The Secrets of Station X by Michael Smith Read Free Book Online

strangers and friends. None of the new arrivals had any idea of the general organisation or, indeed, of what other sections existed beside the one to which they had been appointed and it was no one’s business to explain. This was not like reservists rejoining the colours. It was more like the prim first day at a public school. The sight of a professor of some erudition struggling with an unfamiliar task on the blankets of a boy’s bedstead in the dormitory is one not easily forgotten.
    Not the least striking feature of the list of people who moved to Bletchley in that first wave is how few of them were actually working on German material. Aside from Denniston and his deputy Commander Edward Travis, there were twenty-nine people in the diplomatic and commercial sections, none of whom were working on German cyphers (the largest number of people focusing on any specific language were the nine working on Italian diplomatic cyphers, with the next largest number the six working on the cyphers of Britain’s ally France). The Military Section comprised eighteen people of whom only four were working on German material, half the number who were working on the Italian Army systems. The Air Section had a staff of just eleven, of whom only three were trying to break German systems. The Naval Section had more people, a total of twenty-five, but only two of them were German experts, as opposed to eleven working on Italian systems.
    ‘There was virtually no yield whatever from German codes and cyphers – diplomatic, naval, military or air – other than partial decrypts of low-grade, air-to-ground Luftwaffe traffic,’ said Frank Birch, a famous actor and Room 40 veteran recalled in 1939 to take over as head of the Naval Section. ‘On the civil side, the two high-grade German diplomatic systems had not been seriously tackled since their introduction in 1919, and,owing to the wartime diversion of experienced research cryptanalysts to service tasks, were not to be subjected to concerted attack until 1941.’
    The only section focusing exclusively on Germany was Dilly Knox’s research section, which was solely interested in Enigma. It comprised just four codebreakers – Knox himself, Turing, Twinn and John Jeffreys, another Cambridge mathematician – and was working on its own in a cottage adjoining the mansion. So out of the 110 members of GC&CS who moved to Bletchley, only thirteen were actually working on the codes or cyphers of the country which was now the main threat to the UK.
    The inside of the mansion was impossibly crowded and it was difficult to manage, recalled Edmund Green, one of the senior members of the Naval Section, who became the office manager and acquired the nickname ‘Scrounger’. He recalled that this was a result of the determined manner in which he ensured that the naval codebreakers had any equipment they needed.
    Chaos is a mild term to describe our condition at the outset. We had very few plans, nowhere to lay our heads – no furniture , books of reference, maps, atlases, dictionaries or any tools with which we might be expected to finish the job. Our difficulties were increased by the fact that our work was so ‘hush hush’ that we were not able to specify the reason for our importunities – for so they were regarded. Then we were a government office tied and bound by the red tape of rules and regulations which none of us, even the heads of the organisation , really understood. It was like playing a game with an umpire who did not know the rules. Was it then surprising if some of us resorted to methods frowned upon by the Civil Service? Lastly we were expanding at a speed only equalled by rabbits breeding in a warren. I not only had to scrounge tools but if we acquired a typewriter, our next headache was to find a typist to work it. I had always understood that the most difficult and temperamental personalities were prima donnas.I soon discovered that many of those with whom I had to do could give