There are two stories. The first story, and the most covered, is directly about the immense contribution
Bletchley made to the achievement of victory and to the significant shortening of WWII. That story
in its own right is both completely absorbing and vital to understanding key parts of WWII. The
second story is perhaps even more essential reading. Welchman was heavily involved in the
development of technology that made the digital age possible. Bletchley Park is the true home of
the electronic digital information processor. Without that work, there might be no Internet and we
could still be living in an analogue world where almost everything we take for granted today would
not exist.
This book should be essential reading in schools and be read widely. It provides insights that
should show how further advances can be made and how security can be developed to protect
the users of electronic information. Currently few understand the threats that come with the
enormous benefits and because of that, developers and politicians continue to fail miserably in
providing the benefits at an acceptable level of risk.
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NAME: Gordon Welchman, Bletchley Park's Architect of Ultra Intelligence
CATEGORY: Book Reviews
DATE: 180514
FILE: R1973
AUTHOR: Joel Greenberg
PUBLISHER: Pen & Sword
BINDING: hard back
PAGES: 286
PRICE: £25.00
GENRE: Non Fiction
SUBJECT: WWII, World War Two, Second World War, 1939-1945, SIGINT, communications
interception, cribs, ULTRA, code breaking, encryption, decryption, bombe,
Colossus, Enigma, deception, misinformation, Station X, Y stations, Polish
intelligence, signal traffic, traffic analysis, pattern analysis, threat analysis,
Lorenz
ISBN: 1-84832-752-8
IMAGE: B1973.jpg
BUYNOW: http://tinyurl.comps3cujt
LINKS:
DESCRIPTION: The stories of the signal intelligence war were slow to be told
because the Cold War made its continuation critical. Britain had developed a
very strong lead in this area with the work of the Admiralty before and during
WWI to recognize and exploit signal intelligence. As many of the techniques
continue to be employed in an age of cyber warfare, there will continue to be
significant gaps in published information on the people, the equipment and
techniques first developed at Bletchley Park and its outstations.
Essentially the organization generally known as GCHQ operates in the manner of
Bletchley Park and its supporting organizations. It is a story of two parts.
One the one hand, there is an organization that creates codes and cyphers for
British use, continuously tests those products for vulnerability and effectiveness,
and attempts to identify and break codes and cyphers produced by other countries.
As the convergence of information and communications systems continues, the
dividing line between potential and actual enemies and the rest of the global
user population blurs and creates many new challenges, but in 1939 there was a
clear enemy.
Matching the code writers and breakers, signal intelligence requires the
development of equipment and techniques to collect and then analyse enemy
communications. By volume, this usually sees radio signals as the primary
source of information and the Germans helped Bletchley Park by extensively
using radio communication and relying on what the Germans believed was the
completely unbreakable code produced by the Enigma machine. Although Enigma
was very difficult to break, Bletchley Park was fortunate to benefit from
the acquisition of Enigma machines by the Polish intelligence service that
then shared the knowledge with British code breakers. As long as the Germans
relied on the basic Enigma technology, British intelligence had an advantage.
Enigma would be subject to development and changes, but this only created
short gaps while Bletchley Park identified the changes and improved their
technology to again break the code. The Germans had not learned one essential
lesson from WWI. Any radio signals can be intercepted and the first vital
intelligence is 'chatter'. As before the Battle of Jutland, the Royal Navy
was able to intercept High Seas Fleet radio traffic and the increases in
volume gave first warning that the German Imperial Navy was preparing to sail.
Even without decoding any encrypted traffic, the RN would see how many vessels
were to be involved and, from radio direction finding by triangulation, the
locations of the vessels could be mapped. That continued to hold true and is
still a vital part of modern signal intelligence. It also provided the means
to start to break enemy code. By transmitting a specially designed signal,
the enemy reaction to intercepting that signal provides clues to the code
that they are using This may involve transmitting a signal that has not been
encrypted to assist the enemy in gaining intelligence and then taking steps
to act on that false information.
So far, only fragmentary information has emerged from those involved in
operations at Bletchley. Alan Turing has achieved posthumous fame, but he
was one of many brilliant individuals who were intimately involved in the
story. Some, including Welchman, wrote books and papers after 1945 which
provided insights into their work, but GCHQ and the US NASA acted quickly
to block further publications and to prevent published authors from making
further comments. The author, a Bletchley Park historian, has drawn on
Welshman's papers in an attempt to put the record straight. The result is
an absorbing book that is packed with fresh insights, although it is not a
complete account, with some related information still protected by security
classification and restriction and unlikely to be declassified for many years yet.
There are two stories. The first story, and the most covered, is directly about
the immense contribution Bletchley made to the achievement of victory and to
the significant shortening of WWII. That story in its own right is both completely
absorbing and vital to understanding key parts of WWII. The second story is
perhaps even more essential reading. Welchman was heavily involved in the
development of technology that made the digital age possible. Bletchley Park is
the true home of the electronic digital information processor. Without that work,
there might be no Internet and we could still be living in an analogue world where
almost everything we take for granted today would not exist.
This book should be essential reading in schools and be read widely. It provides
insights that should show how further advances can be made and how security can
be developed to protect the users of electronic information. Currently few
understand the threats that come with the enormous benefits and because of that,
developers and politicians continue to fail miserably in providing the benefits
at an acceptable level of risk.
