![]() ![]() Since the secret of Enigma was SO tightly held, the Navy intelligence analysts did not know where these cryptographers were getting their material from, and assumed it was from MI-6's spies (that was the cover story). This was not because the Navy wanted its ships to be destroyed - it was a classic problem of intelligence analysis. There was a time when the codebreakers DID figure out something disastrous was about to happen to the Royal Navy, in June of 1940. Indeed, it is doubtful that the German high command knew about the Enigma secret until much, much later in the war. While it was certainly true that Britain did everything in its power to make sure that Germany did not know that its tactical orders were being read by the British, that did not include the deliberate sacrifice of 600 souls. Keith Batey wrote in a diary obtained by Smith that although they knew that a big bombing was coming, "we did not know more and to our dismay did not break any key for several days before 14 November: the result was the unhindered and disastrous bombing of Coventry." Batey, of course, had no incentive to throw himself under the bus well after the war when giving his recollection of a technology that had already been declassified. ![]() But there was absolutely no evidence that Coventry would be the target. ![]() There was some indication from another coded stream that a big German operation was planned for that night, and indeed, Churchill ordered air defenses around London beefed up. In his 2001 book, Station X, historian Michael Smith has eyewitness testimony from the codebreakers whose job it was to tackle "BROWN" that on that day they simply failed to break the cypher - something that happened a fair amount of the time. The Luftwaffe launched an enormous blitz at Coventry, destroying more than half the city and killing 600 people The legend that Churchill ordered that the city not be warned germinated in the 1970s when Britain finally declassified the fact that it had broken many of the German cyphers which used the Enigma machine. Often, the so-called "BROWN" cypher would be broken well in advance of that night's raids, which meant that civil defense officials could order up added protection from the Royal Air Force. By that time, the small huts full of men and women and Bletchey Park in England were routinely breaking the cypher that encrypted traffic between the German Air Force HQ and Luftwaffe signal operators who were directing radio beams cross Britain in order to help the pilots hit their targets. ![]()
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