Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/11/12

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Subject: [Leica] OT:How many languages do you speak?
From: grduprey at rockwellcollins.com (grduprey@rockwellcollins.com)
Date: Fri Nov 12 06:21:23 2004

The Germans biggest mistake with the Enigma, was that they used the same 
encryption key for very long periods of time, thus allowing the Allies or 
who ever plenty of time to crack the code and use the information.

For those interested NSA has The National Cryptologic Museum, which is 
open to the public and located just outside Ft. Meade, MD off the 
Baltimore Washington highway.  A very interesting and fascinating facility 
to visit.

Gene


At 11:16 PM 11/9/04 -0700, GREG LORENZO wrote:
>> 
>The history books say that US Naval Intelligence was able to break 
Japan's
diplomatic codes fairly quickly. The Naval Code (purple?) was a much 
harder
nut to crack. I've always wondered if Germany and Japan were able to break
allied codes during WWII.
-----------------------

Well, the actual breaking of the Japanese Purple (Diplomatic) Code, later
named MAGIC, was done by a US War Department (Army) team, though the two
services later shared the decryption and, in fact, the Navy ran the field
offices which either intercepted the message traffic or which interceipted
and decrypted it, such as Stations CAST (originally Shanghai, later at
Monkey Point at Fort Mills on Corregidor, PI, and then moved to Melbourne,
Australia), HYPO (Pearl Harbor, intercept only), WHISKEY (Washington, DC),
and another in San Francisco, California (intercept only?).  The
distribution of the 14-part Japanese message terminating negotiations was
distributed by the Navy as it happened to be intercepted and decrypted
during their day -- the two services shared the duties on a day-by-day 
basis.

The British, of course, with grand Polish and significant French
assistance, cracked the German high-level ENIGMA code, and later cracked a
number of other codes including most of the tactical codes used by the
Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.  All of this was shared with the US and the
British found themselves running, in response, one of the largest PURPLE
centers in New Delhi, India.

The Japanese never managed to do much with breaking US codes other than
lower-level codes and this was countered by the US habit of sending much
traffic in slang.  The Japanese destroyed all of their decryption material
at the end of the Second World War and, thus, we have gaps in our 
knowledge
of their abilities.  (The only PURPLE machines which survived the War were
those built by the US:  the Japanese managed to destroy ALL of their
machines, even that at the Lisbon Embassy.)

The Germans cracked the British Convoy Code early on and the British did
not glom onto this until 1943 or '44.  The Germans also managed to tap the
trans-Atlantic cable and to decipher the scrambled talks between Roosevelt
and Churchill, something not known until a decade or so after the War
ended.  (Fortunately, Churchill's circumlocutions and Roosevelt's ready
responses to these made these intercepts far less valuable than they
otherwise would have been.) 

The Italians, on the other hand, broke almost everyone else's codes.  They
even cracked ENIGMA and told the Germans that this Code was permeable to
analysis and breaking, though the Germans did not react.  The Italians had
great fun in decoding the US State Department's standard diplomatic code 
--
during 1940 and 1941, they passed on all of the reports transmitted by the
US military attache in Cairo, Lt Col Bonner Fellers, to the Germans --
Rommel was to later name him, "my Bonnie Feller", an odd ocassion for 
humor
by that generally morose general. 

The US, UK, Germans, and Italians all cracked the Soviet codes in use
during the War:  the Verona Transcripts which surfaced a decade or so back
are a product of that.

Marc


msmall@infionline.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!



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Replies: Reply from pdzwig at summaventures.com (Peter Dzwig) ([Leica] OT:How many languages do you speak?)
In reply to: Message from msmall at aya.yale.edu (Marc James Small <) ([Leica] OT:How many languages do you speak?)