Solving the Enigma:

History of the Cryptanalytic Bombe

Jennifer Wilcox

Center for Cryptologic History

National Security Agency

Revised 2006

1

About the Enigma

As the German military grew in the late 1920s, it began looking

for a better way to secure its communications. It found the answer

in a new cryptographic machine called “Enigma.” The Germans

believed the encryption generated by the machine to be

unbreakable. With a theoretical number of ciphering possibilities of

3 X 10114, their belief was not unjustified.1 However, they never

reached that theoretical level of security. Nor did they count on the

cryptanalytic abilities of their adversaries.

The Enigma machine based its cipher capabilities on a series of

wired rotor wheels and a plugboard. Through a web of internal

wiring, each of the twenty-six input contacts on the rotor were

connected to a different output contact. The wiring connections of

one rotor differed from the connections on any other rotor.

Additionally, each rotor had a moveable placement notch found

on an outer ring. The notch forced the rotor to its left to step one

place forward. This notch could be moved to a different point on

the rotor by rotating the outer ring. The Germans followed a daily

list, known as a key list, to indicate where the notch should be

placed each day.

Another complication to the machine involved the plugboard,

which the Germans called a “Stecker.” The plugboard simply

connected one letter to a different letter. This also meant that the

second letter automatically connected back to the first. Again, the

key list indicated which letters should be connected for that day.

Each day, the Germans followed the key list to plug the

plugboard connections, select the rotors to be placed in the

machine, change the rotor notch placement, and place the rotors in

the left, center, or right position within the machine. Finally, the

code clerk chose which three letters were to appear through three

small windows next to the rotors. These letters indicated the initial
2

rotor settings for any given message, and the code clerk changed

those settings with every message he sent.

The path the electrical current took initiated with the keystroke.

The current passed through the plugboard, changing its path if that

letter was plugged to a different letter. From there it entered the

first, or rightmost, rotor at the input contact. The rotor wiring

redirected it to a different output that went directly into the next

rotor’s input. After passing through, and changing directions in

each rotor, the current entered a reflecting plate. This plate not only

changed the “letter,” but also sent the current back through the

rotors, again resulting in three more changes. The current made one

last pass through the stecker and finally on to the light panel where

the cipher letter lit up.

To decipher an Enigma message, the recipient had to have an

Enigma with the same plugboard connections, rotors, notch

placement, left/center/right positions, and initial settings. This

enabled the current to follow the same pathway in reverse and

resulted in the plaintext letter lighting up on the light panel. The

Germans, with their published key lists, had the necessary

information. The Allies did not. The Enigma eliminated whatever

intricacies a language may possess that previous methods of

cryptanalysis exploited. One such practice was frequency counts.

Certain letters in any language are used more often than others. By

counting which cipher letters appeared most often, cryptanalysts

could make an assumption about which plaintext letter they

represented. Machine encryption like the Enigma destroyed the

frequency counts. Cipher letters tended to appear equally often.

Poland Breaks the Unbreakable Machine

In 1928 the Poles, who had actively intercepted German signals

since the end of the First World War, realized that the Germans had

changed to machine encryption because standard attacks, such as

frequency counts, were useless. They purchased a commercial

version of the Enigma, but it too was useless. The commercial
3

machine used four rotors to cipher the letters and had no plugboard.

The German military had made too many changes to the machine

for the Poles to make use of the commercial Enigma. 

Determining the exact wiring of each of the three rotors became

the Polish cryptanalysts’ first task. To accomplish this, Poland’s

cipher bureau tested and hired three mathematicians in 1932.

Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki, and Henryk Zygalski painstakingly analyzed the intercepted encrypted messages searching

for clues. Rejewski eventually determined a mathematical

equation that could find the wiring connections.

However, the equation had too many unknown variables. He

finally made the initial breaks into the wiring sequence only with

the aid of a German traitor.

Enigma
4

Hans-Thilo Schmidt, an

employee of the German

cryptographic agency, introduced himself to a French

intelligence officer and offered

to sell German cryptographic

information. Captain Gustave

Bertrand followed up on the

contact, and the initial information

Schmidt provided proved authentic.

Eventually Schmidt provided the French

cryptologic office with documentation on the Enigma machine and

some Enigma keys. Unfortunately, the information did not contain

wiring diagrams for the rotors. With this information in hand,

Captain Bertrand arranged a meeting with his counterparts in the

Polish cryptologic agency in December 1931. He proposed a

cooperative effort to work on the German machine ciphers. They

agreed to an arrangement: the French would provide any German

intelligence that could further the breaks into the system, while the

Poles would work on the actual cryptanalysis. Captain Bertrand left

the Enigma documentation with the chief of radio intelligence in

the Polish bureau. However, the documents were not passed on to

Marian Rejewski until it became obvious no progress would be

made without them.

Rejewski determined the necessary complicated mathematical

equations to determine the wiring of the Enigma rotors. Initially,

there were too many unknown variables. With the information

Hans Schmidt sold, Rejewski filled in some of the unknown values.

After several months of analysis and work, the Polish

mathematician determined the wiring of each of the rotors. Thus,

Marian Rejewski (1905-1980)

as a second lieutenant (signals)

of the Polish Army in Britain in

late 1943 or in 1944

(Courtesy Richard Woytak)
5

they completed the first of the difficult tasks in reading the secret

Enigma messages.

With some brilliant analytic work and some guesswork, Marian

Rejewski also determined the wiring of the machine itself.

Originally, he assumed the electrical current coming from the first

letter on the plugboard (Q) plugged into the first position on the

input drum (A). However, when this repeatedly failed to work,

Rejewski tried another easy configuration that proved to be correct.

The Germans connected the plugboard to the input rotor

alphabetically. Later, when the British learned of this simple

connection, they were astonished. They had never tried an

alphabetic connection in their early attempts to break the Enigma.

Knowing the wiring of the machine and the rotors, the Poles

could now replicate the machine on their own. The Cipher Bureau

contracted with AVA Radio Manufacturing Company (Wytwornia

Radiotechniczna AVA) to build a machine to Rejewski’s

specifications. Unfortunately, having a copy of the Enigma was not

sufficient to read the encrypted messages.

Although the Germans at this time had only the three rotors and

left them in the same position inside the machine (left, center, or

right) for three months, the settings of the rotors changed with each

message. Each Enigma rotor had a ring with numbers (1-26) or

letters (A-Z) inscribed on it. A number or letter on each of the three

rotors could be seen through small windows on the Enigma

machine. This indicated the initial rotor setting for a message, and

that setting changed with every message. Discovering a method for

rapidly determining the rotor settings became the next task for the

cryptanalysts.

At first the mathematicians attempted to solve the problem by

using the indicators included in each message. Since the German

cipher clerk determined the initial rotor settings, they had to be sent

to the intended recipient in the clear, that is, unenciphered. The first

three letters of the code group, sent unenciphered, told the receiver
6

where to set the rotors. The following six letters were the ciphered

letters (repeated) of the settings for the rest of the message. They

were sent twice in order to avoid garbles in transmission. For

example, the clerk might send HIT in the clear. The receiver set his

Enigma rotors to read HIT through the windows and then typed the

next six letters in the message, KOSRLB. These were the

indicators. The letters that lit up (LERLER) told him where to reset

his rotors. Changing his rotor settings to read LER through the

windows, the receiver now decrypted the rest of the message.

Because the clerk made up his own six-letter settings, the Polish

cryptanalysts could occasionally guess the settings. The military

did not allow an obvious setting such as ABC. However, cipher

clerks sometimes chose settings like QWE (the first three letters on

the keyboard) or names. In the example above, if the first three

letters were HIT, the cryptanalysts could guess that KOS and RLB

Internal wiring

of Enigma

showing one

connection
7

were the ciphers to LER, spelling out HITLER. BER was usually

followed by the ciphers of LIN. One particular German code clerk

continually used his girlfriend’s name, Cillie, for his messages, and

so these easy-to-guess indicators became known as “Cillies.” 2 

The Poles could try these Cillie combinations relatively

quickly. However, communication security policy discouraged this

type of indicator, and most rotor settings were relatively random.

To determine these random settings, the Poles relied on pure

analysis and comparison. Henryk Zygalski developed a way to

compare the message indicators that involved “females.” In

approximately one of eight messages, the same plaintext letter

encrypted, three steps away, to the same cipher letter. In our

example the two Ls in LERLER could cipher to Ks: KOSKLB.

Zygalski’s process involved stacks of perforated pages cut in exact

positions. Holes in the perforated pages that lined up allowing K

and K to correspond were considered as possible rotor settings.

Cutting the pages took time, but once completed, they made the

comparisons quickly. This system worked very well until the

Germans changed their indicator system and sets of new pages,

known as Zygalski sheets, had to be cut.

As the German military grew, so did the number of messages

sent using the Enigma. It began to overwhelm the small staff of

cryptanalysts in Poland. They realized that the time-consuming

hand-worked method of analysis would not be sufficient. Marian

Rejewski developed plans for a machine that could, through brute

force, work through the more than 17,000 possible positions.3 The

machine was called a Bomba.4

AVA Radio Manufacturing Company, the same company that

built the Polish copies of the Enigma, also built the first Bomby (the

plural of Bomba) for the Polish cipher bureau. It resembled three

pairs of Enigma duplicates linked together. The new Bomby and

Zygalski’s sheets worked well, finding solutions in two hours or

less through 1938. Then the Germans added two new rotors to the

collection. Although the Enigma machine continued to use only
8

three rotors at a time, the Poles had no way of knowing which three

out of five had been selected. Rejewski determined the wiring of

the new rotors as he had the original three, but the Bomba was not

built to work through the combinations available with a choice of

five rotors. Instead of having six interlinked Enigmas, the Bomba

would need sixty. It was more than the Polish system could handle.

On July 25 and 26, 1939, with the threat of German invasion

looming over them, the Poles shared their cryptanalytic secret with

the French and British. Despite the French-Polish agreement and

the contribution of German information that France provided,

Poland had never disclosed the break in the Enigma messages. The

French and British representatives were astonished to see not only

Enigma replicas but also a machine that could break the Enigma

settings. Returning home with copies of the Enigma, each renewed

efforts to break the German encryption.

Britain Builds the Bombe

Britain, like Poland, began hiring mathematicians to work in

their Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS). Alan Turing

and Gordon Welchman, both mathematicians from Cambridge

University, joined the GC&CS at the outbreak of hostilities with

Germany. In early September 1939, the mathematicians reported to

the new home of GC&CS, a Victorian manor in Bletchley, England,

known as Bletchley Park (BP). They received a briefing on the

work of the Polish Cipher Bureau and the Polish mathematicians.

Turing and Welchman individually began thinking of ways to more

quickly solve the German Enigma messages. They would both play

a crucial role in the development of the cryptanalytic machine.

Alan Turing realized that the solution did not lie in creating a

machine that replicated sixty Enigmas. The Polish Bomba searched

for matches in indicators. Once already the Germans had changed

how indicators were used, throwing the Poles back into the

darkness until new Zygalski sheets could be cut. The Germans

could easily change the indicators again. Turing began thinking
9

about a machine that worked,

not with the indicators,

but with assumed text. By

using text that cryptanalysts

assumed appeared in the

message, the machine would

not be dependent on the

indicators. 

Like the Polish Bomba, the

machine Turing conceived would

also run through all the possible

settings. Rotors and wires would

simulate a series of Enigma rotors and

pass an electrical current from one rotor to the next. However,

rather than looking for the one correct rotor setting based on the

indicators, as the Bomba did, Turing’s would look for all the rotor

settings that allowed the cipher to match the assumed plain text. Or,

more correctly, it searched all the settings and disregarded those

that were incorrect. For example, if the assumed letter was “G” and

the corresponding cipher letter was “L,” Turing’s test register

ignored any results that did not allow the electrical current to pass

from “G” to “L.” By disproving thousands of rotor settings, those

left were possible correct settings.

While Turing developed plans for his cryptanalytic machine,

Gordon Welchman also thought about the Enigma problem.

Though GC&CS assigned him to work in traffic analysis, a field

that involves the externals of a message and not the message itself,5

he contemplated ways to break Enigma messages more easily. On

his own, he reinvented the series of perforated sheets that Henryk

Zygalski had developed for the Poles. Poland had turned this

Alan Turing

(Courtesy of King’s College

Library, Cambridge, UK)
10

achievement over to Britain at the same time as the Bomba, and BP

was already creating new sheets for five rotors.

Undeterred, Welchman began working on another complication

on the Enigma, the plugboard. Because the plugboard uses a cable

to connect one letter to another, it automatically connects the

second letter back with the first. If “A” is plugged into “E,” “E” is

plugged into “A.” Knowing this, Welchman designed a board that

connected each letter with every other letter. The wires created a

pattern of diagonal lines. He created a “diagonal board.” 

Gordon Welchman showed his design to Alan Turing, who

agreed it would greatly enhance his machine. Although simple in

design, combined with Turing’s test registers, the number of

possible rotor settings decreased from thousands to only a few.

Analysts could easily test these few solutions on an Enigma

duplicate or analog.

Turing and Welchman took the

design to Harold “Doc” Keen, an

engineer at British Tabulating

Machines (BTM), who was in

charge of actually building the

machines the mathematicians

had conceived. Work had

already begun on Turing’s

machine, but upon seeing

Welchman’s diagonal board

and realizing its implications,

“Doc” re-engineered the cryptanalytic machine. Turning the

mathematicians’ conceptions into

Harold “Doc” Keen, engineer at BTM of British Bombe

(Courtesy: John Keen (son) and John Harper, British Bombe

Rebuild Project Manager, Bletchley Trust)
11

working machines took extensive engineering experience.

Fortunately, “Doc” was able to combine Turing’s and Welchman’s

thoughts into an integrated, workable machine.

It took months to design and build the cryptanalytic machines.

It wasn’t until August 1940 that the first operational machines

arrived at Bletchley Park.6 Initially, each Bombe took six weeks to

construct, but later BTM completed one Bombe each week. The

completely redesigned Polish machine also received a slight name

change from the Polish “Bomba” to the French spelling, Bombe.7

The British manufacturing company BTM built approximately

210 Bombes used in England throughout the war. Although the

machines changed and improved during the five years of

production, the basic Bombes weighed one ton and stood six and a

half feet high, seven feet long, and two feet wide. Each of the basic

machines, except for the very early ones, had thirty-six sets of three

rotors. Within each set, the top drum represented the leftmost, or

slowest, rotor on the German Enigma; the middle corresponded to

the German’s center rotor; and the bottom Bombe drum represented

the Enigma’s rightmost, or fastest, rotor.

The British Bombes worked through rotor settings in the

opposite direction of the Enigma. Since the Bombe needed to try

every combination of rotor settings, it didn’t matter from which

direction this was accomplished. Even though it represented the

slowest moving Enigma rotor, the top Bombe drum spun the fastest

at 50.4 rpm. However, because there was an additional circuit

around the DC motor, it was able to turn at around double normal

speed. The actual speed depended to some extent on load, but the

top rotor actually spun at approximately 100 rpm.8 In the instant

that each position made contact, an electrical current tried to

complete a path through each of the test registers and the diagonal

board. Most would make a full set of twenty-six paths to the test

register. If any didn’t, the machine would stop.
12

Members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, Wrens,

operated the machines, and when the machine found a “stop,” the

operator wrote down the rotor settings. She then reactivated the

Bombe, enabling it to search for any other possible solutions within

that wheel order. Another Wren tested the stop on a checking

machine and passed the result to a cryptanalyst. When the

cryptanalysts found the one correct setting, they notified the Wrens

to stop work on that message and move on to the next. It took ten

minutes for the Wrens to change the wheel order for the next run

and an additional thirty-five to fifty minutes to set up the

connections and rotor positions.9

By the time the British Bombes arrived at Bletchley Park,

cryptanalysts had already made breaks into the German Air Force

and Army Enigma systems, allowing the Bombes to routinely find

the message’s settings. The German Navy system was much more

difficult to read. The German Air Force and, to a lesser degree, the

German Army, were so sure of the imbedded security of the

Enigma itself that they were lax in their communication security

British Bombe
13

measures. The German Navy, however, complicated their system

with strict enforcement of communication security practices and

the addition of three more rotors to the collection. The Navy now

had eight rotors from which to select the three used in the Enigma

each day. Without knowing the wiring of the Navy’s additional

rotors, Britain could read very few German naval messages. Due in

part to the Allies’ lack of knowledge of German naval intentions,

the Kriegsmarine submarines ruled the Atlantic shipping lanes.

Britain depended heavily on U.S. supplies crossing the Atlantic.

Although the U.S. claimed neutrality, it sold materiel and supplies

to Britain and provided escorts for their convoys. Germany planned

to destroy this supply line and cripple Great Britain. Their most

destructive weapons in the Battle of the Atlantic were the German

submarines, known as U-boats. For twenty-one months, as the

cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park desperately tried to make breaks

into the naval Enigma messages, the U-boat wolf packs decimated

Allied shipping convoys.

Admiral Doenitz, commander of the U-boat fleet, operated his

submarines in a coordinated strategic plan. The U-boats patrolled

the ocean in search of their prey. Once they spotted a convoy, the

subs alerted their forces by way of Enigma-enciphered radio

messages. Other U-boats were sent to assist in the assault. Like a

pack of wolves, the U-boats attacked the supply ships, sending

many of them to the bottom of the ocean. Had Bletchley Park been

able to read the messages sent to and from the U-boats, they could

have alerted the convoys. But without prior knowledge of the

attacks, the ships were all but helpless. A German victory in the

Atlantic loomed over the Allies before Britain finally got the break

it needed.

In February 1940 the British minesweeper HMS Gleamer

captured the U-33. A German sailor had been given three of the

eight Enigma rotors to drop into the water after abandoning ship.

He forgot. The British discovered they had recovered two of the

three unknown rotors, numbers VI and VII. The final rotor, VIII,
14

was captured in May 1940 off the U-13. Even though Britain

acquired the missing naval rotors from the captures of the U-33 and

U-13, knowing the wiring wasn’t sufficient to allow them to break

the Kriegsmarine messages. Bletchley Park needed cribs, or

assumed German text of the messages. Because too much of the

text was coded from a codebook, as well as encrypted on the

Enigma, Britain remained in the dark.

The inability to read the Navy Enigma messages finally ended

in May 1941 when Britain captured the German submarine U-110

with its encryption equipment and code material largely intact. Uboat commander Fritz-Julius Lemp, fearing that the sub was

sinking rapidly and that it was about to be rammed, ordered his

crew to abandon ship. The radio-room crew, believing they were in

great peril of drowning and obeying the order to abandon, did not

German U-boat U-117 under attack by U.S. aircraft in the central

Atlantic, 7 August 1943. The boat was eventually sunk. 
15

destroy the Enigma or codebooks before donning their life vests

and jumping overboard. 

With the German submarine crew treading water in the cold

Atlantic, the British ship Bulldog sent a boarding party to the U110. They found a treasure trove of secrets. The boarding party

collected all books, charts, logs, and other important documents

and equipment. Among the captured material were codebooks,

instructions, and key lists for several different German Navy and

submarine codes. It also included an Enigma machine with the

daily settings in place and each of the eight rotors. 

Representatives arriving from Bletchley were astonished at the

find. They photographed the most important documents and boxed

up everything for shipment to BP. Within days BP would be reading

the German Navy messages again.

Britain had at last acquired the missing rotors and codes. With

the rotors and the keys through June, Bletchley didn’t even need the

Bombes in order to read the messages. But those two months would

pass quickly, and the Bombes needed to be ready when the keys ran

out. 

Fortunately, Admiral Doenitz did not realize that the Enigma

rotors and other vital communications information were now in the

hands of the Allies. Had he known, he certainly would have

changed the system. The U-110 was boarded in sight of some of the

survivors, so Britain went to great lengths to convince them that the

submarine sank before it could be boarded. Word got back to

Admiral Doenitz that the code was safe.

From June 1941 through the summer, BP read the U-boats’

“Heimisch” or home waters coded messages at the same time as the

Germans themselves. Admiral Doenitz used the home waters code

to command his forces. With foreknowledge of a U-boat’s location,

the Allies could take steps to avoid the wolf packs or send bombers

for an Allied attack.
16

Admiral Doenitz noticed this change in his submarine forces’

ability to sink the supply convoys. Before the spring of 1941,

German attacks sank a majority of Allied shipping tonnage. Then,

almost suddenly, it was the attacker who became the prey. Despite

the assurances he received concerning the U-110, Admiral Doenitz

suspected the Allies could read his fleet’s Enigma messages. When

he asked German High Command of this possibility, they assured

him that the Enigma could not be broken. They proposed other

reasons as to why his U-boats were less effective, including Allied

direction finding capabilities (called Huff Duff by the British),

aerial reconnaissance, or even a German traitor. In truth, even when

the Navy Enigma messages could not be read, British direction

finding combined with traffic analysis did have substantial

successes.

Certainly the Germans’ faith in the Enigma was not unfounded

because of the astronomical mathematical possibilities. However,

to encourage this unquestioned confidence, Britain went to great

lengths to disguise how Enigma information, classified Top Secret

Ultra,10 had been obtained. The British took no action based solely

on Ultra intelligence without first providing the Germans with a

deceptive reason for the actions taken. Most commonly, British

aircraft flew a reconnaissance mission over an area that Ultra

intelligence had shown to be significant. When the Allies

subsequently attacked that area, the Germans believed their forces

had been spotted by the aircraft, not given away by Enigma.

Admiral Doenitz, however, was not satisfied. He intended to

change the U-boat Enigma machines. He could not radically alter

the machine itself as it had to continue to work with the rest of the

German Navy. His change added a thin fourth rotor between the

leftmost rotor and the reflecting plate.When necessary, the rotor

could be set in a straight-through position, enabling it to act as a

three-rotor machine.

Bletchley Park learned of the impending change from decrypts

and captured material, but until it was actually implemented there
17

was little they could do to prepare. Fortunately, the Germans made

an error. In December 1941, before the change had been made

official, a U-boat sent a message using the four-rotor machine.To

compound the mistake, the same message was retransmitted using

only three rotors. From this seemingly innocuous error, the

cryptanalysts at BP determined the wiring of the fourth rotor.

In February 1942 Admiral Doenitz officially changed the

Enigma machines on his U-boats. Despite recovering the wiring to

Four-rotor 

Enigma
the fourth rotor, Bletchley Park had a lot of work ahead of them. In

addition to changing the machine, the Kriegsmarine also instituted

a new code, which Britain referred to as “Shark.” BP now had two

obstacles: break Shark and redesign the Bombe. The cryptanalytic

Bombe developed by Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, and “Doc”

Keen found the rotor settings for a three-rotor machine. It could not

find the settings for four rotors. Once again German submarine

messages were indecipherable. Admiral Doenitz’ U-boats began

again to successfully prowl the waters of the Atlantic.

America Joins the Secret Battle

The complete cessation of Ultra intelligence concerning U-boats

in the Atlantic coincided with the devastating attacks on

shipping by U-boats off [U.S.] coasts. In fact, the outlook during

the summer of 1942 was rather gloomy.11

Despite its involvement with the British convoys, the United

States took none of the precautions learned by its allies. Merchant

ships came up the east coast of the United States without the benefit

of convoys or escorts. Sailing alone, there were no other ships to

come to their defense when attacked by the U-boats. To make

matters worse, ships were in plain sight even at night. The United

States did not initially require its citizens to black out their homes

and businesses at night as the British did. Hence, ships coming up

the coast were silhouetted against the bright lights of the cities they

passed. The U-boats had no trouble seeing them and sinking them.

Add to this the fact that the German cryptologic service, B-Dienst,

could read the Allied Naval Cipher No. 3 used for convoy

communications. By reading the convoy messages, the Germans

learned of changes and movements in Allied shipping. This enabled

them to easily respond and continue to follow and attack the ship.

The Germans referred to the spring of 1942 as the “Happy Time.”

Between January and March they sank 216 ships off the East Coast.

The United States didn’t begin sending its ships in convoys or

require blackouts on the East Coast until May 1942. Unfortunately,

even these measures made only a small improvement. The Allies

still could not read the U-boat four-rotor machine’s messages, so

18
there were few ways of knowing where the U-boats were located.

The Allies did make use of direction-finding and other

reconnaissance measures. This provided limited information, but

was no substitute for the valuable Enigma decrypts.

Bletchley Park, the British Post Office (GPO),12 and BTM

began work to redesign the Bombe for a fourth rotor and promised

the United States that a solution would be available by August or

September. The U.S. waited, somewhat impatiently, for assistance.

Neither the U.S. Army nor Navy had made any breaks into the

Enigma problem. Prior to entering the war, the United States was

not intercepting large volumes of Enigma messages and had not

seriously worked to break it. Assistance from the British would be

required if the United States hoped to combat the U-boat attacks off

America’s coast.

Representatives of both the U.S. Army and Navy visited

Bletchley Park prior to the United States’ entrance into World War

II and knew of Britain’s success against the Enigma messages.

GC&CS agreed to share information concerning the Enigma, but it

was not completely forthcoming in 1941. This may have been due

to security concerns. GC&CS was not confident that the United

States services would be able to keep the Enigma secret. However,

the adaptations to the British three-rotor Bombe were not progressing satisfactorily, and members of the U.S. cryptologic

services continued to press Britain for further information.

In March 1942 the U.S. Navy contracted with the National

Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio, to work on the

development and construction of other specialized machines. This

contract established the Naval Computing Machine Laboratory

(NCML). Lieutenant Commander Ralph Meader acted as the

liaison between the Navy and NCR. National Cash Register’s

engineer, Joseph Desch, became the NCML’s research director. The

public knew of some of the work conducted by NCML, including

the production of bomb fuses, shell casings, and aircraft

carburetors. However, it would be decades before the people of

19
Dayton, or even his family, learned of the work Joseph Desch did

for the Navy. The Navy did an extensive background investigation

on him because of his German heritage and relatives still in

Germany. He even “jokingly claimed that the Navy had found

relatives that he had never heard of.”13 With his background in

radio and computing machinery,

Joe was indispensable to the

Navy’s research in building its

own Bombe. Because of the secret

nature of the work the Navy

needed Joe Desch to do, he was

forced to disassociate from all his

Dayton relatives, except his mother.

“The war demanded immediate,

unrelenting research in areas for which Joe

Desch was qualified, and he had no choice but to

accept the responsibility that the Navy asked of him.” 14

Meanwhile, in Washington, communication continued with

Britain. In April 1942 Colonel John Tiltman from GC&CS visited

OP-20-G, the U.S. Navy’s cryptanalytic office, and sent a message

back to England: “In view of the fact that [the U.S. is] now at war

and have a vital interest in submarine traffic, they are entitled to

results. . . .” 15 He also stressed, “Unless a rapid and satisfactory

solution is found . . . the high command will insist on their Naval

cryptanalysts attempting to duplicate our work on ‘E’.”16

In July 1942 two U.S. naval officers went to Bletchley Park

with the intention of studying BP’s research organization. They had

additional orders to acquire more details about the Enigma solution.

They learned much about the British Bombe and returned with

wiring diagrams. After studying the information, the Navy decided

that the development of a high-speed four-rotor Bombe should be

20

Joseph Desch, designer of U.S. Navy

Bombe circa mid-1940s 

(Courtesy: Debbie Anderson, daughter)
designed differently than the British plans indicated. The fact that

the British weren’t making much progress with their own design at

that time supported this decision. 

As the summer of 1942 progressed, it became apparent to Navy

officials that the British would not be able to meet the

August/September deadline for a four-rotor Bombe. Joseph Desch

and other NCR engineers, working with the Navy and Lieutenant

Commander Meader, looked for alternative designs to the British

plan. They investigated the possibility of both an electromechanical

design and an electronic design. They were forced to use the

electromechanical plans because of the power requirements of the

electronic design and material shortages brought on by the war. By

the end of August, the Navy concluded that their design showed

sufficient promise to continue and inaugurated their own Bombe

program.

Captain Hastings of GC&CS protested. He argued that Britain

had lived up to the agreement arranged by Colonel Tiltman in April

that stated the U.S. would be given results “or a detailed statement

as to why this traffic cannot be read. . . .”17 Since the British had

provided a detailed statement, Captain Hastings felt they had met

their obligations.

The situation in the Atlantic, however, was of such importance

that the U.S. Navy decided they could not accept Captain Hastings’

answer. The German U-boats continued to attack Allied shipping

throughout the Atlantic. It was imperative that either Britain or the

United States make a break into the four-rotor Enigma machine.

With that in mind, Commander Wenger, deputy chief of OP-20-G,

officially requested funding for the Bombe project on September 3,

1942. With the consent of the chief of OP-20-G, Admiral Redman,

the Bombe project proposal was approved the following day.

Once they learned of the Navy’s intentions, GC&CS sent

Commander Travis to the United States for a visit with the Navy.

They drew up another formal agreement. This one proposed that

21
the United States take the dominant position in the Pacific Theater,

while Britain continued to conduct most of the work in the

European/Atlantic Theater. They did agree, however, to share full

collaboration on the German submarine problem. Nevertheless,

Britain did analyze Japanese codes, and the U. S. worked against

German and Italian codes. However, the separation of emphasis

worked effectively for the remainder of the war.

Just as the Navy drew up the contract with the National Cash

Register Company to work on the production of the Bombe, Britain

found a way into the four-rotor Enigma messages.

On October 30, 1942, two men from the HMS Petard gave

their lives retrieving a machine and documents from a captured Uboat, U-559. 

Several British ships located U-559 in the Mediterranean near

Port Said. They tracked, followed, and depth-charged the

submarine for hours. The last of more than 100 depth charges

caused significant damage to the sub, and the U-boat commander,

Hans Heidtmann, ordered the sub to surface. As the German crew

abandoned the U-boat, the Petard ceased firing and pulled within

sixty feet of the floundering craft. They prepared a boarding party.

Lieutenant Anthony Fasson and Able Seaman Colin Grazier

removed their uniforms and dove into the choppy waters. As they

swam towards the conning tower, another young man, Tommy

Brown (who had lied about his age to join the Royal Navy),

followed.

When Fasson and Grazier reached the sub, they saw it was

riddled with holes and taking on water. Quickly they climbed into

the control room. Fasson broke into the captain’s room and opened

a locked drawer. He removed the documents inside and passed

them to Tommy Brown, who had followed them down the conning

tower. Brown climbed back up to deliver the secret documents to a

waiting whaler that had rowed over from the Petard. He made the

trip again to retrieve more materials Fasson and Grazier had found.

22
The water rapidly filling the sub, he returned for a third trip even as

those on deck called for the men to come out. Fasson refused to

leave without the box he desperately tried to pry free. It contained

what appeared to be important equipment. Tommy Brown carried

out one last batch of papers, but did not go down again. Fasson and

Grazier finally released the box and tied it to a line to be hauled out

of the sub. Brown called down to them twice, “You’d better come

up.” Just as the men began to climb up the conning tower, the sub

suddenly sank. Brown and the others on deck jumped off and were

picked up by the whaler. However, Anthony Fasson and Colin

Grazier did not make it out of the sub. Their loss was not in vain,

for the material they collected in turn saved the lives of many Allied

and German men. 

The documents Tommy Brown transferred from U-559 proved

vital to the cryptanalysts at Bletchley. They included codes for the

Short Weather Cipher and the Short Signal Book. The books,

combined with a German communications security error, allowed

the British to find a break in the four-rotor messages. The Germans’

shore weather stations could read only a three-rotor message. On

December 13, 1942, the British team discovered that when the Uboats sent weather messages, they set the fourth rotor into a neutral

position. This caused the machine to mimic a three-rotor Enigma.

BP needed only to find the three-rotor settings in the usual manner.

To find the daily setting of the fourth rotor for nonweather “Shark”

messages, they then tested each of the twenty-six places on the

fourth rotor.

Suddenly, BP could read “Shark” messages with only a

moderate delay. The actual results were usually delayed thirty-six

hours on 70 percent of the days,18 but were occasionally delayed as

long as ten days.19 Nonetheless, GC&CS was quite pleased with its

accomplishment. Once again, the Allies could track the German Uboats with a fair degree of accuracy. For the next several months,

the Allied ships played a cat and mouse game with the German Uboats. As BP learned of the subs’ locations, ships were rerouted to

avoid them. The B-Dienst, reading the Allies’ convoy cipher, then

rerouted their subs. And again the Allies altered their shipping

23
route. Across the Atlantic, ships and submarines moved and

countermoved, interspersed with attacks.

However, delays in reading Enigma messages resulted in Allied

losses. The U.S. Navy, convinced the Bombe designed by Joseph

Desch would dramatically reduce the delay, continued its plans to

build a high-speed four-rotor Bombe. 

Bletchley Park sent Alan Turing to OP-20-G as an advisor in

December 1942. Turing viewed the facilities in Washington, D.C.,

and the Bombe production building in Dayton, Ohio. He was not

overly impressed with the American design. “The British didn’t

believe I would be successful,” Joseph Desch later mentioned in an

interview. “After the war, [the Navy] showed me the [British]

reports and they weren’t very complimentary.”20 In Turing’s report

on his visit, he said, “It seems a pity for them to go out of their way

to build a machine to do all this stopping if it is not necessary.”21

Despite Turing’s opinion, the Navy moved forward with its

plans. In April 1943 Navy personnel began arriving at the National

Cash Register Company in Dayton. Eventually 200 sailors and 600

Waves22 worked with the NCR civilians to build the Bombes. To

explain the sudden influx of sailors and Waves, the official story

claimed personnel came for training on tabulating machines. One

sailor, Robert Shade, recalls that “Our standard explanation was we

were looking for submarines on the Miami River in a rowboat.”23

In truth, even the sailors and Waves didn’t know what they were

working on. Bob Atha, a sailor in Dayton, said, “The exact function

of the Bombe equipment was not explained to me. Because of the

strict need-to-know practice imposed, this total knowledge was

probably known to only a few analysts and design engineers.”24

The work Joseph Desch did was so secret Navy security

personnel followed him to and from work. He wasn’t supposed to

know about the extra protection, but he realized he was being

followed. On one occasion, Mr. Desch took his guards on a

roundabout route, only to return home without making any other

stops. On another occasion he cheerfully waved to the secret men

24
in the car outside his home. They never acknowledged his

greeting.25

Because of the secrecy of the work, Waves had to show their

identification to the Marine standing guard. Marines guarded the

different rooms inside the building as well. Waves were not allowed

to see any other rooms unless they could prove to the Marine they

had a reason to go inside. “We only knew what was being done in

our assigned work area, but we never were told the implications or

the importance of our work. We had no knowledge that the Bombe

was being conceived and built directly over our heads on floor two.

There were always armed Marine guards who saw to it that no one

strayed from their assigned work space,” recalled a former Wave,

Sue Eskey.26

25

Joseph Desch and Waves in front of NCR Building #26, circa 1943. 

Credit: NCR Archive at the Montgomery County (Ohio) 

Historical Society
Waves were also not allowed to discuss their work with anyone

outside their specific assignment and never outside of the building.

Even the women working together rarely speculated about the

purpose of the job. Sue Eskey suspected that the twenty-six wires

she soldered corresponded to the alphabet. Later she remembered,

“If you had any intuition or deep thoughts about it you could sort

of figure it out. I knew nothing about codes or anything, but I had

that thought. And, of course, I didn’t share it with anyone because

we were not allowed to talk about anything.”27

The war did not stand still while the engineers, sailors, and

Waves worked to build a machine to break the U-boat Enigma

settings. The U-boats continued to stalk the Atlantic. Losses

mounted, but the tide began to change in favor of the Allies. As the

United States grew stronger, it began to extend its reach beyond

simply defending and escorting the convoys of ships. It began to

actively seek and attack the German fleet.

May 1943 proved to be a significant time in the Battle of the

Atlantic. During May, the Allies inflicted more damage to the Uboats than at any time previously in the war. Germany had more

submarines prowling the ocean than ever before, but because the

tide had turned, they sank only fifty Allied ships.28 This was fewer

than the previous month and significantly fewer than their victories

in March. By the end of May, Allied forces sank 25 percent of the

German submarines, totaling forty-one U-boats.29 Admiral Doenitz

conceded the North Atlantic to the Allies and began withdrawing

his subs from the area on May 22.

This Allied victory did not put an end to the Bombe project,

however. Admiral Doenitz concentrated his forces elsewhere in the

Atlantic and continued to be a threat. The need to know where the

submarines operated and in what strength was still imperative to

U.S. and Allied plans. This had been proven on March 10 when the

Germans began using a new edition of the weather short signal

code. The new code made the second edition, captured from U-559,

useless. In this case, the cryptanalysts were fortunate, for only nine

26
days later they were able to make use of another U-559 captured

codebook, the Kurzsignalheft, as cribs.30 However, the incident

emphasized how important it was to build a machine that was not

dependent on captured material.

In fact, by the end of June, the only way to break into the

“Shark” messages was by machine. The British, by this time, had

developed their own four-rotor Bombe, built by BTM. However,

this took away valuable resources for the production of the threerotor machines31 needed for Army and Air Force messages. The

U.S. Navy Bombe was needed.

Construction of the Bombes proceeded in National Cash

Register’s Building 26 in Dayton. Newly arriving Waves learned

soldering, how to read electrical graphs, and the general aspects of

an electrical education. After that, the Waves’daily routine included

eight hours of soldering wires. Three shifts of women worked

throughout the day: 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M., 4:00 P.M. to midnight,

and midnight to 8:00 A.M. Each woman was given a color-coded

board with nails in it and wire. They didn’t know it at the time, but

the Waves were wiring rotors to match those on the Enigma

machines.

National Cash Register’s assistant engineer, Robert Mumma,

played a role in helping to keep the wiring secret. He designed the

graphs the women followed and selected the colors. To make it

more difficult for a woman to recall the wiring system, he selected

colors from a choice of twenty-eight, not twenty-six. He also

labeled the commutators and graphs zero through twenty-five

rather than one through twenty-six.

The work was tedious and the hours tiring. For her eight-hour

shift, a woman wired a board matching both ends of the wire to the

same color. Another Wave then took the net of wires and soldered

it onto a commutator.32 When she finished one rotor, another was

immediately placed before her. Tens of thousands of rotors had to

be wired to meet the necessary initial requirements for the Bombes.

27
Also, additional rotors would be needed as replacements. Wave

Ronnie Mackey Hulick believed she had failed the battery of tests

she had taken when she first entered the service. Surely this was

why she had been relegated to such a monotonous task. The

importance of the work became apparent only when the Navy

transferred her to Washington, D.C., to operate the Bombes.33 Wave

Jimmie Lee Long agreed: “The work at NCR was tiring and there

was no room for the slightest mistake. Now I understand why.”34

Other Waves and the sailors sent to Dayton constructed the rest

of the Bombe. They completed the prototypes, named Adam and

Eve, around May 1. Members of the maintenance crew, Machinist

Mate First Class Phil Bochicchio and Radioman K.P. Cook, began

working on the machines. They checked the wiring and fixed the

oil leaks. After three weeks of inspections, the Bombes were finally

ready for operational test runs. 

Cryptanalysts in Washington forwarded set-up instructions to

Dayton. Like the British Bombes, the American machines required

assumed text for cribs. The assumed message corresponded to the

cipher and created the settings for the Bombe.35 These menus gave

Phil and K.P. instructions for setting the dials and rotors on the

machines.

On May 28, 1943, on the second floor of NCR’s Building 26,

Phil made a run on Adam. He set the dials and rotors following his

assigned menu. Then he flipped the switch that set the Bombe in

motion. The rows of black Bakelite rotors began to spin through

each of the twenty-six positions of each commutator. A loud, rapid

clicking noise emanated from the huge, gray machine. Then the

machine slowed, stopped, slowly reversed, stopped again, and

printed out some results before returning to its original forward

motion. After only twenty minutes, the two-ton “gray elephant”

came to a complete stop.

Machinist Mate First Class Bochicchio didn’t know what the

numbers on the printout represented. He ran the settings again to

28
double-check it. Adam repeated its

actions, printing out exactly the

same results. Calling over to his

buddy, K.P., Phil showed him

what the Bombe had done. K.P.

didn’t know what the results

were either, but they agreed

to try the run on Eve. K.P.

reset his machine’s wheels

and dials to match the settings

on Phil’s menu. Eve duplicated

Adam’s actions, stopping and

printing the same results. If

nothing else, the two machines

were performing identically.36

The men took the printout to

Lieutenant Commander Meader.

The commander also did not

understand the meaning of the

printout, but instructed the sailors

to send it to Washington.

A secure communications line had been set up between

National Cash Register and Naval Communications in Washington,

D.C. The results of Adam’s run were sent to Commander

Engstrom, head of the OP-20-GM, a technical branch of Naval

Communications. A few days passed before Engstrom replied:

“That one hit paid for the entire project.”37 At that time he couldn’t

explain why, but the sailors learned the importance of the printout

a few months later when they returned to Washington. Engstrom

told them that based on the rotor settings Adam provided, the

cryptanalysts in Washington broke a German U-boat message. The

message revealed the location of submarines refueling at sea. As a

result, the Allies attacked the “milk cow” and sank three subs.

29

Phil Bochicchio

Dayton, Ohio,1943 

(Courtesy of 

Phil Bochicchio)
Which subs the resulting message actually referred to cannot be

verified, but beginning with the sinking of the supply sub U-118 on

June 12, the U.S. Navy waged an all-out assault on German

submarines refueling. During the summer of 1943, the Allies sank

nine of twelve U-tankers. By removing the supply subs from

action, the combat U-boats could no longer roam as far or as long

as Admiral Doenitz had originally planned. How large a role radio

intelligence played in these sinkings is debated; certainly it

contributed.

It was, then, the offensive use of radio intelligence, the increased

number and perfected technique and teamwork of carrier task

groups, and the greater effectiveness through the improved

radar and extended ranges of land-based [aircraft] that

accounted for the destruction of the German refueling fleet in

the year beginning in June 1943.38

Since Adam and Eve successfully proved that the Americandesigned Bombes could rapidly find the four-rotor Enigma settings,

construction on the Bombes continued in Dayton throughout the

summer. Initially there had been some discussion about where the

Bombes should be permanently located. If the Bombes stayed in

Dayton, they would be near the engineers. Design changes

caused by German upgrades to the Enigma, as well as routine

maintenance, could be more easily implemented in Dayton.

However, it was felt that Dayton was too far from those needing the

information the Bombes produced. The vice-chief of Naval

Operations ruled that the Bombes must be operated in

Washington.39

By the summer of 1943, construction on the new buildings to

house the Bombes in Washington had not been completed. But in

Dayton there would be no delay in Bombe construction or use. The

machines began to line the hallways and stairwells of NCR’s

Building 26.40 In one small room, on a few operational Bombes,

some of the Waves learned to operate the machines based on the

cryptanalysts’ menus. Although the machines were not fully

operational, menus and results crossed the secure communication

lines between Dayton and Washington throughout the summer.

30
Finally, at an average rate of four per week, U.S. Navy

cryptanalytic Bombes began arriving at the Naval Communications

Annex on Nebraska Avenue in Washington, D.C. Building 4 was

still incomplete when Machinist Mate Phil Bochicchio arrived to

install the machines. The roof on the second floor, where he set up

the first of the Bombes, was just a tarp. It was enough, though, and

only temporary.41

Other naval personnel transferred from Dayton to Washington

with the machines, leaving only a handful in Dayton.

Originally a girls’ school, the Naval Communications Annex on

Nebraska Avenue in Washington, D.C., once again saw women

cross its grounds. Waves returned from Dayton to newly built

quarters. Other Waves just coming into the service joined them, and

together they spent untold hours secretly fighting the Germans.

When the women arrived at their new station, they were taken

to the chapel on the grounds of the Annex. An officer

impressed upon them the importance of their work and the

seriousness of dealing with classified material. This was followed

by another officer many women thought to be the chaplain.

Expecting to receive a benediction, the Waves were surprised to be

told, “If you ever tell what you are doing, you are committing

treason. And don’t think that just because you are young ladies you

will be treated any differently than the men who commit treason. If

you ever tell, we will shoot you!”42

Having received their security briefing and greatly impressed

with the need for secrecy, the Waves then went to work. Rows and

rows of Bombes filled the newly constructed Building 4.

Eventually, 121 Bombes would be built in Dayton and housed in

this facility on two floors. Divided into bays of four Bombes, each

bay required four operators and a supervisor. All of the Bombe

operators were Waves. Operators conducted tests on the Bombe

before each run, set the Bombes according to the menu, and passed

the results back to supervisors for checking. The supervisors

31
assigned each menu, helped with the set-up, checked results, and

covered during meals and breaks. Three different shifts worked

throughout the day and night to keep the Bombes in constant use.

The American Navy Bombes stood seven feet high, two feet

wide and ten feet long. Each weighed 5,000 pounds. The front and

back of the Bombes each had eight columns of four rotors. The top

wheel mimicked the Enigma’s new fourth rotor while the bottom

commutator represented the rightmost, or fastest, rotor of the

Enigma. The bottom rotor spun at a speed of approximately 1,725

revolutions per minute,43 which allowed the machine to complete

its run in only twenty minutes.44

Like the British Bombes, the rotors spun through each of the

possible rotor settings. At each contact point an electrical current

tried to satisfy the path required in the menu. Those that could not

were discarded. When the machine did locate a stop condition, it

was moving too quickly to stop at the correct location. It took three

32

U.S. Navy Communications Annex, Building 4
and a half to four more rotations before the machine could bring

itself to a stop.45 In order to remember where the hit occurred, the

U.S. Navy Bombes had “memory” in a unit called the Thyratron

chassis, invented by Joseph Desch. After braking, the Bombe

automatically reversed itself and returned to the correct position of

the hit.

Unlike most of the British Bombes, the American Navy

Bombes printed out the strikes automatically. They then returned to

the forward motion to continue scanning for other workable

circuits. Like the British version, the American Bombes usually

found two or three possible correct solutions.

After twenty minutes, the machine came to a complete stop,

and the Wave operator gave the printout to her supervisor. Each bay

33

Navy Bombe
had a small machine officially called an M-9, but better known as

a “checker” to the Waves. It didn’t resemble an actual Enigma in

appearance, but when hand-stepped, did repeat the results of an

Enigma. The Bombe could not find all the Stecker combinations.

The supervisors used the M-9 not only to verify the results, but also

to find the remaining plugboard connections. The supervisors then

took the valid, complete results to an open room at the back of the

Bombe deck where three loggers and the watch officer worked.

After being logged, the results were sent back to the cryptanalysts.

Cryptanalysts received the Bombe results via a pneumatic tube

system. Some of the Waves used the same M-9 machines to

actually decrypt short German messages. They transferred longer

messages to paper tape and ran them through an M-8. The M-8 was

actually a converted U.S. encryption machine known in the Navy

as an E.C.M.46 The M-8 used rotors wired to match those on the

Enigma. When cryptanalysts fed the paper tape into the machine, it

automatically decrypted the message and printed it out in German.

Linguists in another office translated the messages into English for

use by the military commanders. 

In some cases the Germans double-enciphered messages. They

altered the message using a specific codebook before they actually

enciphered it on the Enigma. This required additional cryptanalysis

by the Allies before a message could be read. To break these

messages, cryptanalysts used a captured or reconstructed codebook

to decode the coded portions. They could then proceed in the

normal routine.

By the close of 1943, seventy-seven of the requested ninety-six

Bombes ran continuously at the Naval Communications Annex.

More machines continued to arrive throughout 1944.

Improvements made to the standard N-530 resulted in the N-1530.

Dayton personnel also built and sent other variations of the Bombe

to Washington. These machines worked on other specialized

Enigma-type problems. Throughout the remainder of the war, as

34
the Germans altered their Enigmas, the U.S. Navy and National

Cash Register kept pace.

Britain did have some success with two different models of

four-rotor Bombes, building approximately twelve production

GPO and fifty-nine BTM versions. However, the U.S. Navy

cryptanalytic Bombes proved so successful that in a dispatch to the

U.S. Navy, Britain admitted, “Performance of our machine is still

poor and likely to remain so. In view of your 4-wheel capacity

being more than adequate, priority is being given here to the

production of new 3-wheel machines.”47 The U-boat problem fell

exclusively to the United States Navy.48

By the spring of 1944, ninety-six operational Bombes routinely

broke the U-boat messages. The average delay in breaking the daily

key settings was only twelve hours. As a result, the Navy could read

the Atlantic U-boat messages sent in the latter half of the day at the

same time as the Germans. “In fact, during these hours the

translation of every message sent by a U-boat is at hand about

twenty minutes after it was originally transmitted.”49

Once the Bombes retrieved the daily U-boat keys, the machines

were then set to search for non-naval settings. So many messages

came out of Europe that even Britain’s highly effective three-rotor

Bombes couldn’t keep up. Approximately 55 percent of the

operational time on an American Bombe was dedicated to naval

keys, the remaining 45 percent on non-naval, under the direction of

the British.50

To further improve the system, the British requested that the

U.S. Navy manufacture fifty additional four-rotor Bombes. Their

request was more to further the work done on German Army and

Air Force messages than to increase the efficiency of the German

naval problem. However, in early September 1944 NCR had

completed only twenty-five Bombes, and the Navy determined that

“Current rapid developments in the prosecution of the war have

35
made it unnecessary to complete the remainder of the fifty (50)

additional Bombes.” 51

Certainly, one of the developments that aided in the

“prosecution of the war” was the advance knowledge of U-boat

locations and activities. Because of the information learned from

Enigma messages, the Navy’s ability to destroy the submarines

increased significantly. By the end of the war, the United States had

sunk or captured ninety-five German U-boats.

Dedicated to Keeping the Secret

Because the U.S. Navy, like the British, went to great lengths to

disguise the source of their information, very few ever knew of the

cryptologic contribution. The dedicated men and women working

in OP-20-G played an important role in maintaining one of the

best-kept secrets of World War II. Threatened with death if they

spoke of their activities, and reminded of their oath when they were

discharged from the service, these Americans did not reveal their

war work to anyone.

In 1974 F. W. Winterbotham, a former group captain in the

Royal Air Force, wrote about the work done at Bletchley Park. This

was well before the United States planned to declassify the Enigma

secret, but the story was out. Slowly, the United States began to

reveal its information and role in the Allies’ cryptanalytic

successes. However, notifying the thousands of men and women

involved in the project more than thirty years later was impossible.

Nearly fifty years after the war, during a vacation to

Washington, D.C., former Wave Sue Eskey learned the Bombe had

been declassified. As many tourists do, she walked into the

Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Upon

finding an exhibit that included an actual Bombe and picture of a

Wave, she blurted out, “My God! That’s me! I’m on the wall of the

Smithsonian Institution!”52 Later that day she called one of her

Wave friends with whom she’d remained in contact. Feeling almost

36
guilty for speaking of it over the phone, she told her friend what

she’d seen.

Unfortunately, many of those involved passed away before they

were able to tell their stories. Joseph Desch never explained to his

family what a major role he played in winning the war against the

Germans by designing the American Bombe. Alan Turing, designer

of the British Bombe, died before the secret had been disclosed.

Jerzy Rozycki, one of the first three Polish mathematicians hired to

work against the Enigma in 1932, drowned when the ship he was

on sank in a storm, possibly after hitting a mine, in 1942. The loss

of their experiences is great. But through the memories of those

who survive, the story of the Bombe and the people involved with

it is now told.

Some historians claim that World War II could have gone on for

as much as two more years, with an untold loss of life, had it not

been for the Allies’ ability to read Enigma messages. Those

messages could not have been read without the Bombes and the

men and women who built and operated them.

Notes

1. A. Ray Miller, The Cryptographic Mathematics of Enigma (Ft.

George G. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security

Agency).

2. 6812th Signal Security Detachment (PROV), dated 15 June 1945;

(NARA Record Group 457, File #2943, 7.) Hereafter referred to as 6812th.

However, Ralph Erskine explains that the method described was actually

called “p sillies” meaning psychological sillies. (Correspondence with the

author, September 2002, and detailed in the book Erskine edited with

Michael Smith, Action This Day: Bletchley Park from the Breaking of

the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer (London: Bantam

Press, 2001.)

3. Each rotor on an Enigma can be set in any one of twenty-six

positions (1-26 or A-Z). On a three-rotor machine the number of possible

settings is 263 or 17,576.

37
4. Bomba is Polish for bomb. Wladyslaw Kozaczuk’s book Enigma

(University Press of America, 1984, 63) cites a letter from Col. Tadeusz

Lisicki, chief of a Polish signal unit, which claims that Jerzy Rozycki

named the machine after an ice cream dessert the mathematicians were

eating at the time. The bomba dessert was a round ball of ice cream

covered in chocolate and resembled an old-fashioned bomb. However, in

an article Rejewski himself says, “For lack of a better name we called them

bombs.” (“How Polish Mathematicians Deciphered the Enigma,” Annals

of the History of Computing, v.3, n.3 (July 1981): 226.) Finally, a U.S.

Army document describing the Polish Bombes claims, “When a possible

solution was reached a part would fall off the machine onto the floor with

a loud noise. Hence the name ‘bombe’.” (6812th, 10.) The British,

however, claim that that story began as a joke. (Conversation between the

author and Phil Bochicchio, September 2002.) 

5. Traffic analysts look at information outside of the actual message

text such as the unenciphered headers prior to the message, time of

transmission, and the frequency used. With this type of information,

traffic analysts can reconstruct an enemy’s communication network and

hierarchy.

6. The first British prototype “Victory” arrived at Bletchley Park

March 18, 1948, but did not become fully operational. The first

operational machine, “Angus,” arrived August 8, 1940. (Correspondence

to the author from John Harper, Bombe Rebuild Project Manager,

Bletchley Park Trust, 22 July 2002.)

7. Some people, not knowing the Bombe’s Polish history, suggested

that the name for the British Bombe came from the sound the machines

made as they ticked their way through the possible rotor settings, like an

old time-bomb ticking. However, Gordon Welchman, in his book The Hut

Six Story (McGraw-Hill, 1982, 77), says, “Our bombes [the British

versions] were said to make a noise like a battery of knitting needles.”

John Harper, Bombe Rebuild Project Manager for the Bletchley Park

Trust says, “The British Bombe certainly makes a sound like “tons of

needles being dropped on their points at the same time.” The noise is

actually the pawls dropping down their ratchets under spring pressure

every time we have a carry.” (Correspondence to the author 22 July 2002)

However, CDR McDonald, USNR (Ret.), a senior watch officer of Bombe

operations, doesn’t recall a clicking sound on the U.S. Navy Bombes, but

remembers it made a lot of loud noise. 

38
8. Because there were several different models used throughout the

war, the speed of the machine varied depending on the model. This speed

(50.4 rpm) refers to the British 39-point machine. The actual speed

(approximately 100 rpm) was determined only after the Bletchley Park

Trust tested their working rebuilt model of the British Bombe.

(Correspondence to the author from John Harper, Bombe Rebuild Project

Manager, Bletchley Park Trust. 22 July 2002.)

9. Leo Rosen and William Friedman, “Cryptanalysis of German Army

& German Air Force ENIGMA Traffic” SSA (report on) “E” Operations of

the GCCS At Bletchley Park, 1945, 59. (NARA Record Group 457; File

#3620.)

10. Ultra was a classification codeword indicating that the document

contained intelligence derived from one of several different high-level

communication systems, only one of which was Enigma. It is a common

misconception that Ultra was a project name referring solely to Enigmas. 

11. Memorandum from OP-20-G, “Brief Resumé of Op-20-G and

British Activities vis-à-vis German Machine Ciphers,” July 15, 1944, 1.

12. The Post Office (GPO) with Wyne-Williams and Maudsley

companies designed a four-wheel Bombe that came to be called Cobra. See

footnote 31.

13. Deborah Anderson, “Joseph Desch and Magic,” Miami Valley

History (1993), 11.12. 

14. Ibid.

15. J.N. Wenger, H.T. Engstrom, and R.I. Meader, “History of the

Bombe Project,” OP-20-G Memorandum dated 30 May 1944, 2 (NARA

Record Group 457, File #4584.) Hereafter referred to as Bombe History.

16. “E” refers to the Enigma problem. (Ibid., 6.)

17. Bombe History, 2.

18. Memorandum from OP-20-G, “Brief Resumé of Op-20-G and

British Activities vis-à-vis German Machine Ciphers,” July 15, 1944, 2.

19. Patrick Beesly, “Ultra and the Battle of the Atlantic: The British

View,” Cryptologic Spectrum, v.8 n.1 (Winter 1978), 7.

39
20. American Federation of Information Processing Societies,

Computer Oral History Collection, 1969-1973, 1977. Interview with

Joseph Desch and Robert Mumma. (Washington, D.C.: Archives Center,

National Museum of American History), 116.

21. Bombe History, 7.

22. Waves were women in the U.S. Navy. The acronym WAVES stood

for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.

23. Correspondence to the author from Robert Shade, February 11,

2000.

24. Bob Atha, “The Electro-Mechanical Marvel,” U.S. Naval

Cryptologic Veterans Association (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Co.,

1996), 60.

25. Deborah Anderson, “Joseph Desch and Magic.” 

26. Correspondence to the author from Sue (Sadie) Unger Eskey,

December 20, 1999. However, Phil Bochicchio, a sailor who helped

construct the Bombes in Dayton, says the Bombes were actually

assembled on the first floor.

27. Curt Dalton, Keeping the Secret: The WAVES & NCR (Dayton,

OH: self-published, 1997), 21.26. 

28. John Winton, Ultra at Sea (New York: William Morrow and Co.

Inc., 1988), 146.

29. Gudmundur Helgason, editor, U-boat Fates: The Guide to all Uboat Losses, http://www.uboat.net/fates/may43.htm 1999.

30. Ralph Erskine, “Naval Enigma: The Breaking of Heimisch and

Triton,” Intelligence and National Security v.3 n.1 (January 1988), 171-

172.

31. BTM built approximately fifty-nine of these four-wheel Bombes,

known as High-Speed Keen, or hsk. Another model adopted an existing

three-rotor machine by connecting a sensing unit built for Wyne-Williams

and separate equipment with the fourth rotor attachments built by

Maudsley. This machine was called Cobra (because of the connecting

cable), but it is what most people think of as the British four-wheel Bombe.

40
(Correspondence to the author from John Harper, British Bombe Rebuild

Project, Bletchley Park Trust, 22 July 2002.)

32. The United States referred to the spinning rotors as commutators.

In Britain they were called drums. In the British Bombes, commutators

were a different part of the machine.

33. Conversation between Veronica Mackey Hulick and the author,

March 28, 2000.

34. Curt Dalton, Keeping the Secret, 22.

35. For an explanation of cribs, menus, and Bombe set-up, see

Appendix I.

36. Conversation between Phil Bochicchio and the author, March 20,

2000.

37. Ibid.

38. Battle of the Atlantic: Vol. II U-boat Operations, National

Security Agency SRH-008, 1945, 127.

39. Bombe History, 6-7.

40. Conversation between Phil Bochicchio and the author, March 20,

2000.

41. Ibid.

42. Correspondence to the author from Sue (Sadie) Unger Eskey,

December 20, 1999.

43. Conversation between Phil Bochicchio and the author, November

26, 1999.

44. M-7, M-8, M-9 Devices and CSP-890 (A) The Standard #530

Bombe, (NARA Record Group 457, File #1738.)

45. Notes on the chassis of the Bombe by Phil Bochicchio, undated,

“Bombe” files of the National Cryptologic Museum.

41
46. E.C.M. expands to Electromechanical Cipher Machine. An

identical machine was used in the U.S. Army and was known as SIGABA

(which doesn’t expand to anything).

47. Bombe History, 10.

48. The U. S. Army also had a Bombe project, but it was not built to

deal with the U-boats’ four-rotor messages. For a brief description of the

Army machine, see Appendix II.

49. Memorandum from OP-20-G, “Brief Resumé of Op-20-G and

British Activities vis-à-vis German Machine Ciphers,” July 15, 1944, 3.

50. Bombe History, 9. However, the memo “Brief Resumé of Op-20-G

and British Activities vis-à-vis German Machine Ciphers,” 3, cites the

figure as 40 percent naval and the remaining 60 percent on German Army

and Air Force. The memo is dated only six weeks after the Bombe History,

so it is possible the efficiency improved.

51. Memorandum from OP-20-G, “Contract NXs-7892 – Curtailment

of,” September 8, 1944.

52. James Cummings, “A Salute to the Waves,” Dayton Daily News,

September 10, 1995, City p.1E.

42
Appendix I

Cribs, Menus, and Bombe Set-Up 1

In order to set up the U.S. Navy Bombe, cryptanalysts first had

to determine a “crib.” A crib is the unenciphered text that is

assumed, or known, to appear in the message. 

Cribs could come through a variety of methods. Some of the

best cribs came from errors made by the Germans themselves. On

more than one occasion, a German signal clerk sent the same

message twice in two different codes. If the code for one was

known, it provided a crib for the unknown system.

Another frequent German mistake came in standardized

messages. For example, a shore weather station in the Bay of

Biscay sent out a message every day at 7:00 P.M. which began,

“The weather in the Bay of Biscay will be. . . .” 2 Knowing the

exact wording of a message made a perfect crib for the Allies, so it

became a high priority to intercept the daily message from this

weather station.

A final example of a common German error involved the

practice of submerged U-boats. When the submarines resurfaced

after extended periods of time under water, they requested all the

important messages they had missed while below the waves. The

transmissions that followed inevitably involved communications

previously sent and deciphered. Cryptanalysts merely checked the

back files for messages with the same number of letter groups and

used them as cribs for the new message.3 Since the resulting

message would be identical to the previous one, it helped reveal the

Enigma setting for the current day. With the daily setting, all the

current day’s messages could be read. 

43
Other cribs came from knowing the current activities of the

enemy. If, for example, a battle occurred, it could be assumed that

messages following the attack reported on the battle. It was more

difficult for the cryptanalysts to build cribs for these types of

messages since it involved guesswork.

Cryptanalysts also needed to know

• how the Enigma worked, 

• what was not possible on the machine, and 

• the Germans’ standard practices.

Because the Enigma rotors moved with each keystroke, a letter

typed twice usually enciphered to two different letters. Also, the

Enigma could not encrypt a letter to itself. Finally, the Germans

indicated a space between words with the letter X and spelled out

numbers.

Knowing these details played an important role in ultimately

breaking the Enigma’s daily settings.

To better understand the process of developing a crib and a

Bombe menu, we’ll use an example. The cryptanalyst knows that

two Allied pursuit planes attacked U-boat 66, commanded by

Kapitanleutnant Friedrich Markworth, at 2130 hours. Shortly

afterwards, Markworth sent an encrypted message. The

cryptanalyst assumes the message includes the following:

Assumed text:

MARKWORTHXATTACKEDXBYXTWOXPURSUITXPLANE

SX

(To make it easier to follow the example, the assumed plain text

will be in English. Cryptanalysts during World War II would have

used cribs in German.)

44
Part of the intercepted message includes the following cipher

text:

VWHCD IUGHL UVFAO BXEWN AGZWY ZUXNN

PYZWN LKMUO FRIIL OJPAE

The cryptanalyst begins by lining up the assumed text beneath

the cipher and looking for links that violate what is known about

the Enigma.

Lining up the assumed text with the beginning of the cipher

results in several incorrect links. The first is the H in Markworth

which ciphers to an H. Since the Enigma cannot encipher a letter to

itself, this is not a valid comparison.

In this example, the cryptanalyst finds only one possible

position for the alignment without a letter encrypting to itself.

The next step in developing a menu to set up the Bombe is to

diagram the links. The purpose of diagramming the message is to

determine if it contains any “closures.” Even though the crib may

be correctly aligned, without these closures the Bombe will find too

many hits, making it difficult to determine the Enigma’s settings.

45

Cipher: V W H C D I U G H L U V F A O B X E W N A G Z W Y Z

Crib: M A R K W O R T H X A T T A C K E D X B Y X T W O X

Cipher: I U G H L U V F A O B X E W N A G Z W Y Z U

Crib: M A R K W O R T H X A T T A C K E D X B Y X
A closure occurs when links circle back to a letter that is already

used in the diagram. These loops become obvious when

diagrammed. 

To begin the diagramming, a cryptanalyst may start with a letter

used most often in the message. In our example the letter A appears

five times, twice in the cipher text and three times in the assumed

text. It no longer matters to the cryptanalyst if a letter is cipher or

assumed. This is because an A enciphering to a U at a specific rotor

position deciphers a U to an A at that same rotor position. The

letters are linked at that position. From now on the two remain

associated.

The first in our example is the A in Markworth, which ciphers

to a U. The link is diagrammed:

U

A

A cryptanalyst would then connect the other four links

containing an A. 

U

WA H

B K

46

Cipher: I U G HLU V F A OBX EW N A G Z W YZU

Crib: M A R KWO R THXAT TA C K E D X B YX
Other positions in the message contain some of the letters linked

to A. For example, the K in Markworth is linked to an H. Both H and

K are already in our diagram, so these will be connected creating the

first closure.

U

WA H

B K

The cryptanalyst would continue connecting linked letters in this

manner until two closures appeared. For example, the O in

Markworth is linked to a U and the W is linked to an X. Also, the X

following Marksworth is linked to an O. Our diagram now looks like

this:

X O U

WA H

B K

In our example, A-H-K-A is one closure and A-U-O-X-W-A is

another. The Bombe required two such closures in order to disprove

thousands of possible settings. It also required a total of thirteen or

fourteen links. Therefore, the menu does not include all twenty-two

links in our example. However, it must include the links involved in

47
both closures. Our diagram has these two closures, but only nine

links. The cryptanalyst would continue connecting linked letters until

the required number was reached. 

The final diagram could look like this:

F

T X O U

E WA H

G LB K

Having determined that our example has the two required

closures and thirteen or fourteen links, the cryptanalyst moves on to

the next step: number transposition.

Changing the letters into numbers was primarily a security

measure. Numbers and their associated letters were harder to recall,

especially since the A equated to zero instead of one.

48

Cipher: I U G H L U V F A O B X E W N A G Z W

Crib: M A R KWO R THX AT TA C K E D X

ABCDEFGH I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
The example message transposes to:

The final step transfers everything onto the appropriate form. The

form tells the Bombe operator how to set the Bombe’s dials and

rotors. To do this the cryptanalyst would assign position numbers to

the links. Any links used prior to the first one in the diagram can be

ignored, as can any that come after the last in the diagram. However,

all those in between must be numbered. To make it easier to move the

links from the diagram onto the menu form, we’ve indicated which

links are used.

The menu form referred to cipher and assumed letters, now

transposed into numbers, as “Switch In” and “Switch Out.” There are

four wheels to mimic the four-rotor Enigma. However, the first three

wheels were normally set to zero to begin a run. The last wheel, the

bottom rotor on the Bombe, was placed at the position the link

appeared in the message. The first switch bank’s wheel settings are

always 0-0-0-0, regardless of that link’s position in the message. The

wheel settings for switch bank 2, in this example, are set to 0-0-0-2

(instead of 0-0-0-1) because Link 7-10 is located at position 2. Link

6-17 at position 1 was not used in our diagram and therefore does not

appear on the menu. The final Bombe menu for our example would

look like this:. 

49

Cipher: 8 20 6 7 11 20 21 5 0 14 1 23 4 22 13 0 6 25 22 24 25 20

Crib: 12 0 17 10 22 14 17 19 7 23 0 19 19 0 2 10 4 3 23 1 24 23

Position: 0 1 234 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Cipher: 8 20 6 7 11 20 21 5 0 14 1 23 4 22 13 0 6 25 22 24 25 20

Crib: 12 0 17 10 22 14 17 19 7 23 0 19 19 0 2 10 4 3 23 1 24 23
Since the cryptanalysts had no way of knowing which rotors the

Germans had selected for use that day, each permutation of three

rotors from a set of eight had to be checked.4 The order the rotors

should be placed on the machine was known as a wheel order.

Supervisors received blocks, or groups, of wheel orders and assigned

one to each Bombe operator. The wheel order told the Bombe

operators which rotors, I-VIII, to put on the machine and in which

order they should be placed top to bottom. After a completed Bombe

run, the wheel orders changed. But to keep things efficient, efforts

were made to keep the number of rotor changes on a Bombe to a

minimum. 

It took a Bombe operator only ten minutes to set the Bombe

according to the menu. Once complete, a supervisor checked it, and

then the operator turned the machine on. It ran for twenty minutes,

looking for the electrical pathways that allowed each of the

conditions listed on the menu to be true. Any pathways that fit the

50

Bank Switch Switch Wheel Settings

In Out 1 2 3 4

1 20 0 0 0 0 0

2 7 10 0 0 0 2

3 11 22 0 0 0 3

4 20 14 0 0 0 4

5 5 19 0 0 0 6

6 0 7 0007

7 14 23 0 0 0 8

8 1 0 0009

9 23 19 0 0 0 10

10 4 19 0 0 0 11

11 22 0 0 0 0 12

12 0 10 0 0 0 14

13 6 4 0 0 0 15

14 22 23 0 0 0 17

15 off off 0 0 0 0

16 off off 0 0 0 0
menu caused the Bombe to stop and print out the rotor settings,

wheel order, and stecker connections at that point. The Bombe

operator handed the results to the supervisor. When the Bombe

completed its run, the Wave began setting the machine with the next

wheel order. Twenty-four hours a day, every day, operators used the

Bombes to search for Enigma settings, playing a major role in

winning the Battle of the Atlantic and World War II.

Notes

1. Much of the information used in this appendix came from CDR

Gilman McDonald, USNR (R), who was a senior watch officer of Bombe

operations at Nebraska Avenue.

2. Conversation between former Wave Judy Parsons and the author,

1999.

3. Ibid.

4. The Germans did follow certain rules for rotor use. One of these rules

was that no rotor order would be repeated within the month. Therefore,

possible wheel orders on the Bombes were greatly reduced as the month

progressed.

51

Appendix II

U.S. Army Cryptanalytic Bombe

The following description is from a “Tentative TOP SECRET

Memorandum for OP-20” dated 12 February 1945.1

“Subj: Op-20-G and S.S.A.2 Bombes, Comparison of.

1. In accordance with your request, the following comparison of

the Op-20-G and the S.S.A. Bombes is submitted.

2. The Op-20-G Bombes were constructed at the U.S. Naval

Computing Machine Laboratory. A total of 121 Bombes were

assembled at a cost of about six million dollars. The mechanical

portion of the unit consists of 16 Enigma equivalents consisting of a

set of 4 spindles and brush holders on which cross-wired wheels are

loaded by hand. Automatic electronic detection is supplied on each

Bombe of such a nature that only correct “stories” that satisfy all the

restrictions of the “menu” are printed. A three wheel run takes 50

seconds and a 4-wheel run takes 20 minutes. Each Bombe is 8 feet

long, 7 feet high and 2 feet wide.

3. The S.S.A. Bombe was constructed by the Bell Laboratories at

a cost of from one to one and one-half million dollars. It consists of

a telephone exchange type of installation with a total of 144 relay

equivalents of the Enigma and 12 control stations. Each Enigma

equivalent is mounted on a rack approximately 7 feet long, 8 feet

high and one-half foot wide. The 144 Enigma equivalents can be

allocated in any desired manner to the control stations by plugboards.

Wheel order changes are done by push buttons at the remote stations

and can be changed in about 30 seconds. The other setup data must

be placed individually on the Enigma banks on the floor. Normally,

about 10 stations are running simultaneously and about 10 minutes

is required for each station to run through a short 3-wheel run.

Although the installation is slow and space consuming, it has definite

advantages in rapid wheel changes, remote control, and flexibility for

handling special problems.

53
4. The following table shows a comparison of various aspects of

the two installations. Most of the figures given below are only

approximations.

Respectfully,

J. N. WENGER”

54

Features Op-20-G Bombes S.S.A. Bombes

Total machine cost 6 million 1 to 1 1/2 million

Number of 

effective machines 121 (4-wheel) 10 (3-wheel)

Typical day’s 40,000 short 3-wheel 1,200 short 3-wheel 

output runs runs

1,000 long 4-wheel runs Long 4-wheel runs not 

possible

Rate at which machine

tries assumptions 20,280 [tries] per second 910 [tries] per second

Running time 50 seconds per 10 minutes per

short 3-wheel run short 3-wheel run

20 minutes Long runs

per long 4-wheel run not possible

Operations Personnel 700 20

Maintenance Personnel 135 40

Total number of 

Enigma equivalents 1,935 wheel bank 144 relay banks

Type of detection Prints only correct Prints all “stops” 

“stories” which are then

hand tested to find 

correct “stories”
Notes

1. J.N. Wenger, “OP-20-G Memorandum” dated 12 February 1945,

(NARA Record Group 457, File 35701.)

2. S.S.A. expands to Signal Security Agency, which was the name of the

cryptologic section of the Army at the time.

55