by Sue Black
The auction was Sale 7882, the sale of valuable printed books and manuscripts, including an album of Faraday’s “Deflagrations of Gold, and other metals, on vellum”, which sold for £32,450, and an Enigma machine, which sold for £67,250.
The Turing papers were Lot 60, which were due to come up at about 3pm. I had been keeping in touch with everyone on Twitter throughout the day about the auction and it was starting to feel like we were all going crazy with excitement together. I was so hyper-excited by the time the lot came up that I thought I was going to pass out!
The auctioneer at Christie’s When it came to Lot 60, the Turing papers, the auctioneer described the lot to the audience and then said something to the effect of:
“. . . and bidding starts at £170,000 . . ."
I was horrified. I knew that Bletchley Park only had about £87,000 in the kitty, so the fact that bidding had started at £170,000 meant that Bletchley had no chance at all of winning the lot. My mind went into a bit of a tailspin. I don’t know what I had expected, but being out of the game before it had begun hadn’t featured in any of the scenarios that I had imagined. I was still coming to terms with what had happened when, after only a few seconds . . . it was all over. It had been so fast that I didn’t even know what had happened. I knew that the bidding had stopped at £240,000, but I didn’t know why. Had the Turing papers been sold? Thanks to friends on Twitter and Rory sitting next to me, I found out that the seller’s reserve price had not been met. But what did that mean for the papers and for Bletchley Park? I had no idea.
While I was sitting with my mind whirling away, an Apple-1 had been selling for £133,250, and well known Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak had been sitting at the back of the room.
Steve Wozniak at Christie’s But in spite of the excitement and the atmosphere around me, I left the room feeling quite depressed. I found someone to talk to from Christie’s who gave me the details of an administrator to contact regarding the non-sale of the Turing papers. I then went back upstairs to see what was happening. There were a lot of press setting up their cameras in an ante room, waiting for Steve Wozniak to join them for a press conference. I stayed and watched and then did a quick interview with Rory before leaving and making my way to the Google offices in Victoria.
I wanted to go over to Google to say thank you, especially to Simon Meacham and Megan Smith, for supporting Bletchley Park in their bid. I arrived expecting a cup of tea and a quick chat, but was whisked into a large meeting of Google software engineers, given a microphone, and asked to tell everyone what had just happened. I was surprised, but it was nice to be able to share the news, and I really felt from the software engineers in the audience that they cared about the Turing papers and about Bletchley Park. It was a great moment in the midst of a stressful day.
After I had finished speaking Simon took me to the Google canteen and we sat for about two hours chatting about what had happened over the last few days. Looking back on it I realised it had been quite crazy. We had only known each other about six days, and just through Twitter at that, but we had shared a bit of a roller coaster ride. That kind of experience can be very bonding, and after we had debriefed about the Turing papers, our conversation turned to ourselves. We chatted for ages about life, the universe and everything. Simon was also really hoping that I would be able to meet up with Megan again. It turned out she was not only still in the UK, but also in the building that day. Luckily Megan had time to come and say hi, which was great as it was my conversation with Megan less than a week previously which had kickstarted this whole thing. Megan is, like me, passionate about getting more girls and women interested in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and in empowering everyone through technology. We also of course talked about Bletchley Park, and Megan said that if she and Google could help Bletchley when they spoke with Christie’s, they would be very happy to do so. I thanked Megan and said that I would let Simon Greenish at Bletchley know about this kind offer.
After a few hours I made my way home. What an exhilarating day. The auction had been so crazily exciting, and the story wasn’t over yet. I wondered what was going to happen to the Turing papers.
In November 2010 I sent 1731 tweets
20
The USA at Bletchley
“The 6812th reached a degree of efficiency far above the greatest expectations. When operations ceased on VE day the Detachment was averaging in output runs per day approximately 38% above that of the British units engaged in the same work. This seems almost incredible when it is understood that the British had the benefits of four years of experience. From the beginning of operations to VE Day the 6812th Signal Security Detachment found the solutions to a total of 425 German Enigma Keys.”
—From a 1945 report[48]
People are often surprised to hear that the Americans had a presence at Bletchley Park. After all, the “special relationship” that now exists between the UK and the US didn’t really exist back then. In fact, despite their last conflict being the War of 1812, both countries still viewed each other with some suspicion up until WWI. While most historians report that Churchill and Roosevelt got on very well, the military commanders from both sides didn’t see quite so eye-to-eye. In both wars, it took an act of aggression against the USA, rather than a plea from the UK, to bring America into the conflict. But while things may have been frosty beforehand, WWII was what brought the two nations together as friends and allies.
From a time before the opening of hostilities, the UK and US had an agreement to share whatever intelligence they had that might benefit the other. It is known, for example, that Alan Turing went to America during wartime to act as a liaison and to pass on tools and techniques in person rather than by transmission. According to Bletchley Park’s own official history: “In the British archives there is no intelligence of any importance that was not available to the Americans.” So when the US entered the war in 1941, it was only sensible that a contingent of US codebreakers and communications staff come to Bletchley Park to learn all they could, especially about the Japanese use of ciphers. It wasn’t the Americans’ first visit to meet the codebreakers; a full year before in 1940, a small team of four cryptographers had come to Station X to look at how the place worked. The Scottish dancing Hugh Foss and Oliver Strachey had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes back in 1934 and John Tiltman had figured out the Japanese military ciphers in 1938. With trouble brewing in the Pacific, America was watching Japan very closely.
The codebreakers all got on splendidly by all accounts. However, the visit did end on a sour note. The American government was willing to share the decryption machine they’d built, called “Purple”, with the British, but British Intelligence and Alastair Denniston were unwilling to share Alan Turing’s Bombe. It is not known precisely why the UK was unwilling to reciprocate, particularly as they’d already handed over a great deal of code breaking knowledge and experience. Consensus among historians seems to suggest that it was simply that American security – they were not yet in a state of war – was more lax than British security, and it was known that enemy spies were operating in the USA.
But while, at a diplomatic level, things would remain frosty for a while, the codebreakers continued to enjoy a close, working transatlantic relationship and even friendships. As previously mentioned, Alan Turing went over to America in 1942 to share some of his knowledge and to make new contacts that could prove useful to the work at Station X.
The situation did eventually resolve itself – partly due to the American people’s great respect and liking for Winston Churchill – and the British and American security agencies signed an agreement to share information. America could now build its own Bombes, based on Turing’s designs. The first two were called Adam and Eve and were built in Dayton, Ohio.
Meanwhile, it seemed practical to send a contingent of US troops and codebreakers to work at Bletchley Park. The first wave was under the comm
and of Captain William Bundy. He went on to join the CIA, become President Dwight D Eisenhower’s staff director at the Commission on National Goals, and become foreigner affairs advisor to John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. He was a major player in planning the Vietnam War and in trying to prevent its escalation. Despite a glittering career, in a 1999 BBC interview he stated: “Although I have done many interesting things and known many interesting people, my work at Bletchley Park was the most satisfying of my career.” His and his colleagues’ journey to the UK was not without incident; not only were they wary of attracting the attentions of the U-boat “Wolf Packs”, but their cover story – that they were messenger pigeon experts employed by the Signal Corps was sufficiently outlandish to have raised the suspicions of an officer checking their papers. “They asked us if we’d passed the Army General Classification Test because they couldn’t find our scores on our records,” explains maths graduate and cryptographer Arthur J Levenson, selected by Bundy to be a member of the 6811th Signal Company and posted to BP. “They said, ‘Would you mind taking the test?’ and we said – there were five of us – ‘No, we don’t mind.’ So we took the test and this sergeant graded them and he came back to us and said ,‘Holy raccoon! What scores! You guys ought to be in Intelligence!’”
Levenson worked on Enigma and Tunny in Hut 6 and, after the war, was part of a joint British and American team who were sent to Germany to find and secure any leftover cipher equipment and to question their German cryptographer counterparts. In a 1999 PBS documentary called Mind of a Codebreaker, Levenson says, “I don’t think I’d ever met an Englishman in my life until that point. I’d been full of stereotypes, that they were distant and had no sense of humour. But these were the most outgoing, wonderful people. They fed us, it was quite a sacrifice for them, and there were just enough screwballs there to be real fun.”
The arrival of the Americans and their ease in joining existing teams was surprisingly smooth. In his memoir, Top Secret Ultra, Head of the Air Section Peter Calvocoressi wrote, “A Colonel Telford Taylor was introduced into Hut 3, the first of our American colleagues. He already knew a great deal about Ultra and it seemed to take him no more than a week to master what we were up to. Others of similar calibre followed. They too were temporarily mobilised civilians and their backgrounds were roughly comparable with our own except that there were rather more lawyers among them than among us. They were slotted into our various sections and in next to no time they were regular members of those sections”. He goes on to say, “The addition of the American contingent was so smooth that we hardly noticed it. Presumably this was in part due to the sense of common purpose but it must also have owed more than we realised at the time to the personalities and skills of the first Americans to arrive and of the head of Hut 3 and his peers elsewhere in BP.” And Colonel Telford Taylor later wrote, “I cannot adequately portray the warmth and patience of the Hut 3 denizens in steering me around and explaining the many aspects of the work. I take pride at the ease, goodwill, and success with which the merging was accomplished by Britons and Americans alike.” Taylor later caused a scandal by having an affair with a married British cryptographer called Christine Brooke-Rose (who later became a very well-respected experimental writer).
It was almost inevitable that the glamorous new visitors would be attractive to the young staff of Station X, many of whom had only ever seen or heard Americans on the Big Screen. And the Americans weren’t oblivious to the charms of the female BP staff either. One of Tommy Flowers’ colleagues on the building of Colossus, Harry Fensom, told an Enigma symposium in 1992: “A visiting American lieutenant said that the buildings contained marvellous machines and many attractive ladies. The machines were made by the British Tabulating Company and the ladies by God.” But that’s not to say that this was always an excuse for bad behaviour; the work was hard, the world was more repressed than it is today, and contraception wasn’t as freely available. People tended to be more reserved and faithful. In Marion Hill’s Bletchley Park People, she quotes an unnamed American soldier, who says: “We were 100 American men, at least half of whom worked side by side with the natives, many of them female. In the community at large, there was a shortage of men, many of the local lads being away in the service. Consequently, Americans were always invited to dances. At least half of us were married, but there is little evidence we forgot it.” The fact that the British and the American staff got on very well is evidenced by there having been only one major falling out. Barbara Abernethy recalls a bat and ball game played with a broom handle and a ball. Both teams went in to bat but, at the end of play, there was some confusion. “We all clapped each other on the back and the Americans said ‘We’re sorry we beat you,’” says Barbara, “But then the British captain said, ‘I’m sorry but we beat you.’ So the Americans asked what rules we played by. And we said, ‘Our rules.’” It is entirely possible that, during the match, the Americans were playing baseball while the British were playing rounders.
The Americans became very good at their job. Arthur J Levenson claims that sometimes the teams at BP deciphered the German messages before German forces in the field could read them. In one instance, on the eve of D-Day, a message from Rommel stated that German tanks were being sent to a location in Normandy where US paratroopers were due to land. “They were going to drop one of the airborne divisions right on top of a German tank division,” says Levenson. “They would have been massacred.”[49] Once again, brilliant work by the staff at BP prevented a tragedy.
For the Americans, the breaking of the Japanese ciphers was a major factor in their eventual victory. At the Battle of Midway, one of the most decisive battles of the war in the Pacific, the Japanese fleet intended to lure US aircraft carriers into a trap, believing that a second damaging attack – Pearl Harbor having been the first – would demoralise and weaken the US military. However, because American codebreakers had discovered the plot, the American fleet led by Admirals Chester W Nimitz, Frank Jack Fletcher, and Raymond A Spruance were able to set up an ambush of their own. The result was that a heavy cruiser and four Japanese aircraft carriers, the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu, all of which had taken part in the attack on Pearl Harbor, were sunk. The Americans lost just two ships. Midway was the turning point in US fortunes as Japan was unable to recover from its losses.[50]
The American codebreakers were also helpful to the Allies in Europe too. Before the breaking of the German high command’s Lorenz cipher, there was a short period in which Britain was in the dark. However, the Americans were deciphering messages from the Japanese high command and discovered that the Japanese ambassador in Berlin was reporting home whenever he spoke to Hitler and his closest confidantes. Consequently, many German secrets were given away third party. In one memorable instance, the Japanese military attaché was given a tour of the defences in Normandy shortly before Operation Neptune in June 1944. His subsequent report to the ambassador – which included a very detailed description of the size and extent of the German defences – was transmitted to Tokyo and, without them knowing, to Bletchley Park.
It was staggeringly useful intelligence for the forthcoming D-Day landings.
21
A relationship with Google
December came and went, and all too soon it was a new year. 2011. I was now a member of the Fundraising Committee at Bletchley Park and was excited about finally being involved in a formal way with helping to secure Bletchley Park’s future.
In November of 2010 I had begun speaking with Google about supporting Bletchley Park, and they had given Bletchley $100,000 to put towards bidding for the Turing papers. I knew instinctively that Bletchley Park having a relationship with Google was a good thing, but the Fundraising Committee weren’t so sure. At the first meeting I attended, when I suggested that the Bletchley Park Trust (BPT) should build up a relationship with Google, Kelsey and several committee members spoke against the idea, saying that, amongst other things, Google was not a “clean
brand” and thus we should not have anything to do with them. Luckily it was not only me speaking for a relationship with Google. Simon Greenish realised the potential power that working with Google would give us, and between the two of us we managed to persuade the rest of the committee to accept and develop the relationship.
Following on from Google’s $100,000 donation, Simon Meacham from Google had introduced me to Peter Barron, who was the new Head of Press and PR for Google EMEA. On 17th January 2011 I took Peter up to Bletchley Park for his first visit and a meeting with Simon and Kelsey. Simon gave an overview of the history of Bletchley Park up to the present day and described the current financial situation.
One moment during the meeting that made us all laugh was, when discussing the massive increase in visitor numbers to Bletchley Park over the last few years, both Simon Greenish and Kelsey Griffin pointed to me and said, “It’s all your fault!!”
Simon Greenish, Peter Barron, me and Kelsey Griffin in the Ballroom I’m very happy to be blamed for that.
We had a good initial discussion about Google and Bletchley Park developing a relationship. Peter asked Simon to send him a list of things that needed funding around the Park for him to have a look through and see what they could do. That sounded very promising.