4 ms·
British intelligence, Bletchley Park aside, was amazingly ham-handed and ineffective, by accounts of those involved. (See Leo Marks, "Between Silk and Cyanide".
by pencilguin 4y ago
British intelligence, Bletchley Park aside, was amazingly ham-handed and ineffective, by accounts of those involved. (See Leo Marks, "Between Silk and Cyanide".)
The US, incidentally, was able to decrypt Enigma traffic independently of Bletchley using ordinary cryptanalysis.
- throw0101c 4y agoThe US seems to have used its own equipment, but used British cryptanalysis: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#American_bombes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Am... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe#US_Navy_Bombe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe#US_Navy_Bombe Do you have sources that indicate otherwise?
- pencilguin 4y agoI rely on a biography of the Friedmans. No mistake, they had full access to the Polish analysis and bombe design.
- InTheArena 4y agoThese were not used in the most critical battle of the war, that unquestionably resulted in a massive battlefield victory that changed the course of world war 2 - Midway.
- pencilguin 4y agoJapanese codes were transparent before and throughout the war. They were not Enigma codes. It was well known exactly when the Japanese planned to start the Pacific War, though intercepts did not say where. Many in the Navy were sure it would be at Pearl Harbor. Notably, the militarily useless battleships were there, but not the aircraft carriers.
- fmajid 4y agoAnd all the mathematical breakthroughs needed to crack Enigma and make it tractable to the primitive computers of the day were made by the Poles anyway, which was conveniently airbrushed from history.
- pannSun 4y agoI was not aware - could you explain further?
- pencilguin 4y agoPoles smuggled out a complete first-model Enigma machine, performed the cryptanalysis that revealed its core weakness, and also created the first of the "bombe" machines used for most of the decryptions. Bletchley Park acted as central clearinghouse for intercepted ciphertexts, distributing decryptions with elaborate care to keep the Germans from knowing Enigma had been cracked. Late in the war, they built an electronic gadget called Colossus to decrypt traffic from a much more difficult version of Enigma.
- fmajid 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Polish_breakthroughs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma#Po...