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WWII Code-Breaker Dies At Age 95 (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader quotes an article from the Washington Post:
Jane Fawcett, a British code-breaker during World War II who deciphered a key German message that led to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck -- one of Britain's greatest naval victories during the war -- died May 21 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95... Fluent in German and driven by curiosity, Mrs. Fawcett -- then known by her maiden name, Jane Hughes -- found work at Britain's top-secret code-breaking facility at Bletchley Park, about 50 miles northwest of London. Of the 12,000 people who worked there, about 8,000 were women. Bletchley Park later became renowned as the place where mathematician Alan Turing and others solved the puzzle of the German military's "Enigma machine," depicted in the 2014 film "The Imitation Game"...
The sinking of the Bismarck marked the first time that British code-breakers had decrypted a message that led directly to a victory in battle... Mrs. Fawcett's work was not made public for decades. Along with everyone else at Bletchley Park, she agreed to comply with Britain's Official Secrets Act, which imposed a lifetime prohibition on revealing any code-breaking activities.
Meanwhile, volunteers from The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park finally tracked down an original keyboard from the Lorenz machine used to encode top-secret messages between Hitler and his general. It was selling on eBay for 10 pounds, advertised as an old machine for sending telegrams.
The sinking of the Bismarck marked the first time that British code-breakers had decrypted a message that led directly to a victory in battle... Mrs. Fawcett's work was not made public for decades. Along with everyone else at Bletchley Park, she agreed to comply with Britain's Official Secrets Act, which imposed a lifetime prohibition on revealing any code-breaking activities.
Meanwhile, volunteers from The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park finally tracked down an original keyboard from the Lorenz machine used to encode top-secret messages between Hitler and his general. It was selling on eBay for 10 pounds, advertised as an old machine for sending telegrams.
Greetings from Poland. Our enigma clone and hard work of our best code breakers is yours for free. You can forget us later. Or better still, make us the bad guys when you make a film about all this.
Hell, I'd have paid her 100 for it, and I'd bet others would have paid a 100 times that. Just my $.02 (sorry, no quid in my wallet), but he should have given her at least 10% of it's actual value.
Just another day in Paradise
Really? Yes really.
I don't think you've understood the conditions of the time nor the battle of the Atlantic very well.
The problem wasn't the Bismark being some big super-weapon on the loose. Yes, everyone knows that carriers, especially now and even then to some extent are a better projection of power. But that wasn't the point. The UK is an island nation, and part of Germany's tactics was to cut off shipping to the UK, and additionally cut off supplies to Russia which didn't really have it's act together.
The role of the Bismark was commerce raiding. It was large enough to deal with just about any convoy escort (though the good guns on otherwise obsolete WWI era ships like the Ramilles were often a sufficient deterrent), fast enough to chase down any convoy and had better endurance and was substantially faster than the then state of the art aircraft carriers, so it could stick around sinking convoys far longer.
Also, the sea is big, really big. And back then with the state of the art locating tech, a small commerce raiding party could hide very well in the Atlantic. Merchant ships were not designed to hide and gave off smoke, making them much easier to find. But land based aircraft didn't generally have the range to find and attack a distant battleship, leaving it only open for aircraft carriers. The North Atlantic is also much harsher than the Pacific theatre, and there were a lot of very long nights, providing excellent cover for ships.
The Bismark would likely have been very dangerous if it had had escaped to be able to perform commerce raiding, as such the Bismark was a big threat.
While it's true that WWII was the clear end of the battleship as the top dog of the sea, most of WWII was not fought top-dog to top-dog. Much of the battle of the Atlantic was U boats and commerce raiders versus merchant ships, merchant ships armed with guns obsolete in WWI and outdated warships. The UK couldn't afford to commit new capital ships to escort duties, so it hardly matters what the best capital ship was.
As for the other comment, neither side in the war had a carrier planes that were anything like a match for the land based fighters of the time.
When it came down to actually hunting a capital ship it was different. There, the British Navy could afford to deploy serious force. And naturally enough, the the fatal blow to the was in fact dealt by an aircraft carrier.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
A 95 year old woman dies. Is this what "news for nerds" has become?
No matter how interesting her early life, the death is hardly news, and not the best starting point for a nerdy discussion. So I will just moan about the editors instead.
Good job, and thanks much for your valuable input.
Consider that if Slashdot pulled every article that some guy on the internet didn't think belonged there, there would be nothing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Maybe history, codebreaking, and the passing of a generation of people who did amazing things seems neither interesting nor worthy to you, but trust me, your needless bitching is much less so.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
other than the fact that SJWs think they can change nature
Oh, dear. You're one of "those". End of conversation.
Apparently, you're one of "those" who can't handle the truth.
Just another day in Paradise