The Secret War: Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939–1945. Max Hastings
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how could it be otherwise? Noel Annan wrote: ‘Many of the cryptanalysts who produced Ultra were agnostic, heterodox dons who did not set much store by the normal interpretations of patriotism and democracy.’ It was not easy to combine the discipline essential to the operation’s smooth functioning with sensitivity to the wayward and frankly eccentric character of some of its resident geniuses. Col. Tiltman wrote ruefully on 2 March 1941: ‘Cryptanalysts have to be handled delicately and do not take kindly to service methods of control, which are essential to the good working of signals.’ When the director of the Royal Navy’s women personnel visited the Park, she demanded indignantly: ‘Why are my Wrens working with civilians?’ WAAFs in the teleprinter room expressed resentment about taking orders from civilians. In December 1940 the War Office’s director of military intelligence staged a grab for Bletchley’s military output. Until 1941, the Admiralty tried to continue some cryptographic work under its own roof. In Hut 3, rows erupted between representatives of the three armed services. Stewart Menzies received a constant stream of complaints from rival interests, while Bletchley staff referred to Broadway without enthusiasm as ‘the other side’. One of the most durable criticisms of ‘C’ is that he was ever eager to accept credit for the achievements of the Park, while declining to engage with its chronic resource problems, which eventually prompted the October 1941 letter to Churchill signed by Turing and his colleagues pleading for more staff, that caused Churchill to send his famous ‘Action This Day’ message: ‘Make sure they have all they want on extreme priority.’ It is a serious charge against Menzies, that he was an absentee landlord of GC&CS.
Yet all this made mercifully little impact on the work of the codebreakers. Edward Thomas, a naval officer who worked at the Park, was impressed by the absence of hierarchical distinctions: ‘Despite the high tension of much of the work … anyone of whatever rank or degree could approach anyone else, however venerable, with any idea or suggestion, however crazy.’ Few people of any rank or status felt denied a voice – an unusually rare and privileged state of affairs in the wartime institutions of any nation. From 1941, the Cambridge scientist and novelist C.P. Snow became a key Whitehall intermediary, responsible for channelling suitable mathematicians and other scholars to Bletchley. GC&CS also employed thousands of humbler folk, recruited chiefly for their language skills. Its files record details of some RAF personnel interviewed, such as Leading Aircraftsman Berry, aged twenty-three, who had started training as a pilot but re-mustered owing to his conscientious objections to dropping bombs. His German language skills were graded only ‘B’, and the recruiters noted: ‘if interested in work might do well, but needs careful handling’.
LAC Gray was also ex-aircrew, ‘grounded as result of crash’, had ‘B’ grade Spanish. Cpl Hodges, aged twenty-six, was unfit for aircrew, ‘anxious to use his German “A”, in civil life worked in architect’s office’. AC1 Tew, a twenty-eight-year-old clerk, had German ‘A’, as well as some Spanish, French and Danish, acquired while working in his father’s leather-trading business. There was much snapping between Bletchley and the Air Ministry about the latter’s reluctance to grant commissioned rank to RAF men seconded to cipher or wireless interception duties. Group-Captain Blandy of the Y Service complained that such people were ‘picked individuals having considerable linguistic qualifications and a high standard of education … [Mere Aircraftsmen] and NCOs lack the necessary authority required to carry out their duties efficiently.’
Not all the personnel posted to Bletchley proved suited to its demands. A March 1941 report on an RAF officer returned to general duties after a spell at BP noted: ‘Although an excellent linguist, he does not appear to me to have any aptitude or inclination for the research side of the work. He had been relegated to clerical tasks, but did not seem thus to justify his pay.’ There were equally bleak verdicts on the performance of some women staffers lower down the hierarchy: ‘Wren Kenwick is inaccurate, very slow and not a bit keen on her work, not very intelligent. Wrens Buchanan and Ford are unintelligent and slow and seem unable to learn. Wren Rogers suffers from mild claustrophobia and cannot work in a windowless room.’ The report concluded: ‘The remainder … are doing most excellent work,’ but the selectors were urged to recognise the importance of the jobs the women were required to fulfil, ‘and not to send us too many of the Cook and Messenger type’.
Enfolded within their oppressive security blanket, Bletchley’s people lived, loved and largely played within their own community. Almost all were paid a pittance: nineteen-year-old mathematician Mavis Lever, one of ‘Dilly’ Knox’s team, initially received thirty shillings a week, of which she paid twenty-one shillings for her lodgings. When staff did escape into the world beyond the perimeter fence, the civilian status of the young men incurred dark suspicions among the uninitiated about their absence from any battlefield. The dramas and pantomimes performed by the Park’s amateur dramatic society became high spots in the annual calendar: Frank Birch, formerly of King’s College, Cambridge and now head of Hut 4, was celebrated for his appearances as the Widow Twankey in productions of the pantomime Aladdin.
By 1942, common sense had achieved some important successes in the Park’s management. Each section worked to its appointed head, irrespective of rank or lack of it. Cryptanalysis for all Britain’s armed forces was handled entirely at Bletchley and its Indian out-stations, a concentration of effort that neither Germany nor the United States ever matched. Gordon Welchman emerged as the foremost lubricator, curbing feuding; several notoriously stupid service officers were transferred out; the popular Eric Jones was appointed to head Hut 3. It was acknowledged that the civilian codebreakers must be ridden on the lightest possible rein, though the director was prone to occasional surges of authoritarianism.
On 1 February 1942, Admiral Karl Dönitz introduced a reflector or fourth rotor into the Atlantic U-boat service’s Enigma, with immediate and calamitous results for Allied fortunes in the Battle of the Atlantic: this imposed a twenty-six-fold increase in the range of possible settings, and blinded Bletchley. Sinkings soared. At sea, the Royal Navy was obliged to rely upon ‘Huff-Duff’ to locate enemy submarines until these approached within range of underwater detection by the Asdics of convoy escorts, which were impotent against night surface attackers. Breaking what was now designated the ‘Shark’ submarine key became the Park’s foremost priority, a challenge unresolved for nine frightening months, by far the most stressful period of the war for those engaged in the task. They knew, as they sat hunched over their labours in those austere huts, that at sea men were dying every day because of their failure – though no rational person would have called it such.
Also on 1 February, coincidentally, Alastair Denniston was pushed aside into a subordinate London role, to be replaced by his deputy, Edward Travis. In some measure this development reflected a clash of personalities – Denniston and Stewart Menzies disliked each other – together with the infighting characteristic of any large bureaucracy. But it was widely felt at Bletchley that its operational head was being overwhelmed by the strains of running an establishment that since the outbreak of war had increased fourfold in size, and many times that much in its importance to the war effort. Power struggles were unavoidable. Denniston was a good and kind man who had done many things well, but Bletchley had outgrown him. Travis, whose edicts were issued in a curious trademark brown ink, was generally considered a success in his new role, not least by such influential creative figures as Welchman. When another codebreaker, Ralph Bennett, returned that summer from detached duty in the Middle East, he found that the atmosphere had changed markedly: ‘I had left as one of a group of enthusiastic amateurs. I returned to a professional organisation with standards and an acknowledged reputation to maintain. Success was no longer an occasional prize, but the natural reward of relentless attention to detail.’
Throughout 1942, Bletchley’s activities were hampered by a desperate shortage of bombes, and thus by argument about their best employment. In January the army-Luftwaffe Hut 6 was receiving 1,400 intercepts a day, of which an average of 580 were broken, a proportion that slowly increased, reaching about 50 per cent by May 1943. Often no more than one three-wheel bombe was available at any given time to work on the Shark U-boat cipher, because the others of what was still only a handful of machines were committed to breaking army and air traffic. The codebreakers said later that they would have needed ten four-wheel bombes – which did not then exist – significantly to accelerate their progress. By November, a note of desperation had entered