From that prior blog entry:
"2. The allies [French and English] during that whole time of the Battle of France [1940] at least had SOME Enigma crypto machine decrypts available to them. French and British both reading at least SOME of the most secret German radio traffic during the campaign and sharing same between the two allies."
To what extent did Ultra and the "reading" of the most secure German ciphers [Enigma] during the Battle of France [1940] influence that decision making process of the French [most specifically the generalissimo Gamelin] and the allied forces during that campaign? That is a fair question.
Ultra [the British designation called Boniface "initially" was being "read" during the campaign. At least SOME secure German radio traffic was being decrypted. This is so. Bletchley Park [British], PC Bruno [French] and BP and PC Bruno in combination were able to decrypt SOME Enigma in real time. The material as gleaned from the decryptions, translations, and processed intelligence product, however, DOES NOT SEEM TO HAVE BEEN EITHER PASSED TO THE SENIOR FRENCH AND ALLIED COMMANDERS OR PUT TO GOOD USE EVEN IF IT HAD BEEN!!
From a variety of sources on the Internet we have these extracts:
"Army- and Air Force-related intelligence derived from signals intelligence (SIGINT) sources -mainly Enigma decrypts in Hut 6 – was compiled in summaries at GC&CS (Bletchley Park) Hut 3 and distributed initially under the codeword 'BONIFACE."
"on 17 January 1940, the Poles [working for the French at PC Bruno] made the first break into wartime Enigma traffic—that from 28 October 1939. From that time, until the Fall of France in June 1940, 17 percent of the Enigma keys that were found by the allies, were solved at PC Bruno."
"In April 1940, Ultra information provided a detailed picture of the disposition of the German forces, and then their movement orders for the attack on the Low Countries prior to the Battle of France in May [1940]."
"In April 1940 Ultra discovers information about the logistics of the German forces and of their subsequent orders to attack the Low Countries, before the Battle of France in May [1940]."
"On May 1, 1940, just before the invasion of Norway, the Germans changed their encryption procedure."
"The Germans, just before opening their 10 May 1940 offensive against the Low countries in their thrust towards France, had made the feared change in the indicator procedure, discontinuing the duplication of the enciphered message key."
"the initial series of decryption appeared too late to affect the Battle of France, 10 May-22 Jun 1940, ULTRA did give general forewarnings BP had the most success reading the Luftwaffe messages, codenamed “Red” by the British cryptographers. It was broken on May 22, 1940, and was read uninterrupted throughout the rest of the war."
"By April [1940] the BP codebreakers were able to read messages within 24 hours. However, the British military did not yet have any process in place to pass such vital information on to their generals. It took time for a process to be created and for the military to trust the intelligence."
Bletchely Park [sic] was [had] developed detailed information on the German Western offensive (May 1940), [but] systems were not in place to get useful information to field units nor were field commands ready to accept the accuracy of the information provided, in part because the source was obscured by passing it off as MI6 espionage. Some commanders were afraid that it might be enemy disinformation.
"The Germans launched their long-awaited Western offensive (May 1940) . . . By this time, the British were in the process up setting Special Liaison Units to deliver Bletchley Park Ultra intelligence to field commanders in the field. The system was still just being established when the Germans struck. This and the fact that the primary fighting force was the French Army meant that Ultra had no real impact on the campaign."
This graph tells us a lot? That number of messages evaluations of Ultra decrypts as transmitted from BP to units and commands in the field and actually in contact and combat with German forces. That number of ten [?] per month [?] ALMOST ONE FULL YEAR AFTER THE BATTLE OF FRANCE [1940] INDICATES THAT THE TRAFFIC AVAILABLE TO THE COMMANDERS IN 1940 WAS PROBABLY FAR LESS? Commanders at that exact instant [1940] also not even either understanding what the appreciations meant or how to use them!!
In conclusion:
1. Action-able intelligence based on Ultra during the Battle of France [1940] very scant indeed.
2. NO effective means to transmit action-able intelligence to the combat commander in the field.
3. Combat commanders even if provided with action-able intelligence either not understanding the product, or unwilling to use!
In the nutshell as they say.
coolbert.
No comments:
Post a Comment