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Bletchley Park WWII Staff Finally Recognized
99luftballon writes "Nearly 70 years after Station X (aka the Bletchley Park cryptanalysis unit) was set up, the surviving members are to be honored by the British government. Bletchley was one of the most important computing centers of its time and housed giants of the technology industry (as it was) like Tommy Flowers, who built Colossus, and Dr. Alan Turing. I was lucky enough to meet one of the staff at the site 11 years ago, and she was very bitter that their work was never recognized, and that they were bound by the Official Secrets Act and couldn't talk about it. It's just a shame that so few of the staff are still alive to receive the award."
On the flipside, by covering up the work, one could argue that they kept their society more free from the rule of foreign regimes by securing vital technology.
But, for how many years is it useful to do this?
Bitter? About not receiving public recognition over classified work?
The contribution of those who worked at Bletchley Park is immeasurable, both literally and figuratively. Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the history of cryptography or the Second World War knows of Bletchley Park.
But bitter about not having received official recognition because of the rules that were in place to maintain secrecy? Yeah, the secrecy was maintained long after it was necessary and had well passed into public knowledge, but BITTER?
I'm sorry, but no. There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of individuals whose contributions toward a free society will never be known because of the secrecy in which they had to conduct their duties. If we include those who died in war and whose bodies or for that matter, identities were never recovered, that number would probably reach into the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.
And this lady is bitter that she hasn't received recognition from the British government?
Sorry, but color me a little unsympathetic.
Actually what the germans would have done instead of trying to bomb bletchley (which they likely could have done using the knickebein , X-beam or Y-beam bombing system depending on date) was to change their encryption systems to something more secure.
They made a number of errors in how thy used the Enigma (stereotypical messages, repetition of the message key etc.) which they could have corrected sooner had they known that the British (and notably the poles even before the war) had broken the Enigma.
For instance the naval version of the Enigma was much harder to break than the standard army version as German marine was much more conscious about the above pitfalls and had a more complex Enigma.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to mars with a hammer
My Father served for a time in 1942 at Bletchley Park. He wasn't involved with the 'real work' but his duties were to guard those who were.
Right up to his death in 1994, he refused point blank to talk about what went on there even though there were TV progs and even books available about the work that went on. All he would say was that 'I was stationed in Buckinghamshire and we guarded some very important people. We were told never to speak about where we were and what we were doing. He was emphatic about that. Even today people who worked there are very reluctant to talk about it.
He was the same btw about the scenes he was in 1945 when his company was one of the first into Belsen. They were forbidden to talk about it. He never did.
I only found out about both places from his diaries that were passed on to me after his death.
I doubt if the usefulness of such secrecy ever came into it. The British government has an extensive record for secretiveness, largely because they have a long record of underhand dealings with all parts of the world, including their own populace.
They probably kept Bletchley Park's role (subsequently to the War) under wraps out of nothing more than sheer habit.
Yes, but had they honored those at Bletchley Park, perhap Alan Turing would not have suicided. (Some say he was assassinated) At least he would have been viewed as a hero for what he (and others) achieved for the Allies.
PS: Don't mention the war, I did once but I think I got away with it!
BadAnalogyGuy:
It makes sense to me. Here's another analogy: have you heard of the recent case where a Moslem woman was suing some guy in a German court, the guy starts stabbing her, her husband wades in to stop him, then a guard shows up and shoots the husband? Don't you think the husband deserves more of an apology than the usual innocent bystander gets?
And trust me, I believe persecuted gay guys and shot innocent bystanders both deserve *big* apologies.
Actually the Colossus was not used on the Enigma cipher, but instead on the Lorenz-cipher (somewhat similar to Enigma, but more complex) which was used by the german high command and the Nazi-top exclusively.
The British build copies of the polish bombes, and after the Germans changed the day-key scheme, Turing designed a new version of the bombes which was capable to deal with that (once a proper 'crib' was found, often based on German wether reports which tended to be more stereotypical)
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Think about it.
Revelation of a capability will immediately cause adversaries to adapt themselves to minimize exposure to your areas of expertise. That can be instant or point research and be more gradual. Either way, even suggestions of your present capabilities are priceless for an adversary's minimization of risk. That's why intelligence methods are kept secret. A lot of people simply do not get this connection.
For a good read, I can recommend "The Hut Six Story : Breaking the Enigma Codes by Gordon Welchman".
Some of the reasons why Enigma Failed:
1) Choosing "sillies" for encryption keys (eg QWE, QAZ (or whatever the equivalent is on the German AZERTY keyboard).
2) Re-using keys
3) Using Cribs (eg putting some of the preamble of the message into the encrypted part)
4) Sending the same message day after day (eg "Nothing to Report"). This would compromise the key for all stations using that key:
5) Using the same key for lots of destination stations
6) Fundamental design limitation (A Letter will never encrypt to itself).
7) Enigma operator laziness (eg using the same order of wheels as the previous day). (There are 5*4*3 = 60 combinations possible).
8) More laziness - using the default Ring setting on each ring.
9) "Indicator setting" repeated - in 1 in 8 cases this would lead to a repeated encrypted key - which would give the cryptanalyst an idea of which wheels could have been used. (Fundamentally this is a kind of key distribution problem - how to get the session key established).
10) Basing a military encryption system on a commercial product.
Sixty years on, we're still making some of the same mistakes!