Bletchley parks lost heroes

[John Arton]

On bbc4 last night this documentary was shown. Absolutely fabulous.
Everyone thinks that by cracking the enigma code led to the code breakers of bletchley park shortening the war but in fact it was their breaking the code of enigma's successor that led to shortening the war and the successful breaking of the code was down to two men. A mathematician called Tutte who first broke the code and a post office engineer who built colusses, the first ever binary computer, one year before the Americans claimed to have invented one.
Enigma required 3 people to operate it, one to compose the message, on to encrypt it on the enigma machine and one to transmit it, similar at the receiving end. The new code used radio telex to operate it which meant that there could be something in the likes of 1.6 million different combinations of the code and only needed the operator and receiver of the lelex machine to send a message.. the new code was picked up when a German operator was requested to resend as message as the recipient did not understand it, the sender resent the message without altering the settings on his machine which led to the discovery of the new code and it's subsequent decoding by the mathematician which in turn led to the post office engineer designing and building the Colossus binary system that translated the code into plain text.
So successful was it that we were able to provide the Russians with the German battle plan for the battle of Kursk which resulted in the destruction of the German invading forces.
By D Day the allies knew the exact disposition and strength of all the German forces in the Normandy region and that coupled with Hitler's belief that the invasion would happen in the Calais area led to the success of not only the Normandy landings but also the success of the invasion of Italy.
Rgds
J.A.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2491866/

[Ivan Cloherty]

John, I also saw the programme but have known about Tutte and Tommy Flaherty (the P O Engineer) for many years. Mr Flaherty was treated disgracefully by the establishment and because he spoke with a cockney accent was held back. He had a few speaking engagements in the USA, but was never properly recognised for his electronic and deduction skills, nor was he properly financially rewarded. Tutte got to sign the book of great British scientists, poet, laureates etc, but without Flaherty, Tutte could not have made any progress, one of life's many injustices.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi John.
I read a book about the battle of Kursk a few years ago, the biggest tank battle the world has ever seen, and will probably never be seen again. In it it mentioned the enigma help they received .
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

We had a program here a couple of years ago about that, not sure if it was the same one though.
It was very interesting as like many others I had the wrong impression of how it all came together.

There was later a movie made about the guy who designed and built the first useable computer.
The guy was it turned out gay and I think committed suicide in the end.

[cappy]

Hi John.
I read a book about the battle of Kursk a few years ago, the biggest tank battle the world has ever seen, and will probably never be seen again. In it it mentioned the enigma help they received .
Des

seen some old film footage des probably ruski propaganda .....them russians sure kicked adolphs asss at kursk .....they seemed to be hundreds of them straight at the krauts .....hitler new he was beat after that for sure .......shame about the ruski sub the Kursk......a few years ago ......cheers cappy

[Ivan Cloherty]

Hi John.
I read a book about the battle of Kursk a few years ago, the biggest tank battle the world has ever seen, and will probably never be seen again. In it it mentioned the enigma help they received .
Des

Just a note, it wasn't the enigma machine that Tutte and Flaherty broke, it was Hitler's personal code machine that only he and top generals (plus operators) had access to. I forget the name of it just now, but it was a sophisticated version of enigma, in it's variation of transmissions stretched to near infinity, so it was thought it could not be broken. As far as I recall it was Tutte who worked out the mathematical formula for decoding but it was Flaherty who worked out how it worked by constructing a working model, which led him to believe that the only way it could be beaten was electronically and that's when he built the computer as transcribing by hand would mean that the decoded messages were obsolete. apparently it had minimum
160,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,variat ions

All this is from memory, so I stand to be corrected as always.

[thomas michael]

hi ivan cloherty #6
good afternoon, like you i saw the program, and i take nothing away from alan turing, but it was flaherty whom built the working model, and was i believe as valuable as turing, but flaherty is practically forgotten, where as turing has been exonerated for his criminal past and acclaimed and celebrated by the liberal left for his sexual behaviour,rather than his intelligence, and flaherty is not even given a second thought.
tom

[John Arton]

Just an aside but I thought the post office engineer was named Flowers and the only recognition he received was a housing close named after him. According to that BBC documentary some aspects of their work still are classified. The German code they cracked was Lorenz.
Rgds
J.A.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers

[thomas michael]

hi john arton #8
good afternoon, thanks for the update, But as id already corrected the name alan turing, i felt i should leave it be with flaherty, and not amend it to thomas flowers.
tom

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Ivan.
It was that last variant Ion that got me I just couldn't get it, will have to back to the drawing board.
Cheers Des