get into the wartime cyphers. The Zygalski sheets allowed Rejewski to make the first break into the German wartime Enigma: a German Army message in what the codebreakers dubbed the Green cypher for the 28 October 1939. Turingâs visit also uncovered the reasons for the British codebreakersâ failure to break any wartime Enigma. The information the Poles had given them was inadvertently wrong, providing the incorrect turnover points for two of the wheels. Shortly after Turingâs arrival back in the UK, Knox used the corrected information to break the Green Army Enigma settings for 28 October and, within days, an Enigma key known as the Red was broken for 6and 17 January 1940. (The first Enigma cyphers to be worked on by GC&CS were given the names of colours because progress was listed on boards using coloured crayons, the green and red crayons simply being the first that came to hand.)
Despite Knoxâs undoubted brilliance as a codebreaker, there were those who felt that something more intensive along the lines of a codebreaking production line would be required once the Phoney War came to an end and British troops became involved in the fighting.
âOne decision had been taken just prior to the first success,â noted Nigel de Grey, who took charge of intelligence production.
Among the younger men engaged on the Enigma problem, Commander Travis had found not only the knowledge required to grapple with the Bombe theory but men with an active sense of urgency. He felt that the atmosphere of research work tended to cloud the practical attack, the âchuck and chance itâ spirit that might hook the fish while the more experienced fisherman still considered the colour of his fly. Both were necessary but one should be tried not independently of, but separately from, the other. The decision to make this change was taken at a meeting held on 5 December 1939 and it was further determined to move the exploitation party into a new wooden hut erected in the garden of Bletchley Park, named Hut 6. This they occupied in January and as Hut 6 they were ever after known.
Commander Edward Travis, Dennistonâs deputy, had been the governmentâs main adviser on what type of codes and cyphers to use before the war, a secondary role of GC&CS. Short, stout and bald, with small round spectacles, âJumboâ Travis was fifty-one years old and an able and forceful administrator who did not feel himself bound by the traditions of the veteran codebreakers. He put one of the impressive new younger men identified by de Grey in charge of Hut 6. Gordon Welchman, astudious, pipe-smoking man in his early thirties with dark hair and a moustache, who was far more dynamic than his academic appearance suggested, had already begun recruiting his own people to man the section. Stuart Milner-Barry, the 33- year-old Chess Correspondent of The Times and a fellow student of Welchmanâs at Trinity College, Cambridge, was one of the first to join Hut 6, as Welchmanâs deputy. When the war broke out he had been in Argentina playing chess for Britain, along with his friends 30-year-old Hugh Alexander and 28-year-old Harry Golombek. They too soon joined, as did the 31- year-old Scottish chess champion J. M. âMaxâ Aitken; 30-year-old Dennis Babbage, from Magdalene College, Cambridge and Howard Smith, also thirty and like Welchman a Fellow of Sidney Sussex. (Smith would later serve as British Ambassador to the Soviet Union and then as head of MI5.) Continuity with Knoxâs efforts was provided by John Jeffreys. Knox continued to carry out research into various problems in the Cottage while Hut 6 prepared to carry out what was hoped to be the day-to -day breaking of Enigma. It is important to realise that at this stage no one was sure whether the success would continue. Indeed, there were concerns that it might not last at all, that the Germans were bound eventually to realise that Enigma was not secure, de Grey
Despite Knoxâs undoubted brilliance as a codebreaker, there were those who felt that something more intensive along the lines of a codebreaking production line would be required once the Phoney War came to an end and British troops became involved in the fighting.
âOne decision had been taken just prior to the first success,â noted Nigel de Grey, who took charge of intelligence production.
Among the younger men engaged on the Enigma problem, Commander Travis had found not only the knowledge required to grapple with the Bombe theory but men with an active sense of urgency. He felt that the atmosphere of research work tended to cloud the practical attack, the âchuck and chance itâ spirit that might hook the fish while the more experienced fisherman still considered the colour of his fly. Both were necessary but one should be tried not independently of, but separately from, the other. The decision to make this change was taken at a meeting held on 5 December 1939 and it was further determined to move the exploitation party into a new wooden hut erected in the garden of Bletchley Park, named Hut 6. This they occupied in January and as Hut 6 they were ever after known.
Commander Edward Travis, Dennistonâs deputy, had been the governmentâs main adviser on what type of codes and cyphers to use before the war, a secondary role of GC&CS. Short, stout and bald, with small round spectacles, âJumboâ Travis was fifty-one years old and an able and forceful administrator who did not feel himself bound by the traditions of the veteran codebreakers. He put one of the impressive new younger men identified by de Grey in charge of Hut 6. Gordon Welchman, astudious, pipe-smoking man in his early thirties with dark hair and a moustache, who was far more dynamic than his academic appearance suggested, had already begun recruiting his own people to man the section. Stuart Milner-Barry, the 33- year-old Chess Correspondent of The Times and a fellow student of Welchmanâs at Trinity College, Cambridge, was one of the first to join Hut 6, as Welchmanâs deputy. When the war broke out he had been in Argentina playing chess for Britain, along with his friends 30-year-old Hugh Alexander and 28-year-old Harry Golombek. They too soon joined, as did the 31- year-old Scottish chess champion J. M. âMaxâ Aitken; 30-year-old Dennis Babbage, from Magdalene College, Cambridge and Howard Smith, also thirty and like Welchman a Fellow of Sidney Sussex. (Smith would later serve as British Ambassador to the Soviet Union and then as head of MI5.) Continuity with Knoxâs efforts was provided by John Jeffreys. Knox continued to carry out research into various problems in the Cottage while Hut 6 prepared to carry out what was hoped to be the day-to -day breaking of Enigma. It is important to realise that at this stage no one was sure whether the success would continue. Indeed, there were concerns that it might not last at all, that the Germans were bound eventually to realise that Enigma was not secure, de Grey
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