Re: Spot the deliberate mistake
Geoff Sullivan <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.science.cryptography.bletchley-park |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
In message <hD5MSCAbkkcCJwP7-0DcZplEYJcyHCRyBVyKX4rVCufUGDwFn@public.gmane.org>, Tony Sale <tsale-BY/[email protected]> writes >>an American version of Britain's Enigma-busting Bombe that enabled the al= >>lies to re-enter the German naval code in 1943 after Bletchley Park had b= >>een blacked out for months. >> >><SNIPPED> >Geoff, the March '43 blackout was when the German Navy changed the Short >Weather Code book. The extra speed of the American Bombes allowed very >weak contact signal and crib menus to be run in order to break back into >Shark and re-construct the new Short Weather Code book. There just was >not enough UK bombe time to do this. Tony, It was the phrase 'blacked out for months' that caught my attention. I then assumed that the journalist was referring erroneously to the February - December 1942 period after the M4 machine was put into service on 1st February. According to my references the 10th March 1943 black-out was resolved by the re-entry into Triton on 19th March - thanks indeed to the Desch four-wheelers breaking into the Weather codes. Having personally had recent experience of journalists being terse, perhaps this is understandable. There is only so much detail you can put into a newspaper column. Cheers, Geoff