Breaking through the Enigma
Traversing through the Unbreakable Code
During the War
The Germans thought they were undefeatable, due to their Enigma machine. Little did they know, England had thousands of code breakers trying to break the code everyday. Bletchley Park was a British government crypotolgial establishment in operation during World War II. Bletchley Park is about 55 miles from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. This is how the Ultra project found their candedents, among them Alan Turing. It was here that they worked on Ultra, an Allied intelligence project. The decoders at Bletchley Park decreased the war time by about 2 years.(primaryfacts.com)
England during WW2
Solving the Puzzle
Alan Turing’s machine, the Bombe, was critical to cracking Enigma’s code. Turing’s machine, what we would call today a computer, helped speed up the time it would take to decipher messages. It allowed for a code that took almost two weeks to decipher, finish in a matter of hours.(www.britannica.com)
Female code breakers in WW2
At first, Turing and his coworkers had to find little clues in the German messages. The words ‘weather forecast’ repeated itself every time. One other clue, would be that the Enigma could never decode the letter as itself. They fed these small pieces of information into the Bombe, so that they could speed up the process of deciphering.(www.britannica.com)
How does the Bombe Work?
The Bombe took about 4m euros in today’s money to make. It wayed 1 ton, and was 7ft wide and 6ft tall. Once turned on, they would turn dashes to put in the key words they found. The Bombe then mimics the Enigma and goes through 17,500 possible outcomes until it comes up with the most precise answer it can find. (www.nytimes.com)
Alan Turing's Bombe
Workers finding clues
Multiple Bombes