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Cryptologia
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From the Archives: A Lady Codebreaker Speaks: Joan Murray, the Bombes and the Perils of Writing Crypto-History From Participants' Accounts
Colin Burke Available online: 17 Sep 2010

To cite this article: Colin Burke (2010): From the Archives: A Lady Codebreaker Speaks: Joan Murray, the Bombes and the Perils of Writing Crypto-History From Participants' Accounts, Cryptologia, 34:4, 359-370 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2010.485452

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Cryptologia, 34:359370, 2010 Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0161-1194 print DOI: 10.1080/01611194.2010.485452

From the Archives: A Lady Codebreaker Speaks: Joan Murray, the Bombes and the Perils of Writing Crypto-History From Participants Accounts
COLIN BURKE
Abstract A declassified 1970s article by Joan Murray, the World War IICold War British codebreaker who worked on the German naval Enigma problem, and who was engaged to Alan Turing, gives some new insights into the battle against the U-boat Enigma. As important, in the light of documents released by the British and the American since the 1990s, the article shows the ganders in using a participants memories as final evidence. Although privy to the secrets of Bletchley Park, Murray was, for example, unaware of the near equal power of Englands own four-wheel Bombes compared to those designed in America. Keywords Agnes Driscoll, Alan Turing, Bombe, Enigma, Joan Clarke, Joan Murray, Joseph Wenger

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1. Introduction
It wasnt too long ago that information about the British and American World War II anti-Enigma methods and machines remained highly restricted. That is indicated by the classification Top-Secret-Umbra stamped on this from-thearchive contribution, one which first appeared during the mid-1970s in a National Security Agency in-house journal.1 It took a recent FOIA request to have the item released despite its earlier declassification, its authors later open-source publications, and the near deluge during the last decade of scholarship on the German naval Enigma problem.2 The piece was written by one of Englands leading World War II female codebreakers whose work went far beyond the clerical. The author, Joan Clarke Murray, was a World War II and cold war crypto-insider who later helped Sir Harry Hinsley write the intelligence classic, British Intelligence in the Second World War.3 As part of that effort Mrs. Murray seems to have been among the first to bring the Poles contribution to the Enigma story to full recognition.

Address correspondence to Colin Burke, 6319 Red Haven Road, Columbia, MD 21045, USA. E-mail: burke@umbc.edu There are convincing indications that this FOIA release was from (23) Ralph Erskine gives that citation in (11, p. 219). He seems to have received a somewhat different response to an FOIA request for the same document. 2 Insight into the scope of the literature may be found in (4, 6, and 26. A similar open publication by Murray, Hut Eight and Naval Enigma, Part I, is in: (13, pp. 113118). 3 The early monumental work on the subject is (14).
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Joan Clarke was born in London in 1917 and died some seventy-nine years later. She spent much of her adulthood working as a British cryptanalyst. Her career began in mid-1940 after she was recruited by her mathematics instructor at Cambridge, Gordon Welchman. When she arrived at Britains Bletchley Park crypto-center she was not assigned to Welchmans codebreaking team. Rather, she was routed to the office (hut) of the brilliant (and eccentric) Alan Turing who was working on the German naval Enigma problem while helping to develop the electro-mechanical machine, the Bombe, that became critical to unraveling the settings of Germanys main military encryption devices, the three-wheel and the four-wheel Enigmas. There was more than cryptanalysis going on while Turings group was attempting to conquer the German U-boat cipher systems. In less than a year, Alan Turing proposed marriage to Joan and even offered an engagement ring. She accepted, but Turings homosexuality led to the end of the engagement. That did not disrupt the couples crypto-efforts at Bletchley nor their life-long friendship, however. After a decade of further work with Britains codebreaking agencies, Joan married another fellow cryptanalyst who was also a numismatic expert. Joan took some time off while her new husband dealt with an illness, but then returned to the British crypto-community and played a significant role until her retirement in 1977.4 Her archive article is not bristling with information new to those who have benefitted from the declassification of British and American Bombe-related materials since the later 1990s, but it stands as a revealing personal statement. It points to some significant items that are scattered in the details contained in many recent secondary works and in the technical documents opened to the public in England and America during the last decade, it shows how even participants privy to the inner-secrets of intelligence agencies did not know all the significant facts about their work, and it indicates how difficult it is to craft correct histories of codebreaking efforts based upon recollections. As with other first-person accounts, Murrays article contains some facts that are important, as well as some that are not exactly on-the-mark. A significant and central fact in Murrays article is the ability of the majority of the British newer four- wheel devices (ones so vital to the reading of the U-boat messages after mid-1943) to run two tests of Enigma settings at once (not just longer single menus) while Americas Desch-National Cash Register Bombes ran only one test at a time. The British two-test capability compensated for the American versions one-third greater mechanical speed. However, not all of the British four-wheel devices were, as implied in Murrays article, able to do two tests per run. While one or more of the late 1944 British Bombes had a three menu capability, the first fifteen of the British four-wheel machines were single menu devices.5 Despite that, the British four-wheel Bombes two-test fact amplifies the importance of fragmentary evidence from more detailed histories about the role of the advanced Bombes built by Englands Harold Doc Keen and those designed

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4 For the authoritative obituary for Clarke, see (7). For a longer biography that mentions the engagement ring, see (10). 5 Ralph Erskine alerted this author to the British Bombe descriptions in (29) and to the three diagonal board machines.

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by that nations Charles Wynn-Williams.6 After facing some reliability issues in 19437 and a temporary halt to the production of the Keen type of four wheel British Bombes in early 1944, by the end of that year there were some forty-three of them in operation, not eighteen as Americas Joseph Wenger asserted in a mid-1944 report to his superiors.8 By summer 1945, there were about seventy-one. Compensating for the early Keen four-wheel bombes that did not have a two menu ability, discounting any three menu capabilities, and adding-in the limited power of the twelve British four-wheel Wynn Williams type Cobra Bombes to Keens, leads to a conservative estimate that from a low point of thirty percent in later 1943 (after the Keen Bombes had become more reliable) by late 1944 England had nearly fifty percent of the Americans four-wheel decryption capability. At the wars end, it had close to eighty percent. Thus, Britain had built a substantial four-wheel attack potential. The ramifications of the relative powers of the British four wheel Bombes, compared to Americas, will be examined in a forthcoming article on the accomplishments of the British and American Bombe construction groups and the impact of reading the German submarine ciphers on U-boat kill-rates.9 There are a few other facts in Murrays article that may lead to a reexamination of some historical generalizations. Her description of the initial limitation on what Turing was to be allowed to reveal about Britains anti-Enigma breakthroughs to 1941s American visitors provides a new insight into the British-American decisions of late 1940 and early 1941.10 Her version of the reasons why the British turned their attention back to producing the older three-wheel Bombes (ones that could not meet the U-boat challenge) in early 1944 will give rise to some questions among historians who have followed the lead of American codebreakers who believed the reasons were related to design flaws and British political machinationsrather than to practicalities such as the scarcity of reliable parts and manpower.11 Some Americans also believed the cessation of British four-wheel production was to be permanent, leaving the American Navy with the unwarranted burden of devoting its Bombe-building resources to compensating for Britains failures.12 Murrays statement that the Atlantic submarine problem was turned-over to the Americans in Autumn 1944 when, she states, the United States finally developed the capacity to find the cribs (expected plaintext words) needed for the Bombes should spark some new investigations of American claims of an early 1944 assumption of full responsibility. The official United States Navy logs concerning the use of the Bombes in Washington, D.C., indicate an American proficiency before the end of 1943.13 Murray seems not to have had some relevant facts at her disposal during or after the war. The final number of British four-wheel machines she cites, sixty-eight, is three less than the number cited in official histories released two decades after her

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An excellent article on the subject is (31). Ralph Erskine has found that in October 1943 only some 3.5 of the 18 Keen four-wheel Bombes were in full operation. Communication with Erskine, February 2009. 8 These assertions are found in, (1618). 9 See (2) and his presentation at the NSA Historical Symposium, 2005. 10 For a general overview, see (20) On what was exchanged, see (8 and 9). 11 On the American Navys view, see (17). 12 Communications with Ralph Erskine, January 2008 and (27). 13 (22) is an invaluable resource that awaits even deeper analysis.
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death, and she may not have been informed that not all of the Keen four-wheel machines could run two problems at a time. There are also some inaccurate generalizations in the article which were probably caused by of lack of access to information. She seems to have not known of the depth of crypto-information the Americans brought to England early 1941; nor of the timing and depth of British willingness to share its anti-Enigma capabilities with the Americans. For example, she may never have been told of Britains August 1941 offer to tell-all about the Bombes to Americas code-guru Agnes Driscoll.14 There are some important aspects of the anti-enigma work, including the amazing no-crib electro-mechanical anti-Enigma attack embodied in the American Bulldozer Bombe, that are not mentioned because of the nature of a personal account such as hers and because of her limited war-time assignments.15 Her statements about the number of Enigma enciphering wheels, seven rather than eight, the capture of the German vessel with the critical crib-yielding material at Narvik rather than Alesund, and the spelling of the French cryptanalysts name as Brac rather than Braquenie should remind all of us not to rely solely on memory when trying to write history.16 The limitations of Murrays statements and the omissions are quite excusable: many of them once again show that even crypto-insiders cant know all that went on around them and that fading memories are not the most reliable bases for historical writing. In good intelligence work knowledge is compartmentalizedsometimes political sensitivities cause institutional forgetting. In many instances critical documents lie obscured in cluttered archives to be discovered only through serendipity, and seemingly insignificant papers await those with fresh eyes and much time to turn near raw data into historically significant generalizations. Murray might well have not had the chance to learn, for example, that England kept at least sixteen of its Bombes running after the war, that the United States kept at least ten for quite some time (nineteen were available in early 194617) and that the United States continued to use some of their machines until the mid-1950s against the type of targets that would have likely caused the British to continue employing their Bombes.18

2. The Document

(5, pp. 25520) contains a easily readable treatment of Driscolls views and actions. The critical document on Driscoll is (28), but on alternative attacks see (12 and 19). 16 Ralph Erskine pointed out these errors of memory in correspondence with this author. 17 Although the numbers are buried in the detailed documents, (21 and 25) reveal the specifics of retained machines. 18 On the United States continued use, see (3), On the British targets, see (1, 15, and 30).
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Ralph Erskine for his advice, information, and patience while waiting for this item to be submitted for publication.

About the Author

Colin Burke has been interested in the history of codebreaking for more than two decades. He may be contacted at burke@umbc.edu.

References
1. Alexander, C. H. OD. C.B.E. Cryptographic History of Work on the German Naval Enigma, TNA (PRO) HW 25=1. 2. Burke, Colin. 2005. Raising the Intelligence Bar Far, Far Too High: The Bombes and the U-boat War, forthcoming; and, presentation at NSA Historical Symposium. 3. Burke, Colin. July 2008. The Last Bombe Run, Cryptologia, 32(3):2779. 4. Copeland, B. Jack (ed.). 2004. The Essential Turing: The Ideas That Gave Birth to the Computer Age. London: Oxford University Press. 5. DeBrosse, Jim. 2004. The Secret in Building 26: the Untold Story of Americas Ultra War Against the U-boat Enigma Codes., New York: Random House, pp. 2452. 6. Erskine, Ralph and Michael Smith (eds,). 2001. Action This Day., London: Bantam. 7. Erskine, Ralph, I. J. (Jack) Good, Eric A. Weiss. JanuaryMarch 2001. Obituary, Joan Elisabeth Clarke Murray, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 6771. 8. Erskine, Ralph. 2002, What Did the Sinkov Mission Receive From Bletchley Park, Cryptologia, 24(2):97109. 9. Erskine, Ralph. 2003. From the Archives: What the Sinkov Mission Brought to Bletchley Park, Cryptologia, 27(2):111118. 10. Erskine, Ralph. May 2008. Murray [Clarke], Joan Elisabeth Lowther (19171996), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edition. 11. Erskine, Ralph.et al, July 2008. Captured Kriegsmarine Enigma Documents at Bletchley Park. Cryptologia, 32(3):199219. 12. Gladwin, Lee. Oct. 2007. Bulldozer: A Cribless Rapid Analytical Machine (RAM) Solution to Enigma and its Variations, Cryptologia, 31(4):305331. 13. Hinsley, F. H. and Alan Stripp (eds.). 1993. Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 113118. 14. Hinsley, F. H. (Francis Harry), with E. E. Thomas, C. F. G. Ransom, R. C. Knight. 19791988. British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations. London: H.M. Stationery Off. 15. Mahon, A. P. The History of Hut Eight 19391945, TNA (PRO) HW 25=2. 16. NARA RG 457 Box 1124 Acc 17640, OP20 G, History of the Bombe Project, 30 May, 1944. 17. NARA RG 457 Box 1414, Joseph Wenger, History of the Bombe Project. 18. NARA RG38 Bombe Correspondence, CNSG Library, box 183=32444, Alexander to Church. 19. NARA RG457 HCC, Box 600, NR4815 ZEMA57, 26 March 1945, The Bulldozer. 20. NARA RG457 HCC, Box 940, NR2738 CBMI33 2714A, Chronology of the Co-operation Between SSA and the London Office, GCCS. 21. NARA, RG38 CNSG Library, 5750=159, 31946. 22. NARA, RG457 HCC, Box 621, German Cipher Key Logs. 23. NSA Technical Journal, 20(4) Fall 1975, pp. 4146.

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24. NSA Cryptologic Almanac 50th Anniversary Series, Madame X: Agnes Driscoll in Twilight, The Last Years of the Career of Agnes Driscoll, 19411957, NSA FOIA 2010 release #52567. 25. NSA FOIA release, History of NCML and OP20G 4e. 26. Sebag-Montefiore, H. 2000. Enigma: the Battle for the Code. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 27. TNA (PRO) HW 3=93. 28. TNA (PRO) HW 14=45 August 18, 1941, Denniston, Interrupted Conference with Commander Safford. 29. TNA (PRO) HW 25=19, 20. 30. TNA (PRO) HW 3=164. Squadron Leader Jones Section. 31. Whitehead, David. Oct. 1996. Cobra and Other Bombes. Cryptologia, 20(4):289307.

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