While Station X was being overloaded with supplies, it still had to keep its secrecy. This meant that contact between Huts was by tubes, which was designed so that threats from German spies were reduced. “Ultra” was added to these messages, which meant no action could be taken unless this information was proven from another source.
Breaking the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park
The Enigma machine was a typewriter that encoded messages. The purpose of the Enigma Machine was to create messages in an encrypted form so that they could not be decoded if intercepted.
If Bletchley Park had no idea what an Enigma machine looked like, then their chances of breaking Enigma would have been too small to compute. However, since this did not happen, and Poland did help out, they at least had a chance.
Alan Turing’s inventions were also a vital aid in the cracking of Enigma. Both Bombes and Jumbos, which were the improved versions of Bombes, saved a tremendous amount of time and effort. However, when Turing invited Tommy Flowers, Flowers suggested making a better version of the jumbo that used valves. Only Turing agreed for this machine to be invented, so Flowers and some of his colleagues decided to make it In December 1943, the machine was constructed and named Colossus. It was the first ever programmable computer.
Bletchley Park also benefited form clues provided by the German operators and the Enigma Machine. The Enigma machine would never encode a letter to the same letter e.g. J encoded would not be J but something else. This may have not seemed as much help, but at the time, it proved very useful. However, even with these clues to help Bletchley Park out, it was still a vigorous process of figuring out the settings. What was needed was an understanding of the settings that were used each day, so the decoding would have been a lot faster.
Despite Bletchley Park’s continuous struggle, the first major breakthrough came in January 1940. It was Alan Turing who went to France to discuss with the Polish and try to find out why Bletchley Park was still having so much trouble with Enigma. He realised that the information they got was muddled. He returned to Bletchley Park and attacked the cipher used by the German Army, nicknamed “Green”. He succeeded. Part of the Enigma was broke which gave the Station X workforce a huge morale boost. At this point, secrecy became top priority since if the Germans found out that Enigma was broken and then all of Station X’s achievements would have been vain. A second breakthrough came in February 1940, where John Herivel, a young mathematician, found another way of solving the settings.
John Herivel would imagine the German operator and what he would do each morning when he started work. He imagined the operator realising that the first thing he has to do is to change the setting of the Enigma machine. However, Station X believed that the Germans thought that Enigma was unbreakable, so Herivel assumed that German operators would not be too careful when they send their first message which is to send the setting to other operators. Herivel’s method was greeted with great eagerness; however they could not test his method because there were too few messages sent by the Germans in March and February 1940.
In Conclusion, I think the most important reason why Station X was able to break the Enigma code was because of the breakthroughs of Alan Turing and John Herivel, without those it would have taken them longer to crack it and therefore meant heavy losses. I also think that help from the Polish was also vital, because without the Polish, Station X may have not cracked Enigma at all.
Bletchley Park’s influence on World War 2
In April 1940, the main Enigma codes were broken. This was the first time that Station X was able to provide information to the Armed Forces, however this had its disadvantages. One being that when asked, due to secrecy, Station X found it hard to answer where they got their information form. This, therefore meant that some information was checked over before approved. Another reason was that the Armed Forces already had a decoding centre of their own so little help form Station X was needed. Even if the staff knew about Station X and its history, they still wouldn’t accept it due to Station X not being in the Armed Forces.
The first case of information being ignored from Station X occurred during April 1940. The Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) showed no interest in the information being presented. This then resulted in the British being unaware of German attacks near Norway so British resources was tight. The second case where Station X was ignored was in May 1940. More messages were starting to pile up, and these messages something huge was going to happen. OIC was informed of this, but still ignored them.. Eventually, the HMS Glorious was sunk due to not listening to Station X, which caused a loss of 1,500 crew members
Station X could not play an important role as they did before, but was able to develop its establishment and tactics before the Battle of Britain began as there was no activity from the German side to cause any major alarms. In July 1940, the Battle of Britain began and Station X was able to pass the information on faster to the M.I.6. An intercepted decoded message was translated and stated that instead of London, Coventry was the target of German bombing. When Churchill was informed of this, he used this as a propaganda tool to show that he defied Hitler’s strength by convincing the British people that Hitler would not dare attack London.
Station X managed to contribute information regarding the invasion of Crete. General Freyburg, the New Zealand Commander in Crete, did not have the resources needed to withstand an airborne invasion, however, the Germans had now lost the element of surprise and as a result paratroopers suffered heavy losses. The victory belonged to General Freyburg, but more to Station X as it managed to camouflage the detailed information decoded from the messages so that Germans were not suspicious that Enigma was broken.
Station X’s greatest success was in 1941, when they helped to defeat German U-boats. Britain did depend heavily on merchant shipping from the U.S.A. In July 1941 when Station X broke the Dolphin code, which was the code being used at the time by the German Navy, the record of sinking merchant ships had fallen. However the Germans quickly devised a new coding system called ‘Shark’ which again returned confidentiality and superiority to the Germans, allowing them to return. The breaking of the Shark coding system tipped the war in the Allies favour once again. As well as more than 100 U-boats were being sunk, the use of aircraft carriers and better convoy protections allows the allies to exploit the broken Shark coding system. After the Atlantic was conquered, the remaining U-boats fled to the Mediterranean and protected their own supplies. By December 1941, the condition in North Africa had altered. Station X was providing information about the German force. Station X was now engaged in cracking the Chaffinch coding system used by the Germans within the Mediterranean region. A victory at El Alamien was what secured North Africa for the Allies.
Out of all the operations in Europe, none of them need more accurate information than D-Day. In May 1944, Station X discovered that the Germans were expecting a landing in Normandy, but expected that this would be a diversion to the main attack in Calais. Station X managed to find this out and the Allies then manage to adapt their plans. D-Day was originally planned for 4 June 1944 but was delayed due to bad weather conditions until 6 June.
Station X was an invaluable source of information about the enemy forces for the last four years of the war. The Allied Commanders still had to achieve the victory, but they used the information that Station X submitted to aid them in their planning. Without the help of Station X, victory would not have been achieved as quickly as it did or may not have been achieved at all.
