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Station X (documentary)
''Station X'' is a British television documentary series detailing the story of how Germany's Enigma code was broken. It was broadcast on Channel 4 in 1999.Brown, Maggie, The Guardian, 15 March 1999 John Smithson was executive producer. It was accompanied by the "Channel 4 Books" publication ''Station X: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park'' (1998), authored by Michael Smith which became a UK Number 1 bestseller. The first episode aired on Channel 4 on 19 January 1999. Tim Gardam, Channel 4's director of programmes, insisted that ''Station X'' be broadcast at the peak viewing time. The programme maker Peter Bate used full-scale reconstructions. Instead of a chronological narrative; Bate relied on short dramatised shots and anecdotes by various Bletchley veterans.Hanks, Robert. ''Television Review'' The Independent 20 January 1999Burge, Jim. Essay: ''On the reconstruction... '', The Independent, 14 February 1999 Those featured included Peter Calvocoressi, Ralph Bennett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Smithson
John Smithson (born March 1952) is a British film and television producer. Family John's brother is the political blogger Mike Smithson (politics), Mike Smithson. Together with David Darlow (film producer), David Darlow he co-founded the production company Darlow Smithson Productions in 1988. In June 2002 Smithson acquired full control and bought out Darlow's 50% stake.RDF producer heads to Darlow Smithson'. In: c21media.net, 27 July 2004. A month later Darlow left the company. Smithson later became joint Creative Director of Arrow Media, based in London. He works closely with top broadcasting commissioners in the UK, US and other key international operating territories around the world. Awards *1999, Smithson won the News & Documentary Emmy Award for Analysis of a Single Current Story for "Decoding the Nazis" . *2004, Smithson won the BAFTA Award for Best British Film, Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film for ''Touching the Void (film), Touching the Void''. *2004, Smi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans-Thilo Schmidt
Hans-Thilo Schmidt (13 May 1888 – 19 September 1943) codenamed Asché or Source D, was a German spy who sold secrets about the Enigma machine to the French during World War II. The materials he provided facilitated Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski's reconstruction of the wiring in the Enigma's rotors and reflector; thereafter the Poles were able to read a large proportion of Enigma-enciphered traffic. He was the younger brother of Wehrmacht general Rudolf Schmidt. Selling Enigma secrets A former officer, Schmidt had been forced to leave the army having suffered from gas during the First World War.May, Ernest ''Strange Victory'', New York: Hill & Wang, 2000 page 135. His brother, Rudolf Schmidt, secured him a civilian post at the German Armed Forces' cryptographic headquarters, the Cipher Office. Shortly after the military version of the Enigma machine was introduced, he contacted French intelligence and offered to supply information about the new machine. His offer w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK (formerly News International), which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes ''The Times''. The two papers, founded separately and independently, have been under the same ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981. In March 2020, ''The Sunday Times'' had a circulation of 647,622, exceeding that of its main rivals, ''The Sunday Telegraph'' and '' The Observer'', combined. While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, ''The Sunday Times'' retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it intends to continue to do so. As of December 2019, it sold 75% more copies than its sister paper, ''The Times'', which is published from Monday to Saturday. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lofoten Raid
Operation Claymore was a British/Norwegian commando raid on the Lofoten Islands of northern Norway during the Second World War. The Lofoten Islands were an important centre for the production of fish oil and glycerine, used in the German war economy. The landings were carried out on 4 March 1941, by 500 men of No. 3 Commando, No. 4 Commando, and a Royal Engineers section, and 52 men from Norwegian Independent Company 1. Supported by the 6th Destroyer Flotilla and two troop transports of the Royal Navy, the force landed almost unopposed. The original plan was to avoid contact with German forces and inflict the maximum of damage to German-controlled industry. They achieved their objective of destroying fish oil factories and some of oil and glycerine. The force returned with some 228 German prisoners, 314 Norwegian recruits, and a number of Quisling regime collaborators. Through naval gunfire and demolition parties, 18,000 tons of shipping were sunk. Perhaps the most significan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armed Trawler
Naval trawlers are vessels built along the lines of a fishing trawler but fitted out for naval purposes; they were widely used during the First and Second World Wars. Some, known in the Royal Navy as "Admiralty trawlers", were purpose-built to naval specifications; others were adapted from civilian use. Fishing trawlers were particularly suited for many naval requirements because they were robust vessels designed to work heavy trawls in all types of weather, and had large clear working decks. A minesweeper could be created by replacing the trawl with a mine sweep. Adding depth charge racks on the deck, ASDIC sonar below, and a or gun in the bow equipped the trawler for anti-submarine duties. History Armed trawlers were also used to defend fishing groups from enemy aircraft or submarines. The smallest civilian trawlers were converted to danlayers. Contemporary Some nations still use armed trawlers for fisheries protection and patrol. The Indian Navy used naval trawlers f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
German Weather Ship Lauenburg
''Lauenburg'' was a German weather ship used in the early years of the Second World War to provide weather reports for German shipping, particularly German U-boats. After the German use of such vessels had been identified as a weakness that could be exploited to break the Enigma code, ''Lauenburg'' was captured and sunk on 28 June 1941. The Royal Navy acquired important German code books and parts of an Enigma machine. Early life ''Lauenburg'' had been built in 1938 as a fishing trawler, named after the town of Lauenburg, and with the identification number 'PG 532'. She operated out of Geestemünde for her owners, H. Bischoff & Co, of Bremen. She was acquired by the ''Kriegsmarine'' in 1940, and entered naval service in November, having been converted into a weather ship, retaining the name ''Lauenburg''. In her new guise she carried a crew of between 19 and 21, as well as eight meteorologists. She was to be used to provide detailed weather reports for naval units, including Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
U-boat U-110
German submarine ''U-110'' was a Type IXB U-boat of Nazi Germany's ''Kriegsmarine'' that operated during World War II. She was captured by the Royal Navy on 9 May 1941 and provided a number of secret cipher documents to the British. ''U-110''s capture, later given the code name "Operation Primrose", was one of the biggest secrets of the war, remaining so for seven months. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was only told of the capture by Winston Churchill in January 1942. Design Type IXB submarines were slightly larger than the original Type IX submarines, later designated IXA. ''U-110'' had a displacement of when at the surface and while submerged. The U-boat had a total length of , a pressure hull length of , a beam of , a height of , and a draught of . The submarine was powered by two MAN M 9 V 40/46 supercharged four-stroke, nine-cylinder diesel engines producing a total of for use while surfaced, two Siemens-Schuckert 2 GU 345/34 double-acting electric motors produci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Enigma Naval Codes
Cryptanalysis of the Enigma ciphering system enabled the western Allies in World War II to read substantial amounts of Morse-coded radio communications of the Axis powers that had been enciphered using Enigma machines. This yielded military intelligence which, along with that from other decrypted Axis radio and teleprinter transmissions, was given the codename ''Ultra''. The Enigma machines were a family of portable cipher machines with rotor scramblers. Good operating procedures, properly enforced, would have made the plugboard Enigma machine unbreakable to the Allies at that time. The German plugboard-equipped Enigma became the principal crypto-system of the German Reich and later of other Axis powers. In December 1932 it was broken by mathematician Marian Rejewski at the Polish General Staff's Cipher Bureau, using mathematical permutation group theory combined with French-supplied intelligence material obtained from a German spy. By 1938 Rejewski had invented a device, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham Of Hyndhope
Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy), Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Browne Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, (7 January 1883 – 12 June 1963) was a British officer of the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He was List of military figures by nickname, widely known by his initials, "ABC". Cunningham was born in Rathmines in the south side of Dublin on 7 January 1883. After starting his schooling in Dublin and Edinburgh, he enrolled at Stubbington House School, at the age of ten. He entered the Royal Navy in 1897 as a naval cadet in the officers' training ship HMS Prince of Wales (1860), ''Britannia'', passing out in 1898. He commanded a destroyer during the First World War and through most of the interwar period. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order and two Bars, for his performance during this time, specifically for his actions in the Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign, Dardanelles and in the Baltic states, Baltics. In the Second World War, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josh Cooper (cryptographer)
Joshua Edward Synge ('Josh') Cooper CB, CMG (3 April 1901 in Fulham, London – 24 June 1981 in Buckinghamshire) was an English cryptographer. Josh was the eldest son of Richard Edward Synge Cooper and his wife Mary Eleanor Burke who were married in Dublin exactly a year before his birth. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, Brasenose College, Oxford, and King's College London. He joined the Government Code and Cypher School as a Junior Assistant in October 1925 to specialise in Russian codes and ciphers. He was down from King's College London with a First in Russian and was teaching at a preparatory school in Margate. Then a sister of the novelist Charles Morgan said that Russian linguists were needed "at a place in Queen’s Gate". He was assigned to Ernst Fetterlein to work on Soviet diplomatic ciphers, with an Army officer, Capt. A.C. Stuart Smith. The first message he read was from Moscow to the Soviet representative in Washington, about the repudiation of debts by A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dilly Knox
Alfred Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, CMG (23 July 1884 – 27 February 1943) was an English classics scholar and papyrologist at King's College, Cambridge and a codebreaker. As a member of the Room 40 codebreaking unit he helped decrypt the Zimmermann Telegram which brought the USA into the First World War. He then joined the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). As chief cryptographer, Knox played an important role in the Polish–French–British meetings on the eve of the Second World War which disclosed Polish cryptanalysis of the Axis Enigma to the Allies. At Bletchley Park, he worked on the cryptanalysis of Enigma ciphers until his death in 1943. He built the team and discovered the method that broke the Italian Naval Enigma, producing the intelligence credited with Allied victory at the Battle of Cape Matapan. In 1941, Knox broke the Abwehr Enigma. By the end of the war, Intelligence Service Knox had disseminated 140,800 Abwehr decrypts, including intelligen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Tandy
Geoffrey A. Tandy (1900–1969) was a British marine biologist and broadcaster. Life Tandy graduated from Oxford University in 1921, and pursued graduate studies at Birkbeck College, in the University of London. He was employed at the Natural History Museum in London from 1926 to 1948, specialising in the biology of algae, after which he worked for the British Foreign Office until 1954. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and rose to the rank of Paymaster Commander. He served throughout the war at Bletchley Park in the Naval Section. In 1941 he was in charge of the research sub-section with responsibility for captured documents, and later he became Head of Technical Intelligence. In 1945 he became a member of TICOM (Technical Intelligence Committee). A friend of T. S. Eliot, Tandy wrote a "Broadcasting Chronicle" for '' The Criterion'', and was the first to broadcast '' Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' in 1937. During the Second World ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
