back to article WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until long after the war

El Reg had the honour of speaking with a war hero last Friday when the UK's National Museum of Computing fired up its replica Enigma code-breaker to decrypt messages sent from Poland. Ruth Bourne was among hundreds of Wrens who worked on the front line of code-breaking on 200 or so Bombe machines1 at sites in and around …

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cribs from touch

        >I hadn't realised until recently that the Soviets tried to get cribs on an industrial scale in the 1940s.

        John Cairncross was the KGB's man at Bletchley - he passed a large number of decrypts to the Soviets and they some understanding of the technology and methodology at the very least thanks to him - he wasn't discovered and turned until the 50s by which time he was at MI6. Cairncross is reluctantly part of the official narrative now - although he's usually treated sympathetically and the scale of his treachery underplayed in the, mostly horribly inaccurate, dramatic accounts of the period.

        Also important to remember that Soviets captured a lot of kit and expertise from the Germans - and most of the Bletchley Park Poles - 'Rejewski' notably - went back to Soviet Poland immediately after the war. With hindsight it's probably difficult to imagine, but there was actually hope things would be rosy under Stalin. Officially the story remains that their wartime roles were unknown to Soviets - though that's at odds with level of intelligence they had and the fact that Rejewski wrote one of the first detailed accounts of the work in the 1960s.

    1. I3N
      Pint

      Re: Cribs from touch

      Mark Twain wrote about 'touch' in 1889 as such

      "-and then came a click that was as familiar to me as a human voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil ... They would have known my touch, maybe, ..."

      Down voted gladly accepted if you know the reference ...

  1. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    The Bourne Codecracker? :) (after the Jason Bourne series of films)

    1. Robert Helpmann??
      Thumb Up

      Not Jason Bourne

      The Bourne Codecracker?

      My feeling is that Ruth Bourne is more bad-ass than her fictitious namesake. She has my admiration for the work she and her cohort accomplished.

  2. Valerion

    The Bourne Enigma

    Why wasn't that the title?!

    Fascinating read and I must congratulate Ms Bourne on a very astute memory. I can't remember what I had for breakfast, let alone the finer points of operating an extremely complex machine over 70 years ago.

    1. Excellentsword (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: The Bourne Enigma

      Oh, very good. 20 lashes for me.

    2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: The Bourne Enigma

      ... the finer points of operating an extremely complex machine over 70 years ago

      It's funny, you know, but I can. In fact, my earliest memories seem to be the clearest. She was 18 when she did this, and my 18 year old memories are still pretty clear (sometimes uncomfortably so). I used to repair Teletypes at university for some extra money, and I could still probably take one apart & put it back together, since I did 25 of them every summer (replacing bearings and re-lubricating them).

  3. naive

    Partial truth, partial cover up ?

    Since decades there are serious speculations about high-ranking spies in the OKW general staff. Several generals in the Eastern Front planned their own offensives, without interference from the General staff, often referred to as the "Spy Nest" by people like von Manstein. Some say Martin Bormann was a Russian spy. Maybe this enigma stuff is made up to create a smoke screen.

    This kind of leakage is sort of detectable by smart people, they will notice when "by coincidence" the enemy seems to be on the right place at the right time each time something happens.

    It is however unclear why German counter intelligence was so bad, the incredible losses in the U-boat war, was a clear sign something was off, since Oceans are big, and they seem to be spot on all the time.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

      I just knew there would be conspiracy theories about this.

      1. Aladdin Sane

        Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

        Radio signal triangulation has been around almost as long as radio comms, and once the mid-Atlantic gap had been filled, there was nowhere out of reach.

    2. fandom

      Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

      You can read about Admiral Dönitz desperation in his memoirs, but they never thought their special Enigma machines could be cracked.

      Also, getting the germans to believe the bristish navy could detect the radar installed in the submarines helped, as they were made to emerge blind.

      But really, the Enigma cracking was top secret for decades, pretending to believe that such a highly detailed cracking was faked decades after those alleged spies needed protecting makes no sense.

      1. smudge
        Black Helicopters

        Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

        But really, the Enigma cracking was top secret for decades

        Because other nations were still using them, including the allies to whom the UK sold 'em after the war...

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

        pretending to believe that such a highly detailed cracking was faked decades after those alleged spies needed protecting makes no sense.

        Three reasons.

        Enigma machines were handed out to allies who weren't told that they were broken - so the UK/USA could read the secrets of 'friendly' countries for decades.

        To keep the USSR underestimating the achievements of western cryptanalysis in the hope that they would be less careful/put less effort into advanced codes. Pointless wiht the number of KGB agents working for MI5

        Possibly most important. To prevent the story that the Nazis only lost because of crypto becoming a political norm in Germany. If you lost because the other side 'cheated' then there is a justification to try again ( but this time with better OPSEC). Similar to the German belief that their army was superior in WWI but had been betrayed by traitors at home - so if they could only remove 'non-Germans' they would be victorious and so it was worth trying again....

    3. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge

      Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

      naive,

      German intelligence were seemingly often rubbish (though not always). They made some terrible errors. For example Von Paulus' plan to invade Russia called for the destruction of the 400 divisions of the Russian army West of Smolensk. Which they pretty much achieved. Unfortunately Russia had 600 divisions. And the remainder stopped them from taking Moscow.

      By 42/43 Most of the planning staff of Army Group Centre (in front of Moscow) were in on various plots to assassinate Hitler. I think Von Stauffenberg was there for a bit, and he and various others shopped their plans around the army high command looking for supporters and a star general to be their figurehead. Nobody would take the job, but nobody ratted them out to the Gestapo. Who were totally unprepared. There must have been around 100 officers who know Von Stauffenberg was going to do it, which is huge for a conspiracy that doesn't leak. One bomb that was placed on Hitler's plane in Ukraine (in 43?) failed (due to cold I think) and the conspirators simply removed it after the flight with nobody being any the wiser.

      Several german spies dropped by parachute or sub into England didn't speak fluent english. Which is just rubbish.

      Canaris was aware of some of the plots to kill Hitler and several Abwehr officers were actively planning them. Being at work I don't have my copy of Joachim Fest's 'Plotting Hitler's Death' but Google is your friend - see wiki link - and note the 3 chiefs / ex chiefs of the German general staff in on it (Beck, Brauchitsch and Halder).

      I think the German intelligence community suffered from groupthink. If Hitler didn't like an idea, then it was very hard to maintain it or prove it. And also of course, if Hitler did believe something then even if you could prove it to be wrong, it was still very hard to do so, or to act on that knowledge.

      1. Stoneshop

        Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

        German intelligence were seemingly often rubbish (though not always). They made some terrible errors.

        A particularly stunning bit of leading German intelligence, and with it the General Staff, by the nose has been Operation Mincemeat, IMO. At its centre was a corpse with fabricated documents including a letter by the vice chief of the Imperial General Staff to the British Commander in North Africa, detailing an invasion of continental Europe via Greece and the Southern Balkan, with a decoy attack on Sicily. As the German Abwehr after much scrutiny decided that yes, this person and the papers he carried were authentic, a fair bunch of personnel and material were moved from Italy to the Balkan. It took weeks before the Germans actually figured that the Sicily invasion was the real one.

        German Intelligence did not just suffer from hubris, they also had the disadvantage that after the Battle of Britain they had way less possibilities to use aerial reconnaissance to corroborate info, as well as less human bodies doing the spying thing.

        1. werdsmith Silver badge

          Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

          Operation mincemeat corpse was discovered by the Spanish and the information reported to the Nazi command.

          1. Stoneshop

            Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

            Operation mincemeat corpse was discovered by the Spanish and the information reported to the Nazi command.

            Which was part of the ruse. Spain was technically neutral, although quite chummy with the Germans. The Mincemeat group figured that either the letters and other items themselves would pass German hands for copying and inspection before Spain handed them back to Britain, or the Spaniards would do that for them. Afterwards the letters were checked, and they had indeed be opened so that part of the operation could be verified to have worked. With Axis troops actually moving to the Balkan Churchill was then notified of "Mincemeat swallowed whole".

            1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

              "Afterwards the letters were checked, and they had indeed be opened"

              This bit was shown in "The man who never was".

              Miles Malleson playing the boffin was given the envelope. "This has been in water...." snips a piece off, puts it in a test tube, adds water, gives it a shake, adds silver nitrate and gets a white precipitate "...seawater.". "But had it been opened?" (Dismissively) "Of course."

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

          >Operation Mincemeat

          Ironically the allies got the genuine plans for the invasion of Belgium from a crashed plane carrying a high ranking German officer - but assumed it was a trick and ignored them

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

        German counter intelligence was awful because of common Nazi pathologies: overconfidence in their superiority, paranoia and distrust of rival sister organizations, and reluctance to deliver bad news to higher ups.

        Yup.

        Sounds just like the EU.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

      Bletchley Park intercepts were used to route convoys away from UBoats . The only UBoats hunted down by BP info were the 10 'Milch Cows' that refuelled other UBoats.

    6. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

      "Maybe this enigma stuff is made up to create a smoke screen."

      Actually it was all the highly placed spies stuff that was made up to distract from the code-breaking. It seems to be working.

    7. david 12 Silver badge

      Re: Partial truth, partial cover up ?

      >It is however unclear why German counter intelligence was so bad, the incredible losses in the U-boat war, was a clear sign something was off, since Oceans are big, and they seem to be spot on all the time.<

      I'm old enough to remember that all the post-war documentories, for many years, didn't make that connection. In particular naval losses on both sides were always attributed to tactical changes. like "using convoys" It's now clear that the post-war picture we had of how the war was won, was completely wrong. It's sad that most of that early documentation will never be correctly re-written.

      Some extremely clever chess players were taken to Washington DC, and tasked with analysing navel reports and predicting what the next enemy move would be. By some accounts they were quite accurate, but never really believed, because, well, they were just guessing. At this distance, I've never found out if they were just the cover story for the code-breaking reports, or if the chess was just the cover-story for people doing actual code-breaking work, or if the chess players were just a completely irrelevant parallel effort.

  4. Phlebas

    "Bletchley Park's code-breakers are credited by historians with shortening the war by two years."

    This appears so often in BP stories that I'm beginning to think it's some kind of legal requirement.

    It also ignores the fact that the Allies would have had nuclear weapons in 1945 regardless of the work done at BP. So BP may have saved Berlin from becoming an smoking hole in August of '45 but it's unlikely that it shortened the war by two years.

    1. Tom 7

      @phlebas

      I think this is another US myth, as is the 2 year one. The 3 weapons detonated during the war exhausted the stocks of fissile material available, The next test wasn't until July 46 by which time Russia would have probably taken over most of Europe by then as, in all honesty, Russia's weapons production had reached such phenomenal levels that there was no stopping them.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: @phlebas

        And on the other-other hand.

        With the Battle of the Atlantic lost and Britain with no food, fuel or weapons.

        The Afrika Korp sweeping through Egypt, into the middle eastern oilfields and Rommel about to meet up with the Japanese in India - then all nuking Berlin would do is remove a layer of political interference

  5. Snarky Puppy
    Pint

    All hail Ms. Bourne

    She may not have had a fighting role but her contribution and those of other unsung heroes and heroines like her gave us the freedoms we enjoy today. All the beer you can drink Ms. Bourne!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: All hail Ms. Bourne

      "All hail Ms. Bourne

      She may not have had a fighting role but her contribution and those of other unsung heroes and heroines like her gave us the freedoms we enjoy today."

      I fully agree with the sentiment, but - well, I read this article:

      <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/05/survived-warsaw-ghetto-wartime-lessons-extremism-europe>

      "I survived the Warsaw ghetto. Here are the lessons I’d like to pass on"

      by Stanisław Aronson. One point he made was this:

      "Of course, many people did extraordinary things, but in most cases only because they were forced to by extreme circumstances, and even then, true heroes were very few and far between: I do not count myself among them."

      I've lived a comfortable and extremely secure life in large part because of Ms Bourne and those of her generation who did their bit and I'm extremely grateful to all of them (including all four of my grandparents). But I do feel that the label "hero[ine]" is perhaps used a little too freely at times.

      I've read "The last fighting Tommy" - the life of Harry Patch (now RIP), the last surviving veteran to have fought in the Great War trenches. He rejected the label of "hero" applied to himself on the grounds that he just went where he was told to go and did what he was told to do. Me? I think they're all heroes, all that lot.

      The book "Enigma, the battle for the code" by Hugh Sebag-Montefiore ("Without for a moment belittling the world of Alan Turing and his team [...]") relates some often neglected aspects of the Second World War German naval code-breaking story, including the capture of code-books from German naval vessels. I expect the people involved in that would also deny that they acted "heroically" but it's not how I view their actions.

      I suppose it all depends on your perspective. I once knew a bloke who'd worked on RDF back in the Second World War, and as far as he was concerned doing repairs to an aerial using a thermite powered soldering iron (so he said) while dangling about 200ft up in the air in high winds with minimal safety gear was just an ordinary day's work. The job had to be done, so you just got on and did it and at least no-one's shooting at you - that was his attitude.

      1. Wellyboot Silver badge

        Re: All hail Ms. Bourne

        The common thread from when heros actually talk is 'It needed doing, so I did it'.

        An attitude that luckily still appears regularly in modern society, its just buried under the cat videos & 'me, me, look at me' trivia far too often.

      2. veti Silver badge

        Re: All hail Ms. Bourne

        "Heroes" are, simply, people you look up to. It's an inherently subjective thing, there is no agreed canon.

        No doubt Ms Bourne is a hero to some. But if anyone, anyone at all, actually claims to be "a hero", I think they're full of... effluent.

  6. JJKing
    Megaphone

    And didn't they treat Turing well after the war ended.

    There was an interesting story about the code breakers in, I think Albert Park, Victoria, Australia and they had broken some Japanese codes. For some unknown reason an American politician was given a tour of the facility and when he returned home he told his local newspaper about the great job "our American boys" were doing breaking the Jap codes. These codes were soon changed mush to the disgust and dismay of the code breakers who took three weeks to break the new codes. They wondered how many lives the big mouth pollie had cost with his stupid boasting.

    This story was related by one of the Australian women who worked in the centre and were only allowed to finally talk about what they did during the war some time in the 1990s.

    It was mentioned by someone further up about being careful what was responded to so the Germans didn't know their codes had been compromised. Let's not forget the people of Coventry as some of the victims who suffered to keep the broken codes unknown by the Germans.

  7. Winkypop Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Detail under pressure

    Poor food

    Poor hours

    Poor accommodation

    Excessive work pressure

    Brilliant output

    > Puts today's over paid jobsworths to shame.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Detail under pressure

      You missed the most important detail:

      Motivation.

      Something sadly missing in a lot of today's work environments,

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Random

    Apparently the OSA still applies to some of the documents these people originally worked on (including the specifics of Bombe, etc) are still covered and rumor has it that GCHQ still holds copies of the original decrypts, containing information that may be relevant even now because it relates to people still living.

    Last I checked, some of them *may* be released around 2024 but this is subject to official approval.

    If the classified patents issue is anything to go by the "Fifty Year Rule" may be more like the "Whenever it becomes irrelevant due to technological advancement Rule" and some mathematical and fundamental physics discoveries may be affected by this. Never fear, most of them are related to obscure topics which probably have no relevance to everyday life.

    I've run into the patents issue before, if you accidentally rediscover something that is classified you may or may not be asked (politely) to sign the OSA, hand over original documentation and sign an additional document stating under penalty of perjury that they are the only copies.

    Just doing a search for certain terms of interest (tm) may get you visited by some folks or strange phone calls etc if reconstructed search history implies getting close to something you shouldn't.

  9. Robert Feldman 1

    WWII code breaker buried in Nebraska with UK military honors

    https://apnews.com/23227e69754648c8b0e659f39151c0b1

    WWII code breaker buried in Nebraska with UK military honors

    OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A 92-year-old woman has been buried in Nebraska with British military honors for a secret that she held for decades: her World War II service as a code breaker of German intelligence communications.

    The Union Jack was draped over Jean Briggs Watters’ casket during her burial Monday, the Omaha World-Herald reported. Watters died Sept. 15.

    The tribute honored Watters for her role decoding for a top-secret military program led by British mathematician Alan Turing, who was the subject of the 2014 Oscar-winning film “The Imitation Game .” Watters was among about 10,000 people, mostly women, who participated in the Allied effort to crack German communication codes throughout the war. ...

  10. Joe Gurman

    As a foot (not boot) note....

    .... the 4-rotor bombe was built for the US Navy to handle messages encrypted the the four-rotor Enigma put into service by the German navy in 1942, in parallel with the British Mammoth. By the end of the war, 160 had been produced by the National Cash Register company in Dayton, Ohio. Most were located at the IS Navy Yard in Washington, DC.

  11. EveryTime

    It's worth echoing that operational security is *very* hard, and breaking the encryption is one of the last things to suspect. It's pretty much like burglars rarely bother with trying to pick a lock. It's easier to just look for an unlatched window or an unlocked door. Even if they get in using the door lock, it was probably using a key found in the unlocked car, under the mat, or copied by the valet.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Technically

    The use of common words is actually an obvious back door.

    The Short Weather Cipher (SWC) also did present similar vulnerabilities but the main loophole

    was the lack of ability to encipher a letter as itself.

    As any good codebreaker knows you have to be consistent: for example if I redesigned something of this era the first thing would be to replace the X as space with something more sensible like a relative reference *within* the enciphered text.

    This would make it harder to read but ultimately a lot more secure.

    Also useful: change the code sequencing so words are sometimes backwards, that should help a bit.

    I developed a code not so long ago which uses references to sci-fi and (as yet) remains unbroken.

    To decode it you'd need so much information that only an AI could break it.

    No human could decode it unless they had memory in the petabytes *and* is essentially a cybernetic organism already.

    Can actually be encoded using nothing more than (x) and (y) and a pen&paper.

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