Re: Marian Rejewski

In message <OrLH4CA5Ls2CJw5p-0DcZplEYJcyHCRyBVyKX4rVCufUGDwFn@public.gmane.org>, Tony Sale
<tsale-BY/[email protected]> writes

>>  and the caption of the Marian Rejewski photo is:
>>
>>  "A wartime photograph of Second Lieutenant (Signals) [Polish Army]
>>  Marian Rejewski, taken while he was at Bletchley Park, c. 1943."

>John and All, The photo caption actually says "taken while he was in
>England, c 1943" It is a well known and much used photograph.
>

The caption was in error and corrected to what you say a few days after
my original posting.

>
>Rejewski never visited or worked at Bletchley Park. The PRO documents
>show that both Denniston and later Travis, refused Dilly Knox's requests
>that he should be allowed to. 
>

It was Denniston who first requested to Menzies, that Rejewski and his
two colleagues be allowed to visit Bletchley, on 9th January 1940. As I
understand it, it was Rejewski's French boss who refused this
permission. Why would Denniston refuse - they were in a dire state in
January 1940. 
When Rejewski finally came to England in 1943 after release from Spain,
he only mentions working on one system, a variant of double Playfair
cipher, at Boxmoor until a few months before the end of the war in
Europe, when he then transferred to Scotland.
Actually I find it hard to believe that Knox would want Rejewski around,
he seemed to have problems with other clever people - but that's only my
personal view, I may be entirely wrong.
I don't know of anything about Travis, but I can imagine with Enigma
fully broken any 'outsider' would be unwelcome from a security point.

>
>Another error: not "sight unseen": the Poles copied a commercial Enigma
>which they, like the UK, had purchased. They changed the method of
>stecker plugging to use telephone jacks but the rest of the mechanism
>was the same in their copies. They rewired the commercial rotors to the
>wiring Rejewski discovered after guessing, correctly, the entry order
>wiring.

That single simple word, 'discovered' covers a very remarkable
achievement!

Geoff

-- 
Geoff Sullivan