a425couple
2016-05-31 19:59:44 UTC
Jane Fawcett: Identifed message that led to Allied success in sinking
the Bismarck
Obituary: She worked in Bletchley Park, the home of British code-breaking,
during the second World War
In May 1941, the Bismarck, Germany's mightiest warship, had become a prime
target after it sank one of England's most powerful vessels, the battle
cruiser HMS Hood, in the battle of the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and
Greenland. Much of the British fleet was in search of the Bismarck, which
was presumed to have withdrawn to the North Atlantic around Norway.
Fawcett, then known as Jane Hughes, had just turned 20 and had been working
for a time at Bletchley Park, the Buckinghamshire estate north of London
where the intelligence operation known as the Government Code and Cypher
School was located.
Thousands of young women worked there during the war; many, like Fawcett,
had been recruited and hired from the upper social strata. They performed a
variety of tasks assisting the mostly male chess geniuses, linguists,
mathematicians and rogue intellectuals struggling to unscramble German
military communications written in the complex disguise generated by
so-called Enigma machines.
Enigma generated new codes daily, and though by 1941 the Allies had achieved
some success in decrypting German missives, it remained labour-intensive
hit-or-miss work that required vigilance by a chain of operatives. At
Bletchley, Fawcett worked in Hut 6, where the focus was on breaking codes
emitted by the German army and the Luftwaffe.
As described in a 2015 book, The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories,
by Michael Smith, her station was in the decoding room, where she sat with a
machine called a Typex, which had been modified to replicate an Enigma. When
a daily Enigma code was broken, the keys to the code were passed along to
Fawcett or another young woman in the decoding room. She would then plug the
keys into her own Typex machine and type out the encoded messages.
The Typex machines fed out a decoded script on strips of paper tape, and the
first thing Fawcett and her colleagues needed to do was check to see that
the decoded messages were in fact in recognisable German; she had spent time
in Switzerland, where she learned the language. The German messages were
passed along to Hut 3 next door, where they were featured in intelligence
reports.
On May 25th, 1941, Fawcett was among those in Hut 6 briefed on the search
for the Bismarck.
"We all knew we'd got the fleet out in the Atlantic trying to locate her
because she was the Germans' most important, latest battleship and had
better guns and so on than anybody else, and she'd already sunk the Hood,"
Fawcett recalled in the book. "So it was vitally important to find where she
was and try to get rid of her."
She was just over an hour into her shift when she typed out a message from
the main Luftwaffe Enigma. Reading the message, she recognised that a
Luftwaffe general whose son was on the Bismarck had sought to find out if he
was all right and had been informed that the ship, damaged in the previous
battle, was on its way to France - to the port of Brest, in Brittany - for
repair.
The message, passed instantly along the chain of command, was instrumental
in finding the Bismarck, which was first spotted from the air by a seaplane
and subsequently attacked by aircraft carrier torpedo bombers and swarmed by
Royal Navy battleships and cruisers. It was sunk in the Atlantic west of
Brest on May 27th.
----------------
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/05/25/jane-fawcett-bletchley-decoder-obituary/
Jane Fawcett, British Decoder Who Helped Doom the Bismarck, Dies ...
www.nytimes.com/.../jane-fawcett-british-decoder-who-helped-do...The New
York Times
2 days ago - Jane Fawcett, who was a reluctant London debutante when she
went to work at Bletchley Park, the home of British code-breaking during
World ...
Jane Fawcett, British code-breaker during World War II, dies at 95
Washington Post<UTF16-200E> - 3 days ago
Turing worked in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, while Mrs. Fawcett was assigned to
Hut 6. She was ...
the Bismarck
Obituary: She worked in Bletchley Park, the home of British code-breaking,
during the second World War
In May 1941, the Bismarck, Germany's mightiest warship, had become a prime
target after it sank one of England's most powerful vessels, the battle
cruiser HMS Hood, in the battle of the Denmark Strait, between Iceland and
Greenland. Much of the British fleet was in search of the Bismarck, which
was presumed to have withdrawn to the North Atlantic around Norway.
Fawcett, then known as Jane Hughes, had just turned 20 and had been working
for a time at Bletchley Park, the Buckinghamshire estate north of London
where the intelligence operation known as the Government Code and Cypher
School was located.
Thousands of young women worked there during the war; many, like Fawcett,
had been recruited and hired from the upper social strata. They performed a
variety of tasks assisting the mostly male chess geniuses, linguists,
mathematicians and rogue intellectuals struggling to unscramble German
military communications written in the complex disguise generated by
so-called Enigma machines.
Enigma generated new codes daily, and though by 1941 the Allies had achieved
some success in decrypting German missives, it remained labour-intensive
hit-or-miss work that required vigilance by a chain of operatives. At
Bletchley, Fawcett worked in Hut 6, where the focus was on breaking codes
emitted by the German army and the Luftwaffe.
As described in a 2015 book, The Debs of Bletchley Park and Other Stories,
by Michael Smith, her station was in the decoding room, where she sat with a
machine called a Typex, which had been modified to replicate an Enigma. When
a daily Enigma code was broken, the keys to the code were passed along to
Fawcett or another young woman in the decoding room. She would then plug the
keys into her own Typex machine and type out the encoded messages.
The Typex machines fed out a decoded script on strips of paper tape, and the
first thing Fawcett and her colleagues needed to do was check to see that
the decoded messages were in fact in recognisable German; she had spent time
in Switzerland, where she learned the language. The German messages were
passed along to Hut 3 next door, where they were featured in intelligence
reports.
On May 25th, 1941, Fawcett was among those in Hut 6 briefed on the search
for the Bismarck.
"We all knew we'd got the fleet out in the Atlantic trying to locate her
because she was the Germans' most important, latest battleship and had
better guns and so on than anybody else, and she'd already sunk the Hood,"
Fawcett recalled in the book. "So it was vitally important to find where she
was and try to get rid of her."
She was just over an hour into her shift when she typed out a message from
the main Luftwaffe Enigma. Reading the message, she recognised that a
Luftwaffe general whose son was on the Bismarck had sought to find out if he
was all right and had been informed that the ship, damaged in the previous
battle, was on its way to France - to the port of Brest, in Brittany - for
repair.
The message, passed instantly along the chain of command, was instrumental
in finding the Bismarck, which was first spotted from the air by a seaplane
and subsequently attacked by aircraft carrier torpedo bombers and swarmed by
Royal Navy battleships and cruisers. It was sunk in the Atlantic west of
Brest on May 27th.
----------------
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/05/25/jane-fawcett-bletchley-decoder-obituary/
Jane Fawcett, British Decoder Who Helped Doom the Bismarck, Dies ...
www.nytimes.com/.../jane-fawcett-british-decoder-who-helped-do...The New
York Times
2 days ago - Jane Fawcett, who was a reluctant London debutante when she
went to work at Bletchley Park, the home of British code-breaking during
World ...
Jane Fawcett, British code-breaker during World War II, dies at 95
Washington Post<UTF16-200E> - 3 days ago
Turing worked in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park, while Mrs. Fawcett was assigned to
Hut 6. She was ...