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Code-breaking Heroics:
Capturing secret code books was a key to breaking Axis codes. In 1940 the crew of a captured German ship threw their code books overboard, but the British Royal Navy managed to recover some of them. In 1942 British sailors recovered code books from a sinking U-boat in the Mediterranean Ocean. Two British sailors died, but the books they rescued allowed cryptanalysts to solve German codes used to communicate with submarines in the Atlantic.
With captured code books and skilled code breaking, the Allies were reading up to four thousand Enigma intercepts every day by the end of 1942. These and similar technological victories helped the Allies stem the tide of U-boat attacks on vital supply convoys.
On the home front, cryptologists built special equipment to attack Axis codes. British experts at Bletchley Park, near London, and American teams in Washington, D.C., and Dayton, Ohio, worked in extreme secrecy to decipher Enigma messages. They used early computers and raw mathematical talent to work through millions of scrambled possibilities in each German message until they found the right solution.
Breaking German and Japanese codes gave the Allies an important advantage in WWII -- it saved many lives and shortened the war, by some estimates as much as two years.
Enigma and the Air War:
ULTRA gave the Allies critical information in the European air war. During the Battle of Britain, the outnumbered Royal Air Force depended on ULTRA to counter German raids. Later, Enigma intercepts gave Allied planners detailed information on the effects of strategic bombing, and they allowed Allied air power to virtually halt Axis sea convoys in the Mediterranean. The Luftwaffe (German Air Force) also unwittingly confirmed Allied air tactics' effectiveness by using Enigma to transmit reports of their losses, along with plans and orders. |