Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 224 pages
• Published by: Greenhill Books July 15, 2006
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 185367687X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1853676871
• Book Dimensions: 7.3 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 12.6 ounces

Reader Reviews
For those familiar with the monumental accomplishment of WWII of cracking the Enigma machine codes used by the German armed forces for radio messages, this title sounds like the primary accomplishment of ULTRA, breaking the Luftwaffe Enigma codes and reading them virtually from the fall of 1940 on. To use a contemporary euphemism, that's not quite accurate. The author worked as a RAF WAAF at Bletchley Park beginning in 1942 in the section that dealt with the Luftwaffe radio messages from ground to plane and vice-versa. These were not Enigma-coded messages. The staff used math and previously decoded "cribbed" message keys to decode the intercepted messages. These might be a bomber reporting a ship or a ground station relaying messages to an aircraft crew. The intelligence derived from this was a useful supplement to Enigma and combined with that and other intelligence gave a useful "window" into how the Luftwaffe operated and what it was doing on a daily basis. It was not as key as Enigma in high-level intelligence. The author intertwines a lot of personal stories about life at Bletchley Park and what it was like to be a 20-year old in that rarified atmosphere of brilliant eccentrics. It is a very readable and interesting story, but does not add, significantly to the Enigma story. It is not a technical book in the sense of even explaining, in any detail, how her section's decoding worked. It is, however, an entertaining story of one facet of the whole Bletchley Park story, and worth a read, in spite of the somewhat mis-leading title. Comment | | (Report this)