Prof

by Dermot Turing

  Even knowing which pins were on or off did not break the cipher – for, as with wheels in Enigma machines, knowing the starting positions of each wheel, and the stepping pattern of the psi wheels, was also essential to uncovering the key. The problem was far, far worse than Enigma: to Enigma’s 1.6 x 1020 set-up permutations, the Lorenz had 1.0 x 10170 – the age of the Universe is supposedly only 4.4 x 1018 seconds. But the chi wheels repeated their influence on the cipher regularly, and this feature, together with another of Alan’s ideas – the probabilistic analysis of coincidences, exploited previously in Banburismus – would enable Bill Tutte to design a method for finding the key. Alan’s report of December 1942 from Dayton, Ohio, ends up with a paragraph headed ‘Tunny’. (In the 1940s ‘tunny’ was the name British people gave to tuna, when it could still be caught using a rod and line in the North Sea. Tunny was also the codename for one species of Fish.) One message had been ‘sent over here’ and ‘could have been broken by Tutte’s original method’. The subtext of Alan’s report is that no progress on this cipher had been made by Op.20 G in the US. The British had exclusivity on Fish, but breaking Fish by Tutte’s, or indeed any other, method was tough. It was time to put a new man onto the problem.

  Newman at Bletchley

  M.H.A. Newman had had a difficult time since his sabbatical in Princeton during 1937–38. At Princeton he believed he had found a proof of a mathematical problem known as the Poincaré Conjecture, and presented his proof to the intellectual elite of Princeton shortly before his return. Alas for him, there was a flaw in the proof, and he suffered sleepless nights for his error. The new war with Germany didn’t bring peace of mind. Newman’s father, Herman Neumann, was a Jewish emigré to Britain from Bydgoszcz, which at the time of Neumann senior’s birth was part of the German Empire. Neumann senior had been interned in 1914; on his release, he had gone back to Germany, leaving the young Max and his mother in England to fend for themselves (and change their name to Newman). World War Two was an attempt by history to repeat itself, but it was tying itself in knots in the process. In 1940 the invasion of England by Germany was imminent, and the threat of internment, and much worse, was apparent to anyone of Jewish ancestry. Max Newman sent his wife and two small children to America for its greater safety; his efforts were then directed towards finding work for himself there so he could join and continue to support them. Given the background, it’s no surprise that Newman had ended up with ‘no’ against his name on the emergency professors’ list of 1938. In 1942 he came under renewed pressure to change his mind. The Room 40 old boys were brought back into action:

  Dear Newman,

  There is some work going on at a government institution which would I think interest you and which is certainly important for the War. If you are disposed towards it, would you let me know and a meeting will be arranged to talk it over with someone without either party being committed to anything in advance …

  Yours sincerely

  F.E. Adcock

  Room 47, Foreign Office, London, S. W. 1.

  1st June, 1942.

  Dear Sir,

  Professor Adcock has handed me your letter of May 26th. We are hoping that one of our Principals will be in Cambridge one day during the week of June 8th. He is away for a few days, but when he returns I will ask him to make some definite appointment with you.

  The post would certainly be a very important one from the point of view of the War.

  I am not certain at the moment what attitude would be taken by the authorities concerned, about your father’s nationality, but that can however be investigated if your conversation with our Principal is mutually satisfactory.

  Yours faithfully,

  Nigel de Grey

  By mid-August it was settled. The billeting officer wrote to Newman to say he ‘had in mind a very nice billet in a modern house with constant hot water, only a few minutes walk from here’. Within a few weeks, shortly before Alan Turing left for America, Newman was installed as part of the team working on Fish.

  To begin with, Newman was a fish out of water, whether hot or cold, constant or otherwise. According to his son William:

  Max was initially assigned to the Research Section, joining Tutte and others working on Tunny. Part of his work involved decrypting messages by the existing slow hand methods, which were somewhat akin to solving crossword puzzles. Max found the company congenial, but the work frustrated him at times and left him feeling ineffectual. He even thought of returning to Cambridge. It was around this time, however, that Max made his first breakthrough – the idea of mechanising Tutte’s method using high-speed electronic counters. He took his proposal to the Bletchley Park management. The whole scheme must have seemed hopelessly overambitious at the time, but Max won his superiors round, and in December 1942 was put in charge of developing an experimental machine.

  The message would be punched as holes in teleprinter tapes, and the machine would use photoelectric cells to count pulses as the holes whizzed by. The experimental machine to tackle Tunny was called the ‘Heath Robinson’ – named for the cartoonist whose absurd jerry-built fantasy machines illustrate the Professor Branestawm books; but it ripped up the paper tape and had all sorts of other operating problems. However, Alan’s role, alongside M.H.A. Newman, on Welchman’s Machine Committee brought him close to this project, and thus enabled Alan to bring into being one of the most important partnerships of the Tunny war, that between Newman and Tommy Flowers. And so it was at Bletchley Park that electronic computing machinery was first developed in Britain.

  Schoolboys and their crazes

  When Tommy Flowers saw the Heath Robinson he knew immediately that the engineering solution was wrong. What was being done unreliably with simultaneous reading of two punched tapes could be done much more safely with a single tape; the content of the other tape could be stored electronically, using vacuum tubes, then called valves. His machine design was called the Colossus. The data feed from the second ‘tape’ was programmed into the machine using a panel of switches. The prototype Colossus was working in December 1943 and subsequent Colossi broke messages in time to give confidence to the Allies about their deception plans relating to the Normandy Landings the following year. However, this was routine – Colossus could do a whole lot more, according to Flowers:

  It just changed the whole picture. We were able to start off on a new line altogether; we could do so many things and of course much of what we were doing was just intuition, and it can be seen now to have anticipated what was done later on – it was just intuition – such as when they wanted to change the logic and we provided – they wanted programmable logic – and we provided them with a big panel with a lot of keys on it and by throwing the keys they could – the mathematicians – could program the machine – the keys did the ‘and’ and ‘or’ functions – and we didn’t do any multiplying; we didn’t need a multiply but we added ‘and’ and ‘or’ functions and put them in series and parallel and so forth, and they were quite happy. In fact they were like a lot of schoolboys with a new toy when we first gave it to them; they thought it so wonderful they were playing with it for ages just to see what you could do with it.

  Spot the difference. Heath Robinson’s burglar-catching machine, Professor Branestawm supervising, and the rebuilt ‘Heath Robinson’, Bletchley’s first precursor to Colossus. Alan Turing’s later experience with a burglar was less amusing.

  The codebreakers were trying to get Colossus to do long multiplication, just for the hell of it. Flowers went on to say of this work, ‘It led us to the computer field for Turing’. The Normandy Landings symbolised a reversal of fortune, and it became legitimate to imagine a world after the war. One of Flowers’s tasks was to consider the applications of electronics in peacetime; computing machinery was one of these, and Flowers and Turing began to think about the design of a multi-purpose computing machine at about this time.

  Rather closer to Hanslope than Bletchley was the pub at Wolverton, where, on a Friday evening in th
e latter part of the war, you might have found Alan Turing playing chess with Donald Michie.

  He was keen on playing chess, which he wasn’t very good at and, because of the way that Bletchley Park had been recruited, other people there either didn’t play chess at all or they tended to be chess masters so that he couldn’t find anybody to give him an even game and I was, as it happens, the only person around in the immediate environment who was bad enough.

  Playing chess was only part of it. They were also talking about algorithms for machines to play chess.

  People of his own age tended to regard this as all a bit unfortunate that such an outstanding intellect and mathematical logician should allow himself to be led astray by childish and science fiction-type speculations about mechanised thought, but for young people like myself, and I.J. Good, Peter Hilton and many others, we were very turned on indeed and quite inspired by these ideas. I recall that he was quite narrowly concentrated on computer game playing as being a suitable arena in which to test these ideas. It was quite often that some of us went for long walks on Sundays or on leave days, days off, and talked about game playing and I think that nearly all the ideas that one finds in Shannon’s 1950 paper in one form or another came up, mainly between Turing and Good I would say.

  Alan Turing’s OBE medal, among other memorabilia at Sherborne School. The other things include a rowing trophy and the children’s science book Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know, which according to his mother stimulated Alan’s interest in science.

  As the war came to a close, Alan went with Donald Michie to try to locate his buried ingots – as we know, without success. However, his war service was recognised with the award (in 1946) of the OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire). Gordon Welchman also received the OBE, and it was offered to M.H.A. Newman as well, but he turned it down. According to his son William, Newman had been incensed by the faint praise implied by such a lowly honour in the case of Alan Turing. ‘I was offered something as a matter of fact but I said I didn’t wish to have it. Turing got the OBE, which I thought really a “wonderful” thing to offer a man for what he did. I mean, Good Heavens, he changed the course of the war and I thought all these decorations were so ludicrous that I felt justified in declining the one they offered me. I think to offer a man like Turing the OBE, which he accepted rather as a joke I must say, was fantastic.’ Gordon Welchman had been promised some sort of recognition by both Denniston and Travis, and had even heard a rumour that he had been recommended for a knighthood. Bureaucracy soon put paid to that. Officials’ awards depend on their grade, and an OBE was as good as it was going to get. There was, additionally, the problem of recognising achievements in clandestine service. The vow of secrecy was permanent, and unwanted attention would follow if a higher award had been made. Sara Turing was extremely proud of Alan’s gong (though he, characteristically, kept it in his toolbox); with Mother making an embarrassing fuss, Alan probably saw the advantages of discretion more readily than Gordon Welchman.

  Frankenstein’s castle

  Victory in Europe was declared on 8 May 1945. Tommy Flowers had been waiting to go to America to see for himself the progress being made on computing machinery there, but there were procrastinations and excuses. Eventually his telegram arrived: he was expected there on 15 July. But then an intervention, from America, upset his plans again. General George C. Marshall never issued orders directly to Tommy Flowers, or even Alan Turing, but once again he was going to direct the secret war in Alan’s direction. On 7 August 1944 he had written to the Supreme Commander:

  Dear Eisenhower:

  Following up my radio to you of August 7th concerning the organization of an American team to participate with the British Government Code and Cipher School in an investigation of German Signal Intelligence activities, I am enclosing a list of subjects for inquiry. The attached tab sets forth in itemized form the matters which we believe should receive primary attention. […]

  Faithfully yours,

  G. Marshall

  SCHEDULE OF SUBJECTS FOR INVESTIGATION

  1. Complete cryptographic and cryptanalytic data on file at German centers, as well as equipment and operating instructions pertaining to the same. […]

  6. Speech secrecy equipment, cryptographic facsimile encipherment, and all non-Morse cryptographic equipment as used both on wire lines and on radio circuits.

  The investigation of German signals intelligence had begun as soon as the Western Allies crossed the Rhine. Marshall’s program was called TICOM, standing for the Target Intelligence Committee. Shortly after the German surrender, Tommy Flowers and Alan Turing were sent overseas as part of the TICOM effort, thereby putting paid to Flowers’s computing-machinery trip. The departure was to take place on 15 July, and instead of America they were going to the devastated heartland of Germany – to find out what secrets the Germans had.

  CONTROL COMMISSION (GERMANY), BRITISH ELEMENT

  FIELD INFORMATION AGENCY, TECHNICAL, (FIAT)

  REAR HEADQUARTERS

  c/o U.K.BASE, A.P.O.413

  14 July 1945.

  SUBJECT: TRAVEL AUTHORITY NO. FIAT 30.

  TO: All concerned.

  1. The following personnel are authorised to travel by military aircraft on or about 16 July 1945 to PARIS, France, to carry out the instructions of:-

  CG, U.S. Group, Control Council, and

  Head, Control Commission, Germany, (BE)

  and upon completion thereof to return to present station:- […]

  Mr. T.H. FLOWERS BRAE/122/1 Br Post Office […]

  Mr. A.M. TURING DWQD/2304 Br Foreign Office […]

  s/t/ D. J. NIELSON, Major, G.S.

  This is a certified true copy:

  EDWARD I. FRANKENSTEIN,

  Captain, Signal Corps.

  Tommy Flowers described the journey:

  It was an Anglo-American party and because we were going to Patton’s area it was American led; we came under the American Army. They provided the transport and everything else. We were supposed to meet up in Paris which we did after some delays, and then go to Frankfurt by road, which we did, and then get some sort of clearance or other from Frankfurt, which we did after a great deal of trouble. I just enjoyed the trip. Then we blasted our way. We started out from Frankfurt about five o’clock in the afternoon to do a hundred and eighty miles before dark, which our driver did his best by putting his foot down and going hell for leather, and there were still bomb holes in the road which had only just been filled in, so it was a nightmare journey, but we just made it.

  Their destination was the Laboratorium Feuerstein, which became the subject of several reports by US Army officers. Here, at Ebermannstadt near Nuremberg, was a special engineering facility – ‘a huge outfit unbelievably well equipped’ – under the direction of Dr Oskar Vierling. On the one hand, Dr Vierling had joined the Nazi Party ‘for reasons of expediency, but seems to have been conspicuous by his failure to attend meetings and take any part in party activities’. However, ‘Professor Vierling will be arrested by the military government section as soon as they can bring it about. He is charged with being a member of the SS and with having had Gestapo railroad a few workers.’ Moreover, ‘an investigation of the personnel of the Laboratorium Feuerstein disclosed that eight of the supposed mechanics working in the laboratory were SS troops in civilian disguise’. Protected by the US Army, Alan Turing and Tommy Flowers were unlikely to find themselves railroaded, whatever unpleasantness that might involve. They had come to see the secret lab, and it was evident that the Germans had been catching up fast on the Allies. Alan Turing produced a brief report for his American superiors, with a typical seasoning of superiority and mischief:

  Impressions of Feuerstein

  The Feuerstein Laboratory is in a magnificently romantic setting, on the top of a small Bavarian mountain far from any other buildings, and in the appropriate style of architecture for filming ‘Frankenstein’. Any visitor to the laboratory who was properly conditioned by tales o
f scientific marvels produced there might well expect to see an electronic man peering at him out of the windows as he drove up.

  After this romantic beginning the projects actually being carried out in the lab. appear very disappointing. There is nothing being done there which is really original although some projects might be described as new to us. The techniques involved were (as a whole) not merely not new but slightly outmoded.

  Burg Feuerstein: the fantasy castle where Dr Vierling was developing secure communications technology.

  On the speech secrecy side, in which I was chiefly interested, there was nothing giving high security. The Baustein scrambler gives the same sort of security as the P.O. inverter, i.e. it is only secure against the casual listener. The ‘triple wobbling’ system is somewhat analogous to the public transatlantic telephone, both as regards the security achieved and the nature of scramble produced. […]

  Vierling himself was working, or proposed to work, on yet another speech project. This he described as a ‘speech writer’, and it was intended to write down the words spoken into it in an appropriate phonetic notation. Such a development would be valuable as a basis for a secure speech scrambler. We had the impression at first that this was to be based on some new knowledge about the nature of speech discovered by Vierling. We questioned him on this, but were unable to discover any original work on speech that he had done, unless one believed his claim to have really written a paper published under the name of his professor in Hanover (Wagner). […]