
WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until after the war - sohkamyung
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/09/25/bletchley_bombe_operator_interview/
======
spongeb00b
Brilliant timing - I visited the National Museum of Computing (the computer
museum that’s next to the actual Bletchley Park house) 2 weeks ago as Ruth
Bourne was giving a talk while stood at the reconstructed Bombe. It was
incredible to hear firsthand from someone who had been a part of this war
effort.

She couldn’t even tell her mother what she worked on as the news would be “all
round town within minutes”.

~~~
wyldfire
Gee, that sounds like an interesting visit. And it looks like it opened in
2007. I'd bet the US' most notable computer museum is the CHM in California.
It would be nice if we had a public museum for computing like the UK's.
Although I suppose there might not be much difference in practice.

~~~
valiant-comma
The National Cryptologic Museum[1] next to Fort Meade has an extensive
collection of code-breaking devices and computers from various time periods,
plus a library.

[1] [https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-
heritage/museum/](https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/museum/)

------
yesenadam
After I watched _The Imitation Game_ lately I read about the Polish efforts,
almost totally ignored in that movie and everything I'd read, as if the
British invented the whole thing, possibly Turing single-handedly. The article
says "based partly on an earlier Polish design" but doesn't say

 _Up to July 25, 1939, the Poles had been breaking Enigma messages for over
six and a half years ..._

 _The Poles ' gift of Enigma decryption to their Western allies, five weeks
before the outbreak of World War II, came not a moment too soon .. Gordon
Welchman, head of Bletchley Park's Hut 6...writes: "Hut 6 Ultra would never
have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick
of time, the details both of the German military version of the commercial
Enigma machine, and of the operating procedures that were in use."_

 _..French and British military intelligence,...had been unable to make any
headway against Enigma. This Polish intelligence-and-technology transfer would
give the Allies an unprecedented advantage (Ultra) in their ultimately
victorious prosecution of World War II._

Also the name _bombe_ is explained:

 _The first machine was built by the Poles and was a hand operated multiple
enigma machine. When a possible solution was reached a part would fall off the
machine onto the floor with a loud noise. Hence the name "bombe"._

There is a Polish movie about that story, _Sekret Enigmy_ (1979), but I
haven't been able to get hold of it yet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_(cryptography)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomba_\(cryptography\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Rejewski)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biuro_Szyfr%C3%B3w](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biuro_Szyfr%C3%B3w)

 _Sekret Enigmy_ :
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079878/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079878/)

~~~
oh_sigh
What was it about the Poles that let them break Enigma while other countries
couldn't? Mathematics talent? Mechanical talent? Luck? A desire to not be
invaded and overrun by Germany?

~~~
EthanHeilman
I'm not a historian, but from what I can tell:

1\. The Poles won a decisive victory in the Polish–Soviet War (1921) a war in
which the Soviet's had a clear advantage because the Polish forces were able
to intercept and read Soviet communication during the Battle of Warsaw [0].
This reinforced the value of such intelligence to the Polish government.

2\. Poland understood it was only a matter of time before Germany or the
Soviets/Russia attempted to occupy them again. They made the breaking of
German and Soviet codes and ciphers a priority.

3\. The Polish cryptographers understood the importance of their work. They
had the shared national trauma of Germany and Russia's many attempts at
exterminating Polish culture during over several hundreds years of foreign
occupation. They were the best cryptanalysis in the world and they had the
full support of the government and intelligence services and were dedicated to
their mission

The wikipedia article on the Cipher Bureau "Biuro Szyfrów" [1] is worth
reading.

>During this period, until the collapse of France in June 1940, ultimately 83
percent of the Enigma keys that were found, were solved at Bletchley Park, the
remaining 17 percent at PC Bruno. Rejewski commented: "How could it be
otherwise, when there were three of us [Polish cryptologists] and [there were]
at least several hundred British cryptologists, since about 10,000 people
worked in Bletchley... Besides, recovery of keys also depended on the amount
of intercepted cipher material, and that amount was far greater on the British
side than on the French side. Finally, in France (by contrast with the work in
Poland) we ourselves not only sought for the daily keys, but after finding the
key also read the messages.... One can only be surprised that the Poles had as
many as 17 percent of the keys to their credit"

{0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War#Batt...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish%E2%80%93Soviet_War#Battle_of_Warsaw)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biuro_Szyfr%C3%B3w](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biuro_Szyfr%C3%B3w)

~~~
fortpoint
The Poles set up a cryptography program for mathematics students at Poznań
University in 1929[1]. I believe Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy
Różycki we're all associated with that program.

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzis%C5%82aw_Krygowski](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zdzis%C5%82aw_Krygowski)

------
basementcat
Not to take away anything from Allied codebreaking efforts, I find that _Axis_
codebreaking efforts (against the Allies) before and during WW2 are
underdocumented. I suspect some of this underdocumentation may be due to the
Allies continuing to use WW2 cipher equipment into the Korean War.

TL;DR The Germans also built their own cipher analysis machines and were able
to decode a substantial amount of Allied message traffic.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_code_breaking_in_World_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_code_breaking_in_World_War_II)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher_Department_of_the_High_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cipher_Department_of_the_High_Command_of_the_Wehrmacht#Rapid_analytic_machinery)
[3]
[http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Ultra/SRH-009/SRH009-6.h...](http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/ETO/Ultra/SRH-009/SRH009-6.html)

~~~
kiwijimm
The thing the allies did know and the Germans largely ignored was the fact
that their Ciphers could be vulnerable. They tested them. Despite some pockets
of dissent the Germans thought enigma was totally secure and never subjected
it to proper analysis from their side. Also the German hierarchy during the
war made it difficult for dissenting voices from the ranks to be heard on
these topics.

Donitz was one exception. He suspected the allies were breaking enigma and
hence the security of the naval enigma's was increased. I believe he advocated
for more changes but was stopped or ran out of time.

After the war the allies sent in teams of intelligence operatives to assess
how much the Germans knew about allied codebreaking and intelligence efforts.
What they found was that the secrecy of Ultra worked and held throughout the
war.

James

------
sohkamyung
Those interested in knowing more about the role of the Polish mathematicians /
cryptographers in the breaking of Enigma may want to check out a new book: "X,
Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken" by Dermot Turing (Alan
Turing's nephew), published by The History Press (2018).

Here's a review of the book at Nature News and Comment [1]

[1]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06149-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06149-y)

------
linsomniac
Coincidentally, this article came up while I'm listening to the audio book
Cryptonomicon where they are talking about Turing's bike with a bent spoke and
weak link in the chain, and relating it to how the Enigma works, while they're
taking a bike ride at Bletchley Park. My fourth time through the book, this
time with my daughter reading it.

~~~
interlocutor2
I wouldn't want to listen to the sex scenes in Cryptonomicon with any
potential future daughters.

~~~
linsomniac
Not so much "with", but she's reading it also. She prefers and has time for
reading where I mostly listen. But, yeah, it can be a little weird some of the
books I want to share with the kiddos. No better are the books she's reading
in school that I'm following, like The Secret to Lying...

But, she's gone through the OWL training a number of times, which helps
prepare her for life.

I really want to share Diamond Age with her, but think she needs a couple
years. Not because of the sex, but because of the abusive parents Nell has.

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SEJeff
If you're in or around Chicago and want to see an Enigma, we have one at the
U505 exhibit: [https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-
here/exhibits/u-505...](https://www.msichicago.org/explore/whats-
here/exhibits/u-505-submarine/)

They captured a Uboat without the Germans finding out and kept the sailors
hidden away in prison camps so the Nazis didn't know we'd captured an Enigma
and codebooks for it. Another fascinating story about how all Allies came
together to defeat the Axis.

