Gordon Welchman Read online

  Bayly and Welchman became involved with Alan Turing in his work along with people at Bell Laboratories to develop an effective phone scrambler. They were both very fond of Turing and were of the view, years later, that much nonsense had been written about him. Bayly recalled their time together in New York:

  Alan Turing lived with me in NY for several months while helping with the famous or infamous phone scrambler. Amazingly I didn’t know from Turing what he was doing, but I learnt it from a US source in a casual conversation on security. Turing was a marvellous fellow and we got on very well. I couldn’t understand any technical thing that he said, he gave his descriptions in shorthand, but he could write them down so that I at least knew what he was talking about. I was always amazed at his ability to think in terms of a 26 × 26 matrix. On one occasion they wanted him back in London urgently. By sending one man to the state department, one to the US customs, one to US emigration, and having Bill Stephenson pull wires in the Port of NY Security Committee, we got Turing on board the Queen Elizabeth about half an hour before sailing – all of this in a period of one day. Turing’s parting remark to me was ‘I hope this hasn’t put you to any trouble.’

  To create the Rockex, Bayly had used the existing patented Telekrypton enciphering device and modified it in such a way that while the letter characters A-Z stayed as before, when the other six characters appeared on the enciphered tape (the teleprinter alphabet is made up of thirty-two characters), the figures one to six were used. One problem with the Vernam one-time teleprinter cipher system was that the cipher text included many occurrences of operational (also called stunt) characters such as line feed and carriage return. They would preclude the cipher text being given to a commercial telegraph company for transmission. It also proved to be prohibitively expensive to use this over standard cable facilities as the use of a number doubled the cost of transmission and proved difficult for the cable-Morse operators to handle accurately. Two of the modified printers were sent to BP where the little group of cipher clerks who handled the MI 6 encryption work were stationed. They soon learned to use the machines at about five times the speed of hand processing. According to Welchman, Travis named the new encryption machine while he was visiting the laboratory where it was being designed and built. The lab was in the Rockefeller Plaza Complex and after observing members of the famous Rockettes sunbathing on the roof of the adjoining Radio City Music Hall, Travis came up with the name, Rockex. Another story is that the name Rockex was chosen after the designers saw a performance by the Rockettes. Parts for the Rockex were supplied by the Teletype Corporation of Skokie, Illinois.

  The problems eased when, at a later date, Bayly insisted that they have their own cable terminal and use teletype across the Atlantic. The daily load was running at almost 1.5 million words a day and the supply of teleprinters soon became a problem. They were usually acquired through Lend Lease, the programme under which the USA supplied Allied countries with materials during the Second World War. At one point, Travis and Welchman needed a great quantity of teleprinters worth millions of dollars. As the head of Lend Lease was a friend, Bayly was able to bypass the normal negotiations which could take months.

  During his 1944 visit to the US, Welchman began to warm to the energy the Americans showed in their willingness to exploit new ideas. He was able to work with such luminaries in American cryptography as Frank Rowlett of the US Army and Howard Engstrom of the US Navy. However, as he relates in The Hut Six Story:

  In our liaison work in Washington, Pat Bayly and I found ourselves in a curious position. The technical staff of the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy organizations were only too willing to discuss their activities and ideas with us. Yet they could not exchange ideas with each other directly. They would have liked to do so, but interservice friction made this virtually impossible. So Bayly and I found ourselves acting as go-betweens. It may seem foolish that we were just about the only means of contact between the leading cryptanalytic experts on Enigma of the U.S. Army and Navy, and indeed it was foolish.

  Welchman only found out the real role and influence of Bayly’s boss, William Stephenson, during his trip to the USA:

  I did not become aware of Stephenson’s existence until I went to America on the Queen Mary in February, 1944, and found myself sitting at the Captain’s table with several well-known people, including a minister in the British cabinet, the head of the British National Physical Laboratory, and film producer Alexander Korda. During the voyage it became apparent that the cabinet minister resented the presence of this Gordon Welchman, who didn’t seem to be doing anything important. However, when we reached New York, and the passengers were waiting instructions, we heard a broadcast announcement: ‘Will Mr Alexander Korda and Mr Gordon Welchman please disembark.’ I happened to be standing near the cabinet minister and saw the look of amazement on his face!

  He was indeed in august company. As well as the famous producer Korda, the head of the National Physical Laboratory at that time was Sir Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of the evolutionary biologist, Charles Robert Darwin. Korda, apart from being a personal friend of Stephenson, was one of the many people whom Stephenson had recruited to take advantage of their talents and contacts to help win the war.

  Not least among Stephenson’s accomplishments and contributions to the war effort was the setting up by BSC of Camp X in Whitby, Ontario, the first training school for clandestine wartime operations in North America. Rockex first saw service at Camp X in 1943 to pass messages across the Atlantic, and soldiered on in military and diplomatic applications until 1975. Stephenson’s story has been told in some detail and inaccurately by several authors.7 His initial directives for BSC were to investigate enemy activities, institute security measures against sabotage to British property, and organize American public opinion in favour of aid to Britain. Later this was expanded to assuring American participation in secret activities throughout the world in the closest possible collaboration with the British. Stephenson’s official title was British Passport Control Officer. His unofficial mission was to create a secret British intelligence network throughout the western hemisphere, and to operate covertly and broadly on behalf of the British government and the Allies in aid of winning the war. It is generally believed that he also became Churchill’s personal representative to US President Roosevelt.8

  Stephenson was also a shrewd businessman, according to Bayly’s former assistant, Kenneth Maidment:

  Again he helped me to (very anonymous) fame in 1944–45 by calling me to his office and handing me a primitive ball-point pen. He wanted me to invent an entirely new name for it, as he had shrewdly bought the patent for it. All the names for pen, I told him, had already been used: so I asked who had invented the thing. He said a Hungarian refugee called Biro, who worked in an aircraft factory in Buenos Aires. So I said: call it a BIRO. Which he did, and hence the name.9

  This was how the word ‘biro’ subsequently became synonymous with the ballpoint pen in Europe.

  Maidment also had views on the surprising lack of direct contact during the war between Stephenson and GC&CS. According to Maidment, it was because of his close relationship with Bill Donovan, the wartime head of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and the growth of OSS, whose ideas of security worried Travis. Even more worrying was the US Army and Navy’s antagonism to OSS. Stephenson had been a close adviser to President Roosevelt, and had suggested that he put his good friend, Bill Donovan in charge of all US intelligence services.

  Welchman’s trip to the USA in 1944 coincided with a secret joint US/British conference on intelligence at the SIS’s headquarters at Arlington Hall on 13 March. While he was busy working with Bayly in Washington and New York, Welchman spent a day at Arlington Hall when Travis attended the conference. He was able to catch up with two former BP colleagues as Philip Lewis and Tony Kendrick were now based in North America and also in attendance. Lewis had been working in Washington, with full access to the Pentagon, visiting Bayly in New York and addressing th
e Canadian Combined Chiefs of Staff in Canada to describe in outline British intelligence work. GC&CS had sent a high-powered delegation which included, apart from Travis, John Tiltman, Joe Hooper and Edward Crankshaw. The American representatives included William Friedman, Abe Sinkov and Solomon Kullback. At the end of the conference a photograph was taken of the participants on the steps of the main building at Arlington Hall.10

  Welchman returned from his American trip in the summer of 1944 bearing gifts for the family. He had chocolate, peanut butter and dried bananas but warned the children that the bananas would not be as good as fresh ones. In wartime Britain, the children had never tasted fresh bananas and had only heard how wonderful they would be when the war ended and real life began again. For now they had to make do with dried fruit which was compacted, a brown colour and tasted like dried figs.

  On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler, besieged in his bunker in the centre of Berlin by the advancing Red Army, placed a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. His closest ally, the Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini had been executed by communist partisans on 28 April and his body strung upside down in a petrol station forecourt in Milan. On 7 May, General Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander sent out a brief message which simply said ‘The Mission of this Allied Force was Fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th.’ For the British, the real victory arguably came with the signing of the unconditional surrender of all the German forces in northwest Europe to Field Marshal Montgomery in a large tent at his headquarters at 1830 hours on Friday, 4 May.

  At BP, senior managers were seriously concerned about security and in particular, gossip about key wartime personalities gained from decrypts. On 29 April, staff in Hut 3 were instructed to avoid issuing decrypt information about ‘large German capitulations’ and ‘the activities of prominent German personalities’. On 4 May, Travis gave an order that he personally would have to clear any VE-Day congratulatory telegrams sent from BP. The war with Japan was still going on and BP’s involvement in Japanese codebreaking had increased. At the same time, senior staff at BP were already planning the peacetime work of the GC&CS organization. It would emerge from the war as GCHQ, first at Eastcote and eventually at Cheltenham. To mark VE-Day, Travis sent every member of staff a note thanking them for their efforts. He also reminded them that the work continued and of the dangers to security of careless talk that could disclose the work that they had been engaged in.

  GC&CS staff numbers had approached 9,000 by the end of the war in Europe. At its peak in November 1944 Hut 6 had 575 staff while Hut 8’s numbers peaked at 154 in July 1943. While some staff left quite quickly, others were moved on to Japanese and Russian work, particularly those from Hut 8. In each of the huts, senior managers were tasked with writing official hut reports. The Hut 6 report was authored by several individuals never formally identified, but Milner-Barry had final editorial control over the resulting three-volume document.11

  Strict controls were placed on the demobilization of service personnel based on a points scheme with a shorter delay for those with the longest service. Civilian staff went through a similar process although academics were allowed to go earlier so that universities could cope with the large intake of students returning to complete their education. By the end of August 1945, most of those who had come from the universities had left BP and staff numbers were down to 5,500. Although a small GCHQ team would remain at BP for more than forty years, BP would finally be closed down as the headquarters of GC&CS/GCHQ in the spring of 1946.

  And what of Turing, Welchman and Keen’s wonderful bombes? It is believed that all but 60 of the 211 built were dismantled in the summer of 1945.12 It is also believed that of the 60, all but 16 were stored, the rest being used after the war. No official document which provides details of their ultimate fate appears to be in the public domain. The women of the Royal Naval Service (WRNS) who had skilfully operated the machines throughout the war were tasked with dismantling them. Wiring and components were removed and sorted for future use.13

  Even before the war had ended, Travis had asked Welchman to join a small planning group to look at the future and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) which would emerge from the wartime GC&CS. After thinking about this for some time, it occurred to Welchman that the triumph of Hut 6 and the reasons behind it could help inform the structure of a future intelligence organization. His views were extremely radical for the time yet resonate in the world of today. He strongly believed that people’s salary and prestige should reflect success in their particular field. So the top cryptanalyst at BP should have been able to command a higher salary that the Director. Today, the leading stars in sport, entertainment, banking and, to some extent, IT are top earners who enjoy the trappings of their success. This was certainly not the world of the 1940s! He also felt that cryptological staff at GCHQ should not claim to be experts in related fields unless justified. Technology experts should be part of the early conversation about what the technology can do and how best it can address certain problems.14

  The planning group produced a paper on 17 September 1944 titled ‘A Note on the Future of GC&CS’. Its authors, Welchman, Harry Hinsley and Edward Crankshaw, recommended the following:

  • The creation of the Foreign Intelligence Office, which will include Signals Intelligence and Signals Security as part of its sphere of activity.

  • The remoulding of G.C. & C.S. in the framework of the Foreign Intelligence Office as an organization which will compel the respect of the Services and take its proper place as the unchallenged headquarters of all Signals Intelligence.

  • The development of a first-class Signals Security organization with an expert and professional understanding of communications and communications engineering.15

  On 1 January 1945 Welchman submitted his personal thoughts in a report titled ‘The Place of Cryptography and Traffic Analysis in Signals Intelligence’. The report was considered by a government committee looking at the future of GCHQ. Welchman wrote:

  In writing this note the question that is uppermost in my mind is whether it is going to be possible to keep alive in peace time an organisation that is fully prepared for war. There are very great difficulties, which after careful consideration may be considered to be insuperable. But I am trying to analyse the sort of organisation that is required in wartime and to foresee the difficulties involved in keeping at least the framework of such an organization alive in peace time, with the idea in my mind that we should make a very determined attempt.16

  Some years later he was told that his recommendations had been largely ignored. In any event, a man with a wife and young children needed to start making his own plans for a post-war career. Some BP veterans would remain within the new peacetime GCHQ but the majority of the more technical staff quickly dispersed to other occupations. For his part Welchman was already wondering if the Americans, with whom he had been so enamoured, would be more receptive to his ideas.

  Chapter 8

  Post-War and the Birth of the Digital Age

  In the years leading up to the Second World War, Welchman and Katharine had enjoyed a good life in Cambridge. They had many friends and could enjoy some of the perks which came with being Dean of Sidney Sussex. However, they had always felt like fish out of water there. He had been a clergyman’s son at Cambridge on a scholarship and without significant funds at his disposal. The men in Katharine’s family were in the military on her father’s side and in the clergy on her mother’s side. She was a descendant of Elizabeth Fry, the English prison reformer, social reformer and Quaker. Very powerful women were a feature of her family. She would not have access to financial support through her family until later in their married life. After almost six years of working in the exciting and pressure-filled environment of BP, Welchman knew that the academic life was no longer for him. With a wife and three young children, Nick, Sue and Ros, aged six, four and one, to care for he needed to decide on his future without delay.

  BP was winding down quite
quickly in the summer of 1945, but before he could depart, Welchman had one final matter to deal with. He had become a temporary civil servant at the beginning of the war but eventually he received notice to report for military duty with a unit of the Royal Artillery. He contacted his new employers, the Foreign Office, who said that they would resolve the matter with Army administrators. At the end of the war, Welchman was still classified by the Army as having being called up but never enlisted. So in the eyes of the military, he was in effect a ‘draft dodger’. To be discharged, he would first have to enlist and this he duly did. Within twenty minutes he was discharged and once again a civilian. As he remembered in The Hut Six Story: