Enigma men due homage

The Times
July 20, 2006

Letters to the Editor

Enigma men due homage
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Sir, It is certainly time Alan Turing's immensely important role in our 
victory in the Battle of the Atlantic was properly recognised. The 
breaking of the Enigma codes, particularly the later four-rotor code, 
helped to turn near-defeat into victory ( Comment, July 14 ). But what 
about the forgotten surviving heroes of the destroyer Petard, who had 
no idea of their immense contribution in the key Battle of the 
Atlantic until a few years ago ?

Turing was frustrated for ten months in 1942 when the U-boat signals 
organisation added a fourth working rotor to the three of the machine 
whose codes he had broken. This change added enormously to the 
permutations to be tested. It was introduced at the beginning of an 
all-out offensive by up to 300 U-boats, which came near to succeeding 
in Germany's aim of starving Britain into seeking an armistice.

As shipping losses mounted, Petard sank U559 on October 30 in the 
Eastern Mediterranean, and documents captured by First Lieutenant 
Anthony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier, who swam to the sinking 
U-boat as her crew abandoned her, enabled Turing to break the 
four-rotor Enigma within six weeks. U-boat signals were then read 
without delay and, after crippling losses, U-boats were withdrawn from 
the main Atlantic shipping lanes.This was the key victory of the war.

Fasson and Grazier left it too late to climb out of the U-boat and went 
down with it. They were recommended for posthumous VCs, but in order 
not to risk German suspicion that this key code might be broken, they 
were awarded the George Cross instead.

STEPHEN HARPER
East Horsley, Surrey


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