. It seemed to be neither a military nor a civilian operation, but â especially in its earliest days â a curious blend of the two.
In other words, this was not an environment of uniform, parade grounds and drill. And as work gathered pace, and the responsibility for breaking codes was divided between services â army, air force, naval â and sectioned off into separate huts, the place remained curiously self-governing and self-disciplining. If you worked in Hut 8 on the naval Enigma, for instance, you answered to the head of Hut 8 and seemingly no one else.
This vagueness of structure, combined with the nature of the personnel that Bletchley Park acquired, was the cause of some initial discomfort and bewilderment in Whitehall. As veteran and historian Harry Hinsley wrote of the organisation of the Park:
[It] remained a loose collection of groups rather than forming a single, tidy organisation ⦠Professors, lecturers and undergraduates, chessmasters and experts from the principal museums, barristers and antiquarian booksellers, some of themin uniform and some civilians on the books of the Foreign Office or the Service ministries â such for the most part were the individuals who inaugurated and manned the various cells which sprang up within or alongside the original sections.
They contributed by their variety and individuality to the lack of uniformity. There is also no doubt that they thrived on it, as they did on the absence at GC&CS of any emphasis on rank or insistence on hierarchy. 1
Lord Dacre, then Hugh Trevor-Roper, was attached to Intelligence at the time and quite often passed through the Park. He was reported as saying that the early years of Bletchley were marked with âfriendly informality verging on apparent anarchyâ.
Perhaps the only parallel with the call-up to the military was that the summons for Bletchley was not questioned by anyone who received it. However, unlike the weeks of careful training that one received for military service â the weapons-handling, the exercises â Bletchley seems to have been something of a plunge pool. For the early codebreakers and linguists alike, there was an element of being parachuted straight in to their new lives with little in the way of instruction. There are those who recall short, intensive courses for beginners being held in a nearby school; according to others, there wasnât even that.
âIt was all pretty quick,â says John Herivel. âI think especially for those of us who arrived in the early days. I was shown the Enigma, and packed off to see Alan Turing and Tony Kendrick. They were, in a sense, my teachers.â
Oliver Lawn, who arrived a little later, found himself feeling quite gung-ho about the nature of the challenges that lay ahead. He recalls: âThese were basically mathematical problems and I had been trained as a
But another obstacle for Bletchley was the fact that the different arms of the German military used subtly different versions of the Enigma system. The army Enigma machine was already fearsomely complex; the naval Enigma, as the cryptographers knew, was quite a different proposition – more complex, with extra code-wheels and more disciplined settings, using strict tables. Denniston doubted it could ever be beaten. For some of the new recruits making their way in blithe ignorance to Bletchley Park in the early months of the war, this would be the overriding priority.
6 Â Â Â 1939â40: The Enigma Initiation
From the start, one of the disorientating elements about Bletchley for a new recruit was the ambiguity of its status. It seemed to be neither a military nor a civilian operation, but â especially in its earliest days â a curious blend of the two.
In other words, this was not an environment of uniform, parade grounds and drill. And as work gathered pace, and the responsibility for breaking codes was divided between services â army, air force, naval â and sectioned off into separate huts, the place remained curiously self-governing and self-disciplining. If you worked in Hut 8 on the naval Enigma, for instance, you answered to the head of Hut 8 and seemingly no one else.
This vagueness of structure, combined with the nature of the personnel that Bletchley Park acquired, was the cause of some initial discomfort and bewilderment in Whitehall. As veteran and historian Harry Hinsley wrote of the organisation of the Park:
[It] remained a loose collection of groups rather than forming a single, tidy organisation ⦠Professors, lecturers and undergraduates, chessmasters and experts from the principal museums, barristers and antiquarian booksellers, some of themin uniform and some civilians on the books of the Foreign Office or the Service ministries â such for the most part were the individuals who inaugurated and manned the various cells which sprang up within or alongside the original sections.
They contributed by their variety and individuality to the lack of uniformity. There is also no doubt that they thrived on it, as they did on the absence at GC&CS of any emphasis on rank or insistence on hierarchy. 1
Lord Dacre, then Hugh Trevor-Roper, was attached to Intelligence at the time and quite often passed through the Park. He was reported as saying that the early years of Bletchley were marked with âfriendly informality verging on apparent anarchyâ.
Perhaps the only parallel with the call-up to the military was that the summons for Bletchley was not questioned by anyone who received it. However, unlike the weeks of careful training that one received for military service â the weapons-handling, the exercises â Bletchley seems to have been something of a plunge pool. For the early codebreakers and linguists alike, there was an element of being parachuted straight in to their new lives with little in the way of instruction. There are those who recall short, intensive courses for beginners being held in a nearby school; according to others, there wasnât even that.
âIt was all pretty quick,â says John Herivel. âI think especially for those of us who arrived in the early days. I was shown the Enigma, and packed off to see Alan Turing and Tony Kendrick. They were, in a sense, my teachers.â
Oliver Lawn, who arrived a little later, found himself feeling quite gung-ho about the nature of the challenges that lay ahead. He recalls: âThese were basically mathematical problems and I had been trained as a
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