Talk:Ultra

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject on Cryptography This article is part of WikiProject Cryptography, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to cryptography on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
WikiReader Cryptography It is intended that this article be included in WikiReader Cryptography, a WikiReader on the topic of cryptography. Help and comments for improving this article would be especially welcome. A tool for coordinating the editing and review of these articles is the daily article box.
MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
To-do list for Ultra: edit · history · watch · refresh

Contents

[edit] major revision needed

Much of this article, at this time, is seriously in need of revision. There are misconceptions, mistakes of fact, and general inadequacy. I haven't time to do the revision as I type this, but have added it to my plans. Watch this space, I suppose...

In the meantime, beware. This article will get you into serious confusion.

ww (4 Aug 03)

It took me a while (I forgot it was 'on my list', actually), but those watching this space can finally relax. Quite a lot of moving around, headings, corrections, rephrasing, ...
Comments?
ww 18:05, 7 Apr 2004 (UTC)

[edit] out with dict def

I am deleting the dictionary definition of the word Ultra from this article. It is nothing more than a dictionary entry and I see little hope of it becoming anything more. The text of what I deleted is shown below. I also removed a large section discussing sigint in the Pacific, that better belongs in an article on Purple or Magic. -SimonP (18 Dec 02)


Definition: Ultra- is a prefix used to denote something above or higher. It is derived from the Latin word ultra ("beyond", "farther", "over and above"). It is also used for indicating superiority or higher quality. Examples include "ultrasound" and "ultraviolet". "Ultra" defined as it was used in the Battle of the Atlantic meant "information obtained through monitoring, intercepting, and decoding enemy radio communications." (MacArthur's ULTRA - Codebreaking and the War against Japan, 1942-1945, by Edward J. Drea.)

[edit] misc stuff not actually Ultra

Pacific Stuff (already to be found in the article on Purple): well before Pearl Harbor. [Actually, the Japanese Purple machine ('alphabetic typewriter B') was an outgrowth of an earlier Japanese design the SIS called Red and was not an outgrowth of the Enigma or similar rotor machines; it treated vowels differently than consonants and used no rotors -- it used stepping switches instead. One of the reasons it was cryptanalytically vulnerable was that the key scheduling was poorly done]. Resultant revelations of Japanese plans led to U.S. naval victories in the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, crushing the offensive power of the Japanese fleet, and enabled American flyers to find and shoot down the plane carrying Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, the Japanese commander in the Pacific in April 1943. [Actually all of these things resulted from American (and possibly British, though this is less clear) breaks into the Imperial Navy's chief high level system, called by the Americans JN-25. It was regularly changed throughout the War, but after Pearl Harbor, the Americans were able to more or less keep up. Purple carried only diplomatic information -- very valuable, of course -- but carried no military tactical information at all.]

Actually, although a group of six letters was handled differently from the other twenty, IIRC they weren't the vowels: which letters where in which group was selected with a plugboard. (I have no idea why the did it this way - because the group of 6 was only scrambled through a single level of stepping switches, whereas the group of 20 was done through 3, it represented a vulnerability.) Noel (talk) 21:20, 31 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] on terms (M4, Triton, Shark...)

The Germans used several names for their (various non-commercial) Enigma machines. The one that sticks in my memory is the Navy's which was 'M' in some variants. 'M4' was, as I recall, the name of the 3.5 (or 4, depending on viewpoint) rotor machine adopted by the Navy well into the War. Bletchley Park used different names for assorted Enigma networks. Thus, the Navy in the Atlantic may have been talking back and forth (using the M4 machine), and BP might call that network 'Shark'. While the Navy in the Med (using the SAME machine, mind, though with different traffic patterns and different key schedules) might be called Porpoise by BP. Thus, it is necessary to keep clearly in mind the difference between a network (determined by who talks to whom and is therefore using the same keys) and the machine used to implement that network. Some recent edits have been going round and round on this somewhat slippery ground. ww 19:46, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yep, we need to be careful. Before 1 February 1942, the Shark network used M3, the 3 rotor machine. The M4 was also used by other networks, e.g., Seahorse. — Matt 22:49, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Page move??

On Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Ultra-, someone wants this article renamed. Any opinions?? 66.245.111.194 20:29, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Overlap

There's considerable overlap between the Breaking the code section and the article Cryptanalysis of the Enigma. This would be okay, if the section were briefened to a summary. Can anyone take this on? Derrick Coetzee 05:01, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Now that I look, there's a considerable amount of overlap in other sections as well. According to the header at the top of Cryptanalysis of the Enigma, this article should focus primarily on how the information was used, which seems like a pretty good idea. If someone feels having a large overlap is important, either merge these articles or create a template which is placed in both; this allows updates to be made in one place (otherwise, the updater may not even be aware redundancy exists.) Derrick Coetzee 05:58, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments, and yeah, I think most of the overlap can be cut out; entire books have been written on ULTRA that spend about a paragraph explaining what the Enigma was and even less space explaining how the information was produced! For background, until a few months ago, we had just two articles: Enigma machine and ULTRA. Both articles attempted to give the entire story of (1) the machine, (2) the cryptanalysis and (3) the intelligence produced. I spent some time relocating the intelligence and cryptanalysis parts of Enigma machine into Ultra and Cryptanalysis of the Enigma respectively, but I haven't got round to working on the latter two articles yet. — Matt 09:35, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Now, that I've noticed this, I'm going to speak up for the Average Reader. Both these articles (Enigma and Ultra) were, it seems to me, mostly introductions or articles of first resort at the time Matt mentions. As such, the AR will be most helped in my view with something that doesn't require much chasing of pointers to specialized articles in order to get a first level overview. Such an article will, it seems to me, necessarily be less than maximally sparing of duplication of content. I was satisfied with the degree of overlap that Matt mentions, at least after a series of extensive edits I did. This is, I think, a policy which differs from that of some others, in this instance Matt. We have had similar differences at other articles in crypto corner. I have mostly been unwilling to do more than disagree, but the same disagreement seems to return from time to time. I don't think that the article style we now frequently have in the crypto corner, thus
topic
subtopic
main article somewhere else
comments
subtopic
main article somewhere else
comments
etc etc
is felicitous. The AR, who is not a cryptiac, nor a devotee of maximal economy of words across many related articles, is not best served this way. The standard to which we should be rallying is instead, maximum intelligibility for AR. Admittedly, this is not so clearly a standard in favor of duplication of content that some excess words cannot be trimmed. It is, though, a significantly different criterion of judgement about potentially trimmable alleged excess.
Comments? ww 19:59, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I think the suggestion here is not a topic-subtopic structure, but a division between intelligence and codebreaking. The general rule is simply to stay "on topic", and one can write and read quite successfully about ULTRA intelligence without needing to know anything at all about the techniques used to break Enigma (or the mechanics of the Enigma machine). This division is a very natural one -- it started during the War in the division of duties between Hut 3 and Hut 6, or between Hut 4 and Hut 8. This separation is not going to cause any confusion for your Average Reader (although it may make for a less entertaining story, but Wikipedia is a reference work). The only "crossover" that I would think necessary is when various problems in the codebreaking caused an intelligence blackout (such as the introduction of the four-wheel Naval Enigma on Shark). Having multiple articles which all tell the whole story of "How Enigma came to be broken" is quite undesirable. — Matt Crypto 20:16, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of details about cryptanalysis

I separated material related to codebreaking and capturing of naval cryptographic material and moved it after "breaking the cipher". My view is that this material must be removed from the article and made available in the discussion page for possible inclusion in Cryptanalysis of the Enigma. Sv1xv (talk) 13:56, 16 February 2008 (UTC)


Well, after a month and a half with no comments on the previous view, I commented out the parts related to cryptanalysis. As these sections contain losts of information, I propose to copy them in the discussion page (ie here). Sv1xv (talk) 16:06, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ULTRA and FISH, etc

The term "Ultra" also covered material gathered from the decryption of FISH ciphered material, not just Enigma, right? (Not to mention various other Italian and German codes and ciphers?) I ask because the current article talks almost exclusively about Enigma.

I do know that later in the war the US and UK standardized on "Ultra" as a term for all SIGINT material (West, SIGINT Secrets, pp. 238). Budiansky gives (Battle of Wits, pp. 254-255) a memo from Travis which says ULTRA is to be used as a term for all "special intelligence"; Budiansky says the latter term referred to all "high-grade and machine ciphers".

However, West also contains a quotation from Peter Calvocoressi that "Ultra was the name given by us to intelligence we derived from breaking Enigma" (pp. 22). So I gather that the enlargement of the coverage of the term was a later wartime development.

It may even have been a UK edict, as nearly as I can make out. Certainly the term MAGIC for another source of SIGINT material continued in use in the US. ww 20:12, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

In particular, Ultra covered the TUNNY and STURGEON systems (Lorenz SZ 40/42 and Geheimfernschreiber respectively), I gather. (Although it was mostly TUNNY that the attention of GCHQ was focussed on, with the Colossus, etc.)

So presumably either i) this article needs to cover those other systems as well, or ii) we should rename the current contents of article to something which refers specifically to the intelligence gained from break of the Enigma, and do a new "Ultra" article which covers all the systems?

Another issue is that later in the war, attacks on Enigma (particularly the Naval Enigma) were very much a joint US-UK effort, and of course technically, later in the war the term Ultra covered the Magic material as well! So technically an article on Ultra should cover all Allied cryptanalytically-derived intelligence.

However, I think it makes sense to keep separate the campaigns against the German (+Italian?) communication systems, and Japanese systems into two separate articles; the two are logically fairly separate, and putting them in one would create an unwieldy beast.

Still, it would be nice to have an article titled Allied SIGINT in World War II (with alternative titles Allied cryptanalytic intelligence in World War II, etc) which gives a brief overview of the whole field, and references all the appropriate lesser articles.

And no, I don't have time to do it! Sorry, too much else to do here...

What I will do for now is rework the intro section to add brief references to at least TUNNY and STURGEON, and mention the importance of TUNNY: West says (pp. 228) that "it was to be GCHQ's most valued source", and Budiansky described (pp. 315) its output as "priceless". Noel (talk) 22:38, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I removed this sentence from the intro:
The corresponding name used by the Americans for analogous intelligence from Japanese decrypts in WWII was Magic
because, as far as I can make out, MAGIC was only applied to PURPLE decrypts, and is not really analagous to Ultra (which covered a multitude of sources). E.g. Lewin, American Magic (pp. 14) "the machine that came to be called Purple. All information gathered from this source was known then, and throughout the war, as Magic." I've looked through a large number of references, and can't find any use of Magic for anything except Purple decrypts. Noel (talk) 02:39, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

PS: I've just noticed that Edward J. Drea, MacArthur's ULTRA (pp. xi, pp. 240 footnote #2) gives a lot more detail on the usage spread. He gives 13 May 1940 as the first British use of Ultra (by the RN, per Beesly, Very Special Intelligence); US usage started in Europe and the Med, but there was no uniform naming system in the Pacific, and it did not gain currency there until March 1944.

He also notes (pp. xi) that MAGIC applied to the diplomatic decrypts. Noel (talk) 02:50, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would caution that West's evaluation of 'most valuable' is one made from a considerable distance in time, though of course by a well informed observer. I suspect in any case that what he had in mind was the very high level strategic insight the Fish cypher decrypts were supposed to have made available. I would suggest that Enigma decrypts, as applied to N Africa and the Atlantic (when things were very much in doubt) were valued indeed. Later on, when the Germans were on the run in N Europe and things in less ultimate doubt perhaps less critical? As for May 1940 first use, that seems to me about right, and would apply to most likely Luftwaffe or Wehrmacht as Naval Enigma was rather more resistant and took longer to begin to produce usable results.
As for the scope of reference/inclusion for MAGIC, I would note that JIN cyphers and JIA cyphers began to produce useful material before Midway (June 1942) and continued to do so throughout the war in increasing quantity. Thus Pacific SIGINT material covered rather more than merely the diplomatic PURPLE, and the British / Dutch / Australians contributed to more than a little of that, perhaps especially JIN intercepts. ww 20:12, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
From my reading of Kahn, Holmes, & Blair, MAGIC covered it all, & the main reason Lewin says it ref only PURPLE is because there were no (or limited) breaks into JN-25 yet.
On another point, why, if Churchill (&, presumably, Portal) knew area bombing wasn't working, didn't they simply order Harris to change the priority?
In that vein, & since the tone of it strikes me as unencyclopedic, I changed the bouncing rubble to "trying to break German morale. Trekphiler 07:37, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Illustrations

How about an illustration or two for this article — e.g. an Allied aircraft approaching a German ship on the Mediterranean, or a submarine torpedoing an Allied merchant ship? Logologist 10:06, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. I just had a quick look to see if Wikipedia had anything we could use on other pages (like Second Battle of the Atlantic, or U-boat), but I didn't turn up anything. — Matt Crypto 10:19, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 'Strategic implications' section problems

The recent addition of this section seems to me to present some difficulties. As it stands now, it is largely rhetorical questions intended to show the importance of Ultra. While I more or less agree about the intended importance, I have some difficulty with the format / structure. We're supposed to be reporting facts here (as much as we can manage anyway) and our joint opinion is not such. We should change this section to report contemporary opinion (eg Churchill to the King) or later scholarly judgement. Even if the same result is achieved, a highlight of Ultra's importance.

Comment? ww 20:17, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. While the occasional rhetorical question spices up the text, I think it should be used sparingly. I don't think that fixing it would be terribly hard, though; replace "Might Japan have opened a second front against the Soviets?" with "Historian Bob suggested that Japan might have opened a second front against the Soviets (Bob, 1997)". — Matt Crypto 20:30, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I realize this comment is belated (...), but perhaps a look at the Desert campaign would be instructive. It's a clear example of the use of Ultra, & a pretty clear case can be made for the effect of Ultra on Rommel's offensives; also, I might say, of poor crypto secutity by Bonner Fellers ( man who should be pilloried), sending in Black which Rommel's boys were reading. Between Lewin, Macksey, & some others, a picture should be possible, no? Might also goto a page on strategic implications generally, which was here & here Trekphiler (talk) 17:26, 24 March, & 05:38, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Was ULTRA a military 'operation'

Sorry to be pedantic, but .....

Is there a definition, in this main topic's context, of 'operation'? I had supposed that the term would be more limited and thus exclude ULTRA (though not questioning ULTRA's importance). If not what else can be added? PLUTO?

[edit] some recent edits

A recent ambitious pruning and tweaking of this article has generally improved it I think. However, they have also resulted in wholesale replacement of such terms as cryptanalysts and code-breakers with cryptologists, and so on. While the term is used (mostly in military crypto circles in the US), its use should not displace so zealously for equally servicable words which, incidentally, have existing extensive WP articles. Non crypto informed readers chasing cross references are likely to be confused. Since we can expect few such readers we are necessarily writing for the mostly crypto innocent. It would be better I think to retain some use of the now replaced terms if only to suggest that there are aeveral possible choices for those who business it is to break codes/cyphers used by the enemy.

Comments? ww 03:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Precisely my point. How can such proliferation and sloppy use of terminology fail but to confuse novices? To speak of "code-breaking" when one means "cipher-breaking," as is often the case, is unconscionable oversimplification that borders on contempt for the intelligent layman. A comparison may be drawn to the blanket use of "cancer," whether one is speaking in fact of a cancer or of a different kind of neoplasm. (All cancers are neoplasms, but not all neoplasms are cancers.)
"Cryptanalyst" is, with all respect, a piece of pompous crypto-bureaucratic jargon that was coined by that shameless self-promoter, William Friedman. logologist 08:06, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
Logologist -- it's clear you're on some sort of vendetta against words like "cryptanalyst" and "codebreaking". You are very welcome to campaign to change the usage of these words within the field, but please don't try to impose it on Wikipedia articles until you after you succeed. It is not appropriate to drop the jargon and idiom of the field simply because we don't like it. — Matt Crypto 23:31, 19 September 2005 (UTC)
L, Mostly what Matt said. However, I would observe that, however barbaric Friedman's neologism might be to some ears (it offends me obscurely because it does not roll trippingly off the tongue), it has become universally accepted in the stead of such as code-breaking. As such, the word (regardless of its spelling or exact pronunciation) has entered the language. Recall that English for some reason welcomes new words whther from other languages or deliberately invented. I don't know why, nor am I aware of anyone who credibly claims to, so I think we all, including WP, will have to cope. ww 05:44, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wartime consequences

I have just added some other arguments to this section but I did this not because I expect the changes to last but because (although it is fun) I don't think this type of speculation is appropriate for Wikipedia.

As Winston Churchill, "The terrible Ifs accumulate." So I would like to replace the speculation with:

An exhibit in 2003 on "Secret War" at the Imperial War Museum, in London, quoted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill telling King George VI: "It was thanks to Ultra that we won the war." Churchill's greatest fear, even after Hitler had suspended Operation Sealion and invaded the Soviet Union, was that the German submarine wolf packs would succeed in strangling sea-locked Britain. He would later write, in Their Finest Hour (1949): "The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril." A major factor that averted Britain's defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic was her regained mastery of Naval-Enigma decryption.

Cut this paragrah and section at this point. (Note the change from "The major factor" to "A major factor")
Then I would like to see paragraphs on other areas of the war:
  • Air war (Stratigic bombing). How did enigma help?
  • Land war. Why did Allied commanders not win thier battles hands down given that they could see the other players hands? Why was the Battle of the Bulge such a suprise? Why did Allied commanders time and again ignore Ultra, like Monty (who should have known better) and the lack of interest in intellegence before Operation Market Garden. Or was there no Ultra for Market Garden, if so why not?

I do not know enough about the subject so I would appreciate it if someone else would answer the questions. But what should not be done is to pile up two or more ifs, so that the section is turned into unsourced speculation. (No matter how much fun it is!) Philip Baird Shearer 21:52, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

PBS, I like your initials (US joke, others may disregard). I'll take a brief whack at some of your queries.
Air war: UK and US bomber commands must have had, I presume, some information on presence and state of readiness of various German attack units. Since 8th Air Force especially had appalling loss rates, it might suggest that the knowledge made no difference. On the other hand, losses might have been even higher without it. I'm aware of no credible studies on the point. (Graduate students, rev up your word processors!) On other aspects of the Air War (in particular V1 buzz bombs) Engima supplied considerable hints and suggestions as to where and how organized were the launch sites. Not definitive but helpful.
When reading up to contribute to the article on the "Bombing of Dresden", I came across a snippet that said that Bomber Harris, C-in-C of "RAF Bomber Command" was not privileged to direct use of ULTRA he was given some information gleaned from ENIGMA but not where it had come from. This directly effected his attitude to the effectiveness of the post D-Day 1944 directive (order) to go after Oil because he did not know that it was high level German sources which was being used to say just how much it was hurting them, so he tended to see it as a highlevel command "panacca" (his word) to bomb specific oil and munitions targets, and as a distraction from the real task of making the rubble bounce in every large German city. Source: Page 202, "Dresden:Tuesday 13 February 1945" by Fredrick Taylor. --Philip Baird Shearer 09:42, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Land war: Kasserine Pass. Eisenhower's staff ignored such warning as it got via Ultra, and Torch got plastered. Invasion of Crete -- almost entire German battle plan was in local UK hands well before it started. Part of the reason less use was made than otherwise is probably that Ultra distribution was in its early days, and the mumbo-jumbo about it all left the UK commander in considerable doubt about its reliability. And he was not permitted to mention the information to anyone, including his planning staff. Battle of the Bulge. Allied commanders seem to have ignored Ultra this time as the Germans were clearly beaten and it was only a matter of time. Monty. A special case, with an ego as wide as all outdoors. He is said to have bragged publicly just before El Alamein that he had been informed as to what the Jerries had for breakfast. His behavior later on the N edge of the Normandy breakout was, it seems, largely devoted to bragging and pressuring (Eisenhower, UK politicians, anyone else) to give him full command, or independent command, or anyway more. The Arnhem disaster may be Eisenhower's biggest blunder, for it let Monty waste troops and time to very little effect. John Keegan's Intelligence in Warfare has an interesting study on the Crete business and some comments on the Battle of the Atlantic. He is less willing to see as much value in intelligence as most, but he has had a career-long stance that force at the point of application is key overall, so it would be a surprise to see any other. His grasp of cryptography is a little hazy, so beware on that point. ww 06:01, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
On Crete it was a much a tactical victory as anything, neither men not Allied command had trained on how to deal with airborne assult. Although Nathan Bedford Forrest maxim of the "first with the mostest" would have been a good start! BTW it is a myth that Hitler never allowed another airbourn assult. One was planned for the "Battle of the Bulge" but was aborted due to lack of fuel. Philip Baird Shearer

It is information like this, with sources, that I think needs adding to this section of the article not the "if if" which were there before. But as it is not my area of expertise I think someone else should add it. Philip Baird Shearer 09:42, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

PBS, The Bomber Harris tidbit is about the only thing I'm aware of about knowledge of Ultra by commanders in the air war. I'd love to hear what Curtis Lemay thought of it all, if he was informed. A man with his own Strangelovian vision; consider his advice at high levels during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I agree it and similar stuff ought to added somehow to the article, but have no time to do it myself. May I suggest that you do so? You know, be bold! If you get something off kilter, someone will eventually correct that claim, section, paragraph. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ww (talk • contribs) 01:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Another thought on this theme. The strategic bombing of cities by the Allies, particularly towards the end of the war was as an attack on German communications. Until the 1970s this was always taken to be on the physical networks of road, rail, and water ways. However it is now clear that in part it was to destroy the telephone network forcing the Germans to use wireless more, which could of course be intercepted and decoded. This tends not to be emphasised in books on the bombing campaign because, at Bomber Command planning level, it was not known how critical the destruction of the telephone system was, but it ought to be mentioned in this article Philip Baird Shearer 12:28, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Also note that there there is a contradiction between what is stated in this article:

"Likewise, Ultra traffic suggested an attack in the Ardennes in 1944, but the Battle of the Bulge was a surprise to the Allies because the information was disregarded."

and what is found in the article on the Battle of the Bulge:

"Even Ultra (the allies reading of secret German radio messages) revealed nothing about the up-coming buildup and offensive."

It would be nice if sources were cited on this subject! (Eric Le Bigot 08:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC))

The sentence about the Ardennes should be deleted. By this time the Germans were operating on their own territory and could use land lines instead of radio transmissions, so Bletchley Park had less to work with late in the war. Vgy7ujm (talk) 03:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
There's a better reason. It's wrong. Ultra revealled rather a lot in bits & pieces beforehand, IIRC; from Lewin, I think. Maybe Calvacoressi says something to it, too. (It's been awhile, & it's not in front of me...) Trekphiler (talk) 17:04, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Re air commanders, Hugh Dowding in the Battle of Britain had Ultra (and could ensure that every raid was met by some fighters), but not his deputies eg Leigh-Mallory. See Big Wing controversy. Hugo999 10:39, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Just noticed this. The underlying assumption of this comment is that Ultra info contained abundant reliable raid targeting information. Baldly, this was not so. Luftwaffe Engima traffic might contain some info about a squadron being assigned to tomorrow's raid, say, but this didn't tell quite from where and at what heigth they would be approaching what target. RAF Fighter Command needed far more detail for Ultra info to be directly useful in deployments. Radar and tactical chatter and huffduff would be more useful in practice. It's very tempting to imagine that there was available (to someone) just the information needed, but it was largely not so. And, in any case, Bletchely was not breaking even Luftwaffe traffic in real time at this period. Much less large amounts (or the especially useful bits) of it. ww (talk) 21:27, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Concur. Ultra's been attributed with magickal powers, usually by people ignorant of its workings (& esp its limitations...) Trekphiler (talk) 17:04, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ultra and M4

The article implies that the adoption of the M4 by the U-Boat arm in Feb 1942 caused no problems for Allied codebreakers, as they had luckily detected a transmission error in Dec 1941. I understood that the adoption of the M4 did cause major problems, and that regular reading of traffic encrypted on M4 was not achieved for nearly a year, one of the key events being the capture of Enigma documentation from U559 in the eastern Med at the end of Oct 1942.

Maybe I'm wrong? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.174.208.64 (talk • contribs) 21:47, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

No, you're right, and the article does give the wrong impression. Shark wasn't being read from February 1942 to mid December 1942 as a result of the introduction of M4. I'll try and read up on this, but I believe it's the case that, while codebooks captured from U-559 were very helpful, it was another factor which finally helped BP get back into Shark, which was that the Germans were using three-rotor settings for short signals (the fourth rotor being set in the "emulate M3" mode). — Matt Crypto 21:00, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] staff at PC Bruno

It's my memory that Bertrand put together PC Bruno including the Polish folk who had gottne out of Poland before the Nazis caught them, and that they and the French cooperated on such things as Enigma intercepts. None of the Poles went to Bletchley (British caution apparently) and PC Bruno and BP ooperated on the at least the Enigma work. There is the oft-repeated tale of using Enigma to encrypt work schedules and such between the two sites. Since Rejewski is said to have been surprised about British Enigma work at BP, I deduce that he was not one of the people talking directly with BP from PC Bruno, implying both that there were other personnel working on Enigma (French most likely), and that when Turing came over to talk about things, he must have been careful not to be quite forthcoming with the Poles he met about quite where he was from and what he (BP) were proposing to do. That's why I changed it to 'major assistance' since others would appear to have been involved. Is there any reason to believe the French et al didn't also work on Enigma at PC Bruno etc? ww 08:12, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "work on Enigma." If you mean collecting Enigma intercepts, communicating by teletype with Bletchley Park (in Enigma, according to Henri Braquenié) and the like, then the French did "work on Enigma." But if you mean the essentials — the actual cryptologic work — Kozaczuk, relying on Rejewski, Bertrand, Braquenié and others, makes it quite clear that this was a strictly Polish domain.
By the way, what are the sources for Rejewski "being surprised about British Enigma work"? logologist|Talk 09:29, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Memory tells me it was an obituary style account of R. but memory doesn't tell me that it was an actual obituary. It's been getting more and more spotty of late... But the assignment of the man who broke Enigma to the Polish army in UK and 'wasting him' on low level stuff implies that the Brits weren't at all willing to tell him anything about their Enigma work. Things thus fit... ww 16:53, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
The Poles at PC Bruno collaborated with the British at Bletchley Park, and Alan Turing visited the Polish mathematician-cryptologists at Bruno. It seems impossible that the latter would not have known that the British were breaking Enigma. The British not inviting the cryptologists to Bletchley in 1943 or later would likely have been due to: 1. British observation of the need-to-know principle; 2. reduced need of the Poles at that stage; and 3. the departure, from the scene, of Alfred Dillwyn Knox and Alastair Denniston, who had known the mathematicians from the Warsaw conference in July 1939. What would have been surprising, in the circumstances, would have been if Rejewski had been surprised that the British had continued working on Enigma, whether successfully or otherwise. Possibly the report of his surprise comes from one of the numerous pseudo-experts on Enigma history who have flourished like weeds since 1973-74. logologist|Talk 03:44, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] rommel and montgomery

is there any information about what gen. montgomery found out through ULTRA about rommel that led ot the defeat? thanks

I believe Winterbotham states in his book that General Montgomery took Ultra intelligence seriously. Also many losses of ships carrying supplies to Africa Corps are directly related to Ultra intelligence. Sv1xv (talk) 13:59, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rename

We currently use primary disambiguation for this page, with other meanings of "Ultra" relegated to a disambiguation page (Ultra (disambiguation)). Personally, I still feel, looking at the range of "other" meanings (minor bands, albums, video games, comic books etc), that primary disambiguation is a reasonable choice here. However, if we get consensus to move it, I ask that 1) we use the "move" function, and not copy and paste (which loses the history), and 2) before we move, we update all the incoming links. — Matt Crypto 11:20, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Agree entirely. ww 21:50, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, this is my fault entirely. I didn't know there was a move function. Of course, for the record I agree with the move. Sorry to cause a small mess. Fresheneesz 22:32, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Making the rubble bounce"

This phrase, if it is a quote, it needs to have a reference source relevant to the article context (an initial browse through google turns up the phrase in a nuclear war context), otherwise I think it should go - if its not a relevant quote that can be specifically attributed to Bomber Harris or Frederick Taylor or another relevant commentator, the phrase is non-encyclopedic (its colloquial and emotionally loaded), and may even be offensive. "Devastated", or if one prefers, "repeatedly devastated" should be sufficient to describe the destruction of the cities (unless one subscribes to the hyperinflation of descriptive language). Can someone turn up a relevant reference for this phrase? Bwithh 15:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

The phrase appears to come from Winston Churchill - but from 1954, and about nuclear warsee this link. If noone can turn up another reference from a commentator from the period of the bombing campaigns, I will be changing that phrase again. Bwithh 16:01, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Rather than have this conversation in two places please see: Talk:Arthur Travers Harris#"Making the rubble bounce" --Philip Baird Shearer 15:02, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kasserine

Its my understanding that the ULTRA problem at Kasserine was that Rommel didn't attack exactly where he was directed via ULTRA and II Corps did not send reinforcements to Faid pass because they were expecting attacks elsewhere. Does anyone have a reference for the information listed here? John (Jwy) 05:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I have dug in further - appararently Ultra indicated an attack was immanent but not where. II Corps "guessed" wrong as to where it would be. John (Jwy) 21:07, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other references

ULTRA is also the name of an alliance in the video game Planetside. Zanduar 21:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] allied intelligence relay

Wasn't ULTRA also part of the intelligence that sent allied intelligence and allied info back and forth, because a couple of my sources mention it as being used to send allied intelligence to commanders. could someone double check this?

ULTRA was the name given to information (most of it from Enigma breaks of one sort or another). It was distributed via a special organization of liason officers to various commanders during the War. Not all commanders were eleigible to be told of its reliability, much less its origin, even in shrouded form. For instanc,e the commander on Crete was not so informed and seems to have treated the information as useful but not exact.
There was a struggle between the US and UK about how much Ultra info (and knowledge of where it came from) should be permitted. Bureaucratic fief protection was a non trivial contirbuter to this in most accounts. Though the official reasons tended to be doubts about others' abilities to keep information from leaking. ww 18:02, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] recent edit re Battle of Britain

Winterbotham's book is unreliable on much about BP crytpanalysis. He was not involved in the crypto side, but rather in the dissemination side. Calvocoressi's book is rather better, as he was closer to the crypto work and is, any case, a more careful writer.

As for the Battle of Britain, a look at BP's break status during that period will show that BP was not breaking messages in real time, which was required if it were to be of significant help to the RAF. Lots of other asistance from the listening posts, from traffic analysis, and from intelligence analysis of what was actually broken by the crypto folk. The lot is often conflated in the books, especially those written earlier than,s ay, the 90s. This point is important in understanding the effect of Ultra at verious stages of the War, and the sentence removed at least had the virtue of flagging this issue. And the vice of being too brief to convey the a more nuanced view. On balance, I think its removal was unfortuante.

Comments? ww 18:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I think a lot of writers (myself once included :() over-emphasize the importance of Ultra. In the BoB, I have to think (as Deighton & Macksey, I think, both point out), Ultra was of limited value. Strategically, it was crucial, but it could do little to aid tactical defense, when information had to be useful in minutes, not days. Y-Service had to be of more tactical importance in that environment. Ditto BoAtlantic; simply knowing a U-boat was around, which DF could reveal, was enough to route evasively, which was the preferred practise: no need to read the signal, it's pretty clear what it is. Trekphiler 07:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Just noticed this, sorry.
In fact, content of messages could in some circumstances add considerably to the tactical significance of siganls interception. for instance, several boats could be instructed to maintain silence for the next few days, leaving the traffic analysis folks in the dark as to their locations. Only by decrypting signals from Doenitz would the Allied convoy control be able to route around those silent boats -- perhaps maneuvering to tinercept a convoy. In qny case the routine transmissions from boats at sea were usually very brief and could not be universally picked up, so no expectation that boat locations would be known from such transmissions would be very reliable. Often useful, but it doesn't take many missed brief transmissions to put one in a very dicey position regarding a assembling wolfpack in one's path.
Those periods when Bletchley was blacked out from the traffic for one reason or another were in fact rather nerve-wracking. Decryption was really useful when it could be managed. Which accounts for Churchill's characterization of BP's worth as a goose which continued to lay golden eggs. ww (talk) 17:30, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The Coventry Incident

Does anyone have specific information or sources regarding the story that, Winston Churchill should have chosen not to evacuate the city of Coventry in England, despite knowing (supposedly through ULTRA) that it was about to be bombed? I can't seem to see it mentioned anywhere, but the Danish article on Enigma implies that it is a myth or misinterpretation of some sort, though no sources are listed, aside from a mention of Peter Calvocoressi's book on the subject.

Does anyone have specific knowledge on this subject? I would like to see this included in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Munksgaard (talk • contribs) 12:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll see if I can dig up some more information on it, but I believe the Danish article is correct; see also History_of_Coventry#Bombing_during_the_Blitz. — Matt Crypto 20:05, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Difficulties with some disclosures

I removed this part from the main article and copied it here. I believe it has no place in the article but is a good reminder to editors. Sv1xv (talk) 14:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Just noticed this also. And sorry again.
Certainly this extract is of worth to editors, but it is also of worth to our Gentle Reader. It is helpful in explaining that there are differences, logical and alleged factual, between supposedly reasonable (ie, non conspiratorial) accounts of Ultra, its history, and value to the Allied war effort. It would certainly be possible for a reader of an encyclopedia like WP to learn more or less the same thing from reading several of the articles in the crypto corner, but few of those who read the Ultra article will be interested in the technical (more or less) details of crypto or cryptanalysis or the history and development of either. Accordingly, in the interest of its mission to cover the important aspects of the subject matter of an article, this material (or its equivalent) belongs in the article.
There is a persistent attempt by many editors, I think you being one of them, to strip articles down to the minimum possible scope. Sometimes on the grounds of parsimony of verbiage. While generally laudable, this leads in the extreme to articles which are correct, but too bare to be useful. In addition, they are often lifeless. Part of our brief as editors is to write well, and good writing must always take into account he Expected Reader. In an encyclopedia, like WP, that Reader is a bit indeterminate, but we may safely assume that a great many will not be experts and so our prose whould be interesting. And so on that grounds also, this extract should not have been elided. It is usually of interest that the field in question has been confused and twisted and by what and for what motives.
Comments? ww (talk) 17:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Difficulties with some disclosures

Many accounts of the Enigma-decryption story, and of other World War II cryptological happenings, have been published. Several are unreliable in many respects. This can be traced to a number of causes:

  1. Not all authors have been in a position to know. Several books have been published by those on the Ultra distribution side at Bletchley Park, but work there was seriously compartmentalised, making it difficult to credit some alleged episodes if due only to such a source. The story about Churchill deliberately not interfering with a Luftwaffe bombing of Coventry which was known through Enigma decrypts is one such. Peter Calvocoressi's book, Top Secret Ultra, contains a sounder account of the episode than the commonly recounted allegation.
  2. The cryptanalytic work was tricky and quite technical. It requires someone with a considerable understanding of cryptanalysis, and of Enigma, to adequately comprehend -- or explain -- how either worked.
  3. Documents have been 'lost' in secret archives. Those not actually lost have taken decades to be released to the public, and some are, presumably, still to be released. In any case, none of them was originally written, nor made available later, with historical clarity in mind; considerable perspective is required to make reasonable use of them.
  4. Governments have chosen to keep secret or release information to serve their own purposes, not historical accuracy or completeness.
  5. Several authors have had agendas which took precedence over accuracy in their reports. At least one incident is known of whole-cloth fabrication regarding British cryptanalytic progress on a particular World War II Japanese Navy cryptosystem. The account was claimed to have been written from the unpublished memoirs of the Australian cryptanalyst Eric Nave, but substantive parts of the published version appear to have been simply invented.
  6. Many writers have not done their research. The fate of the German Enigma spy "Asché" was not publicly known till Hugh Sebag-Montefiore tracked down Asché's daughter about 1999. Her account appears in Sebag-Montefiore's book.
  7. Ultra itself was a top-secret institutionalized mechanism to specifically protect the fact that the Nazi Enigma codes had been broken. In many ways, protecting that secret often had to be more important than using decoded information for immediate strategic gain. Balancing that utility meant that Ultra, without a doubt, placed the secret above individual human life on several, if not many, occasions. For that reason, considering the issue of Ultra, and its 30-year secrecy, means confronting the highly ideological and perhaps convoluted, yet equally necessitated, reasons why nations keep secrets at any expense.

As with other history, but more than for most, the history of cryptography, especially its recent history, should be read carefully, due to its complexity and to possibly confusing or misleading agendas.

Several authors have had agendas which took precedence over accuracy in their reports. At least one incident is known of whole-cloth fabrication regarding British cryptanalytic progress on a particular World War II Japanese Navy cryptosystem. The account was claimed to have been written from the unpublished memoirs of the Australian cryptanalyst Eric Nave, but substantive parts of the published version appear to have been simply invented.

Do you mean "The Emperor's Codes" by Michael Smith ? Sv1xv (talk) 20:30, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted section saved here

[edit] Breaking the cipher

Main article: Cryptanalysis of the Enigma

The fundamental break into the Enigma systems that were to be used by Nazi Germany was made in Poland in 1932, just on the eve of Adolf Hitler's accession to power, by Marian Rejewski. The 27-year-old mathematician used advanced mathematics (group theory, particularly permutation theory) and cracked the Enigma system, with some guidance from instruction manuals from a German source (Hans-Thilo Schmidt) via French Intelligence. It has been characterised as the most momentous advance in cryptanalysis in a millennium. Together with two colleagues at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau (Polish: Biuro Szyfrów), he went on to develop practical methods of decrypting Enigma traffic. They designed working "doubles" of the Enigmas and developed equipment and techniques which helped in finding the keys needed for decryption (including the "grill," "clock," cyclometer, cryptologic bomb, and perforated sheets). Well before 1938, much German Enigma traffic was being routinely decrypted by the Poles; but accelerating changes in German operations (operational procedures, frequency of key changes, greater rotor choice) and looming war led the Poles to share their achievements in Enigma decryption with France and Britain. This happened during a famous meeting at Pyry, in the Kabaty Woods south of Warsaw, on July 25, 1939. Since neither the French nor the British had broken into Enigma traffic, this was a major cryptanalytic windfall for Poland's Western Allies.

Armed with this Polish assistance, the British and French began work on German Enigma traffic. Work on Enigma after the outbreak of World War II in France, at PC Bruno outside Paris, was done in part by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptanalysts who had escaped Poland. Early in 1939 Britain's secret service had installed its Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, 50 miles (80 km) north of London, to work on enemy message traffic. For some time, Bletchley Park and PC Bruno cooperated on work against the Enigma messages. The British had set up a large interception network to collect enciphered messages for the cryptanalysts at five near-by off-site outstations at Adstock, Gayhurst, Wavendon, Stanmore, and Eastcote. Eventually there was a very large organization centered at Bletchely controlling the distribution of the resulting—secret—intelligence, which came to be called "Ultra." Strict rules were established to limit the number of people who knew of Ultra (and its source) in the hope of ensuring that nothing (e.g., leaks or actions) would alert the Axis Powers that the Allies were reading their messages. Prior to use of the term Ultra, the product from Bletchley Park was for a time codenamed "Boniface" to give the impression to the uninitiated its source was a secret agent. Such was the secrecy surrounding reports from "Boniface" that "his" reports were taken directly to Prime Minister Winston Churchill in a locked box to which he personally held the key.

The 'bombe', used to test solutions.
The 'bombe', used to test solutions.

The Bletchley Park workers included a mix of crossword enthusiasts, chess mavens, mathematicians and pioneer computer scientists. Amongst the latter was Alan Turing, one of the founders of modern computing. By 1943, a large proportion of intercepts (over 2,000 daily at the height of operations) were routinely read, including some from Hitler himself. Such information enabled the Allies to maintain an often remarkably accurate picture of enemy plans and orders of battle, and, when appropriately used, was of great value in formulating Allied strategy and tactics.

[edit] Methods of cryptanalytic attack

British attacks on the Enigmas were similar to the original Polish methods, but continued evolving to keep pace with the German equipment and procedure changes. (For a discussion of the many techniques shared between the Polish and British approaches, see Kozaczuk 1984, appendix F.) A particular challenge was German Naval Enigma. Even before the war, it had been a challenge to the Poles; only a portion of Naval Enigma had been read at B.S.-4 (the Cipher Bureau's German section) due to limited Bureau personnel and resources and because knowledge of Army and Air Force traffic had been deemed more important to Poland's defense. (Kozaczuk, pp. 31, 58.)

One mode of attack on the Enigma relied on the fact that the reflector (a patented feature of the Enigmas) guaranteed no letter could be enciphered as itself, so 'A' could not be sent as 'A'. Another technique counted on common German phrases, such as "Heil Hitler" or "please respond," which were likely to occur in a given plaintext; a successful guess as to a plaintext was known at Bletchley as a crib. With a probable plaintext fragment and the knowledge that no letter could be enciphered as itself, a corresponding ciphertext fragment could often be identified. This provided a clue to message keys.

On some occasions, German cipher clerks helped Allied cryptanalysts unknowningly. In one instance, a clerk was asked to send a test message, hit the T key repeatedly, and transmitted the resulting ciphertext. A British analyst received from an intercept station a long message containing not a single "T", and immediately realised what had happened. In other cases, as they had before the war, Enigma operators constantly used the same settings for their message keys, often their own initials or those of a girlfriend (one clerk is said to have had a girlfriend named Cillie, and would continuously use CIL as the rotor setup; alternatively, their choices were merely foolish, as ABC, hence 'silly'. Bletchley Park named such hints "cillies" or "sillies"). Analysts were set to finding such messages in the sea of daily intercepts, which winnowed out enough possibilities to permit Bletchley to use other techniques to find the initial daily key. Other German operators used "form letters" for daily reports, notably weather reports, so the same crib might be used every day.

Had the Germans ever replaced every rotor at the same time, the British might not have been able to break back into the system. And had German operating practices been more secure, things would have been much more difficult for the British cryptanalysts, according to the head of Hut Six at Bletchley, Gordon Welchman. However, due to the expense and difficulty of getting new rotors to all ships and units, rotors were never replaced simultaneously. Instead the Germans every so often added new rotors to the mix, thereby allowing the British to work out the wirings of the newest rotors. Human operational errors were never eradicated either.

[edit] Capturing of German naval cryptographic material

From the beginning, the Naval version of Enigma used a larger selection of rotors than did the Army or Air Force versions, as well as operating procedures that made it much more secure than other Enigma variants. There was no hint at all to the initial settings for the machines, and there was little probable plaintext to use, either. Different and far more difficult methods had to be used to break into Naval Enigma traffic, and with the U-boats running freely in the Atlantic after the fall of France, a more direct approach recommended itself. [1]

On 7 May 1941 the Royal Navy deliberately captured a German weather ship, together with cipher equipment and codes; and two days later U-110 was captured, together with an Enigma machine, code book, operating manual and other information that enabled Bletchley Park to break submarine messages until the end of June.

Naval Enigma machines or settings books were captured from a total of seven U-boats and eight German surface ships. These included U-559 (1942), U-505 (1944), and a number of German weather boats and converted trawlers such as the Krebs, captured during a raid on the Lofoten Islands off Norway. More fantastic scenarios were contemplated, such as Ian Fleming's James Bondian suggestion to "crash" captured German bombers into the sea near German shipping, hoping they would be "rescued" by a ship's crew, which would be taken captive by Commandos concealed in the plane who would capture the cryptographic material intact.

In other cases, the Allies induced the Germans to provide them with cribs. To do this they would drop mines (or take some other action), then listen for messages thus provoked. In the case of mining this or that channel, they expected the word "Minen" to occur in some of the messages. This technique was, at Bletchley, called gardening.

Even these brief periods were enough to markedly affect the course of the war. Charting decrypted Enigma traffic against British shipping losses for a given month shows a strong pattern of increased losses when Naval Enigma was blacked out, and vice versa. But by 1943 so much traffic had been decrypted that Allied cryptologists had an excellent understanding of the messages coming from various locations at various times. Thus a brief message sent from the west at 6 a.m. was likely to have been broadcast by a weather-reporting boat in the Atlantic, and that meant the message would almost certainly contain these cribs; and similarly for other traffic. From this point on, Naval Enigma messages were being read constantly, even after changes to the ground settings.

However, the new tricks only reduced the number of possible settings for a message. The number remaining was still huge, and due to the new rotors that the Germans had added from time to time, that number was much larger than the Poles had faced. In order to solve this problem the Allies, especially the US, "went industrial" and produced much larger versions of the Polish bomba that could rapidly test thousands of possible key settings.

In 1941 British intelligence learned that the German Navy was about to introduce M4, a new version of Enigma with 4 rotors rather than 3. Fortunately for the Allies, in December a U-boat mistakenly transmitted a message using the four-rotor machine before it was due to be inaugurated. Realizing the error, the U-boat retransmitted the same message using the 3-rotor Enigma, giving the British sufficient clues to break the new machine soon after it became operational on February 1, 1942. The U-boat network which used the four-rotor machine was known as Triton, codenamed Shark by the Allies. Its traffic was routinely readable.

[edit] German suspicions about Enigma cryptanalysis

The Germans considered Enigma traffic so secure that they openly discussed their plans and movements, handing the Allies huge amounts of information. However, Ultra information was also at times misused or ignored. Rommel's intentions just prior to the Battle of the Kasserine Pass had been suggested by Ultra, but this was not taken into account by the Americans. Likewise, Ultra traffic suggested an attack in the Ardennes in 1944, but the Battle of the Bulge was a surprise to most Allied commanders because the information was disregarded. On yet another account, during the North African Campaign, an overly pessimistic report by German officer Friedrich Paulus led the British to believe that the German Afrika Korps was much weaker than it actually was, prompting them to launch the disastrous Operation Battleaxe.

[edit] References

  1. ^ A fictional version of this story is told in the novel Enigma by Robert Harris (ISBN 0-09-999200-0) and in the movie made from the novel—see "Enigma (2001 film)."

Sv1xv (talk) 18:06, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted material

Svlxv, as for your edit removing the comments about the reasons for the unreliability of many accounts of Ultra (above) I have to disagree with your edit/deletion here. If for no other reason that it's a twhacking good tale of repeated derring do in the recovery of crypto material on the high seas, and sneaky interception of weather reporting boats in the arctic too. Even James Bond is connected to the story. And relevant in its own right as illustrating the degree of effort thought worthwhile by those concerned at the time with such matters. Something it's perfectly within WP purview to cover. Of interest to the Average Reader surely, and so worthy of inclusion. not to mention that only some readers actually do follow the pointers to the main article and so only a few will get the full treatment of the background.
If your deletion was due to concerns for reducing storage requirements on WP servers, I sympathize, being old enough to recall a time when storage costs were much higher, and large capacities unavailable at any price. But we live in a different epoch with regard to such costs and so I think any such concern is unwarranted in this environment.
I suggest restoration or rewrite if your objection is primarily stylistic, though I would caution that artistically outstanding writing is nearly always promptly taken down a few pegs here on WP, whose effective standard for prose is quite plain and unadorned with artistic flourish.
Comment? ww (talk) 17:53, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Ww, I removed this text because it belongs to the articles relating to Cryptanalysis of the Enigma. It is not directly relevant to the present article, which is about ULTRA intelligence preparation, dissemination and usage. I copied the text in here (the talk page) because it is very valuable to editors of other Enigma related articles. There is nothing wrong about the reliability of the material or the suitability for WPMILHIST.

Sv1xv (talk) 20:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Also some of this information can be re-introduced in the article after cleanup, especially if a section for "Safeguarding of ULTRA and its sources" is added. Sv1xv (talk) 20:49, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

S, I'm less concerned about which section (new or old) it may be included within than with inclusion of the information for the benefit of our Gentle Readers. As I noted above, I disagree with you about the appropriateness of this information in this article. Information rarely fits within bright line boundaries between this subject or some other (in WP terms, this article or another). In fact, it's easy to argue that there are no bright line boundaries, thus a certain amount of blur at the edges is not only to be expected, but must be tolerated. So, I think your proposal to include this material in the new section you suggest sounds good. Will you undertake it? ww (talk) 18:02, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

I have already started. However I shall merge the section about capturing german naval crypto with section Naval Enigma in "Cryptanalysis of the Enigma" and not in "Ultra". Information about Enigma and its cryptanalysis is very well distributed in a number of excellent articles, and all related material should copied in them. Sv1xv (talk) 03:19, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I notice that you have started doing so, and I'll watch to see what you end up with. However, I so disagree with your dogmatic assertions that this or that belongs elsewhere that I am considering, for the first time in the years I've been eiditng here, requesting an arbitration panel ruling on the policy you are unilaterally implementing here. I repeat that context withing which to understand the origin, use, importance, and problems with Ultra and accounts of it are not surplusage in this article, but a service to our Gentle Readers, a great many of whm will find that context useful. We, as editors are writing for them, not for outselves. ww (talk) 21:49, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


v • d • e
The Enigma cipher machine

There is nothing dogmatic about it, just a reasonable structure, so that an extensive subject is covered by a number of articles with limited overlaping. In Wikipedia there is already a very logical structure in the Engina related articles and it is reflected in the template used in each one of them:

  1. Enigma (the machine itself, history, technical details, usage, surviving enigmas in collections etc)
  2. Cryptanalysis of the Enigma (code breaking, crypto material capturing, bombes, people involved)
  3. Ultra (production and dissemination of intelligence from decrypted messages)

It is very well organized and can be expanded easily. Following this structue, raw materila can be classified easily: Capture of naval crypto falls under "Cryptanalysis" and it could even be an article by itself under "Cryptanalysis", if enough material becomes available. Safeguarding of Enigma decryption by using intelligence carefully falls under "Ultra". Also under Ultra belong sections (or even articles) about effects of Ultra to decisions of field Commanders etc. General description of the cipher machine itself must be included under "Enigma".

Proper classification and organization of information and avoidance of extensive duplications are essential in any encyclopedia, don't you agree?

Sv1xv (talk) 04:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

S, Yes I agree, but with a difference in emphasis. We are not serving our own editorial views here, but being of use to a Reader. As such duplication of material is appropriate if it helps that Reader, and not if it doesn't. We are no longer constrained in the traditional way of printed Encyclopedias by page limits, nr of volumes, and so by maximum word counts imposed on articles by supervising editors. So, since the Average Reader will not go chasing off into other articles to get a full view of <whatever> (it's an uncommon trait), we are fully justified in using, for instance, the tale of seized Enigma materials to show how important Enigma was seen to be operationally. However, having done so for perfectly good reasons we must note that breaking of Enigma did not, fundamentally, depend on such derring do as it had been in principle broken by the Poles in the early 30s and that breaks continued w / or w/o the seized wheels and such during the War proper. Only in this way can our Reader get a conceptually adequate view of Ultra. The purpose of the article, needless to say. Whether any details about bombes or Zygalski sheets need be mentioned in this article or not is more clear. Should definitely be mentioned at Breaking Enigma though.
So, while we agree in large part, the differences lead to a different tone in the article here. And the difference is sufficiently significant in my view to suggest appeal to third parties to help achieve consensus. ww (talk) 16:51, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Battle of Kursk

You are right to ask for references for the statement about intelligence in the Battle of Kursk. Perhaps this particular statement does not fit in this article at all. Sv1xv (talk) 04:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes I suspect so, if there isn;t some source for it. ww (talk) 16:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Steganography

I deleted

"<ref>It does not look like a good cover name, as [[Saint Boniface]] was an 8th century Anglo-Saxon monk and missionary in Germany, who imported to continental Europe cryptographic puzzles based on a simple substitution of vowels with dots.</ref>"

While interesting, it's not exactly on point; moreover, at the time, there was less sensitivity to associational hints in code/cover names, as witness Operation Avalanche. And the question of the source of the Boniface name arises, too. Might be better to ask why the cryptonym Boniface was selected & see if it was a deliberate ref to the saint, who chose it (my $'s on Winston), & if it was done knowing about his crypto work. (If Winston did choose it, I'd put money on that, too.) Trekphiler (talk) 17:04, 28 April 2008 (UTC)