The Poles’ help was vital and the staff of Bletchley Park worked in collaboration with the three Polish mathematicians, Zygalski, Rozycki and Rejewski who cracked the first Enigma codes. Dilly Knox met the Poles in 1939 when the information was handed over, as he had worked on the Italian Enigma key previously and was one of the most experienced members of Station X. He was quick to guide Bletchley Park on what needed to be done to break the German codes. Another important reason was that everyone who worked at Bletchley Park was very intelligent. Most of the men were recruited by the ‘Old Boy’ network and were therefore the best. The staff of Station X could easily grasp the context of the Enigma machine which made the work faster and more efficient.
The Y-Stations were a great achievement and indispensable. Without the network, Station X would never have been able to succeed in cracking the German codes. Everything at Bletchley Park, including the information received from the stations was logged and dated making it extremely well organized.
Unlike what the Germans believed the Enigma machine had a flaw. In about one out of eight intercepts, the Enigma was turning one of the letters in the message setting into the same coded letter twice. This quirk caught the attention of Bletchley Park and the code breakers named the repeated letters ‘females’. The code breakers produced huge cards, known as Jeffries sheets, with holes punched through in an alphabetical grid representing the wheel positions that could produce females. This technique was thought of by John Jeffries and became a major help to decoding the messages.
All the days’ settings on how the Enigma had to be wired were on instruction sheets because all the Enigmas on a network had to be set up identically for the system to work. If however, those sheets where to be captured by an enemy they would know exactly how to decode the messages. So as an extra level of security the operator of each Enigma chose his own secret rotor setting of three letters. To inform the operator at the receiving end he sent the code via the machine so that the he too could set up his machine for the day with the same code. To make the rotor code clear, the operators were told to repeat the code twice. This gave a clue to the code breakers of Bletchley Park in 1940 and gave a better idea of how the Enigma was set up.
A gigantic step forward in the breaking of German codes was when the British finally managed to capture an Enigma machine in May 1941 along with all the code books and operating manuals. By the end of June nearly all of the Naval Enigma codes were being read. Furthermore, the Bombe created by Alan Turing enabled the code breakers to decipher the codes more easily and a lot faster. Located in Hut 11 the Bombe was very essential in the matter of breaking the German Naval codes.
Finally, Bletchley Park was able to break the German Enigma, because the code breakers all possessed an enormous amount of motivation. All of their energy was put into their work and they were happily willing to stay for longer shifts to carry on with their work.