The Secret in Building 26 : The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-boat Enigma Codes

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Summary: The Codebreakers of Dayton, Ohio
Review: Until now too little has been said about the contributions of Americans towards decrypting either German ?Enigma? or Japanese ?Purple? ciphers. From 1941 until the end of the war the Americans and British collaborated ? in a sometimes prickly relationship ? with the desperate task of deciphering the messages sent between German U-boats in the North Atlantic and Grossadmiral Karl D?nitz, commander-in-chief of the German Navy. Fortunately for the allies, the admiral liked to keep in close touch with his fleet of U-boats, providing a steady stream of messages with clues to the U-boats? position and intentions.

In 1939, with Germany threatening to invade Poland, the Polish had turned over to their British and French allies all the work they had done during the previous nine years on the ciphers generated by a machine called an ?Enigma? that the Germans used to send secret messages. The Polish artifacts included a mechanical device called a ?bomba kryptologiczna?, or ?bombe? in French. In response, the British set up a Code and Cypher School (note the British spelling of cipher) at Bletchley Park. That story has been well told many times and the contributions of at least some of the men and women who served there ? most notably the mathematician Alan Turing ? have been publicly recognized.

In the United States much of the code breaking was done in Dayton, Ohio, by NCR in cooperation with the US Navy. The Bombes used in the US were designed and constructed in Building 26 under the leadership of engineer Joe Desch. Desch was one of many people who have never received proper acknowledgement for their work during the World War II because of the tight security surrounding their duties. Putting together their story has been a labor of love for Dayton reporter, Jim DeBrosse, and security historian Colin Burke. Be warned that there is very little about the technical aspects of Enigma encryption in ?The Secret in Building 26?, but there is a wealth of information about the men and women who worked ? often for years of long, hard days and under tremendous strain ? for the love of their country.