Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes: The Secrets of Bletchley Park

A Greenhill Book

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Greenhill Books, Lionel Leventhal Limited

www.greenhillbooks.com

This paperback edition published in 2013 by Frontline Books

an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street, Barnsley, S. Yorkshire, S70 2AS

www.frontline-books.com

Copyright © Gwen Watkins, 2006

The right of Paul Britten Austin to be identified as the author of this work has been

asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN: 978-1-84832-682-8

eISBN 978-1-78303-660-8

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Edited and typeset by Wordsense Ltd, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group

For David Wendt

Without whose generous help and prodigious memory this book could never have been written

Dear David,

In those far-off days when we were both young and both at Bletchley Park, you seemed to me to have one fault: you were absurdly modest. You never seemed to realise that other people could not have done the things that you did, nor have made the discoveries that you made. And now, in your eighties, you still have that fault.

When the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) awarded you the Australia Day Medallion for your ‘numerous firsts in a very difficult area’, your ‘rare ability to assimilate and correlate minor pieces of information’, the ‘originality and accuracy’ of your research, which ‘contributed significantly to DSD’s high standing in the SIGINT community’, you said that the medallion might have gone to a chauffeur or cleaner – it just happened to have come round to you.

But your employers knew better. When you retired, they said that during your twenty-two years in the DSD you had acquired the reputation, not only in your own organisation but also in many others, of being an expert in your own field and for being responsible for many significant achievements in that field. It was the same at Bletchley, wasn’t it? You did extraordinary things, and always thought that anyone else might have done them.

So, do you believe now that you were brilliant, and that no one else could have done what you did?

No, of course you don’t.

GMW

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Foreword

Introduction

Acknowledgements

1 In the Beginning

2 Keeping the Record Straight

3 David

4 The Interview

5 Talk about the Park

6 German Air Section

7 David Gets to Work

8 Within the Gates

9 Making Friends

10 Living Quarters

11 Changes

12 Orchestra

13 The Camp

14 The End of the Park

15 Afterwards

Appendices

1 Brief Introduction to Codes and Ciphers

2 Control Commission (British Element), 1946–7

3 Food at Bletchley

Select Bibliography

Glossary

Illustrations

J. E. S. Cooper (Josh)

The author (as Sergeant G. M. Davies) on arrival at Bletchley Park, May 1942

Sergeant Robert Hivnor, US Army Intelligence Corps; German Air Section

Vernon Watkins’s fellow code-breakers in Hut Fifty-four, RAF Church Green

David Wendt with a friend in Bletchley Park days

Cartoon on the importance of not being intellectual

Certificate of Discharge from the RAF

Flight Sergeant Vernon Watkins with the author (his wife Gwen) and his daughter, January 1946

Letter from Vernon Watkins to Janet Downs, a fellow code-breaker, 1946, with a drawing of Vernon by Janet

Letter from Robert Hivnor to the author about Codebreakers, 1994

An issue of the Hut Fifty-Four journal, 1960

Letter from Janet Downs to the author, after seeing the TV programme Station X, 1999

David Wendt, 2003

Preface

MOST OF THE BOOKS about Bletchley Park in the 80s and 90s were written or compiled by the pundits, who had worked there from before the war and knew all about Enigma, Ultra and all that stuff. Their books were full of mind-bending technicalities, such as ‘If the consistent set of steckers of Z, V, O and Y contains only one letter of the last four chains, this will imply letters for the other stecker(s) of the chain which could conceivably result in a contradiction’ … But my book had nothing in it like that, because I knew nothing about Enigma until many years after the war, and was in any case one of the lowliest of code-breakers, working with furrowed brow on fairly simple codes.

The critics, probably dreading another mind-bending volume, were proportionately grateful, and were kind to it. One said almost affectionately that he liked the chubby format of the book: ‘it is nice, it doesn’t slip out of your hands if your eyes close.’ Another heartily advised anyone who simply liked a good read to buy it, which is the sort of criticism that goes straight to an author’s heart. It was nice to be told that I had written a compelling first-hand account of Britain’s battle to crack the German codes, because it had sometimes seemed to me that I had written a rather self-indulgent book about myself, my friends, where we lived and how we amused ourselves in the Second World War. I greatly admired the American critic who, probably too young to be greatly concerned about a war which was over before he was born, frankly confessed that he was particularly fascinated by the Appendix on wartime food. I sympathised with him; it was an interesting subject, and I could have put in some rather nice recipes too, if I had known that anybody would care.

I was grateful, too, to readers who wrote to tell me what they thought of the book. Most of these letters came from people who had worked in the Intelligence or Signal services, many from outstations as far afield as Cheadle, Chicksands or Beaumanoir; another book could have been written from their reminiscences. But the most precious of all letters were those from the friends – a dwindling band of survivors – who had actually been with me in Mr B’s section. These brought me great joy; darling Tim E, the now illustrious Lewis R., titled and with many letters after his name – and with a pleasant story connected with his mention in the book. The publishers received a letter from the National Museums of Scotland, asking permission to exhibit the photograph of the occupants of Hut 54 ‘as we do not possess a wartime image of Sir Lewis’. There’s glory for you, as Humpty Dumpty said! Besides this, I had a splendid letter from Ann Lavell (now Cunningham), prestigious PA to dear Josh Cooper himself, giving me news of my dear friend Beanie, with whom I spent happy leave days, wandering around Oxford and watching undergraduates and Servicemen (often American) fall helpless before her many charms. Also, splendidly, an email from one of Josh’s nieces, asking if he was really as eccentric as his contemporaries had said. I was able to tell her stories which proved that indeed he was (though Ann assured me that Josh threw his coffee cup into the lake only once but popular mythology had him doing so every summer evening). And what to answer to the insomniac friend who, having no interest in cryptography, picked up my book one night to send him to sleep, but found himself still reading at 6.30 the next morning? Neither ‘Sorry’ nor ‘Oh, I am glad’ exactly expressed my feelings.

In order to correct any typos (which I used to call ‘misprints’; thank you Ann, for bringing me marginally up to date), the author has to read through the whole book. This brought all that strange life, so many years ago, before me as though in one of those glass globes that enshrine a tiny scene. Outside Bletchley Park, our lives were much like those of other people living or staying in Britain. If we travelled to certain areas we were in danger of being bombed or having a V1 or a V2 crash down upon us, or on our homes or loved ones. Relatives and friends serving abroad might at any time be killed or mutilated or taken prisoner. We put up with all the shortages of food, clothing and other items too numerous to mention but wildly exasperating; not to possess a match if you were billeted in a house where candles were the only means of lighting seemed to be the last straw when you came off the midnight shift. In all these things you were the same as everyone else; only, outside the Park, you could never breathe a word of what you did inside it. This led to a closeness with your friends and fellow-workers which has been commented on by most people who have written about their time at Bletchley. They were the only ones who understood what this silence meant when you went home or met other friends, or when someone you loved died, and you had never been able to speak about how your days were spent. But we hoped (and some of us knew) that this silence was the price of winning the war, and it was after all a small price to pay. Thousands paid an infinitely greater price. The consequences of losing that war would have been more appalling than anyone now living can imagine, and we were intensely grateful that we were allowed to take a small or a great part in saving the world from that disaster.

Gwen Watkins, 2013

Foreword

by Asa Briggs

EVERYONE WHO WORKED at BP (Bletchley Park) during the Second World War – and our numbers are diminishing – had her or his secrets, and everyone by oath was bound to keep them. For reasons that she explains, Gwen Watkins in her fascinating memoir now feels that she can tell some of the secrets of a unique establishment that during the war scarcely dared to speak its name. In the absence of written archives, memoirs are of crucial importance, and time is running out.

At BP I was in a different section from Gwen’s, but I met her there and knew well the man whom she married, the poet Vernon Watkins. Through my own experience I can confirm that the details which she sets out in her clear and highly readable account of her own experience at BP are authentic. I greatly admire her skill in putting everything together.

At the time both of us were very young – Gwen describes herself as ‘young and silly’ – and both of us reacted sharply against the pretensions of ‘authority’. These were never entirely missing in BP, but there was a strong sense of common participation. Once inside BP you came to feel, as she comments, that it was a ‘social place’. Even before its secrets began to be told I had come to the conclusion that it needed a good social history.

To me BP, after Cambridge, was an education in itself, both in working and in living. Gwen and I were carrying out different tasks. In military uniform I was a cryptographer working in Hut Six on the Enigma cipher, a member of ‘the Watch’. ‘Intelligence’ was separate from cryptography, although I was a member of the Intelligence Corps and that gave me cover when I was outside. As a WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force), Gwen was employed in breaking what we called ‘low-grade’ Luftwaffe codes. I was unusual in knowing more than most in BP about what other people were doing. I had friends in many sections, including people who were working on more difficult ciphers than Enigma.

I knew at the time how essential to the effective work of BP – and to the winning of the war – was the work of WAAFs, WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) and the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service). I had never seen so many women in my life! Even then, though muzzled, I dreamed of writing a history of BP, more than a social history, just as Gwen dreamed of writing a novel. Vernon actually wrote poems, and there were lots of future publishers around. Both my history and Gwen’s novel would have dealt with the relationships (a crucial word at BP) between men and women. Both would have focused also on the relationships between the younger and the older members of the BP community. The older were not very old, but they seemed old to us. Indeed, this was my first sense of ‘a generation gap’. Because BP was a ‘sociable place’, formal and informal relationships mattered. If I were writing my history or my autobiography I would concentrate on them more than on functional charts of responsibilities.

Gwen’s account speaks for itself, but for me she makes three main points about BP which are not often made. First, the experiences of the people working there are only part of their lifetime experiences: there was a before and after. This comes out vividly in what is said in her book about David Wendt and, indeed, about GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters). Second, people’s experiences at BP encompassed their life outside BP as well as inside it. Their billets, which varied widely in the facilities and amenities that they offered, were as much the scene of their lives as the architecturally interesting offices in which they worked, and a pub, like the Duncombe Arms at Great Brickhill, lingers as much in the mind as the refectory in BP itself. The Bletchley cinema too played a big part in all our lives. Third, the American presence at BP, late in manifesting itself, affected everyone who worked there. I was on the Watch in Hut Six when Bill Bundy and his colleagues arrived. Previously I had met Telford Taylor, a soldier who made his mark as an historian. I had met very few Americans before 1942, and it was by spending a lot of time at their headquarters that I first learned of tomato juice, American bacon, American coffee and, not least for me, American universities. I kept in touch with Bundy and some of his colleagues after the war. New relationships had begun, and they subsequently unfolded. One of my closest American friends, Frank Stanton, married a girl who worked near to him at Bletchley. Their family in sociological terms was a by-product of BP. Frank was a pop song writer, who had taken a degree in English at Yale, and through him I came to learn about Broadway and Nashville, Tennessee.

It did not much matter what subjects one had studied before going to BP. People who had read English could be just as good cryptographers as people who had read mathematics. In my own part of Hut Six – the Machine Room, which was separated from the Watch – we had to know about all the properties of the Enigma machine. Alan Turing was on the edge of my world. I made my own way to BP by a circuitous route, with the mathematics Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Gordon Welchman, watching me on the way. He appears frequently in Gwen’s account, and he wrote a book about BP, The Hut Six Story, which got him into trouble. He was a critic of authority.

Far from getting into trouble with Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes: The Secrets of Bletchley Park, Gwen Watkins will pass into general history, and not just the history of cryptography and of Intelligence. I am proud to have been asked to write this foreword to her book. I am grateful to her for writing it.

Introduction

WHEN WE CODE-BREAKERS left Bletchley Park on or before VE Day (8 May 1945), we found on our Certificate of Discharge a warning. This is what it said:

You are hereby reminded that the unauthorised communication by you to another person at any time of any information you may have acquired whilst in His Majesty’s Service which might be useful to an enemy in war renders you liable to prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.

We younger ones