Gordon Welchman Read online

  In 1948 he decided to emigrate to the United States and initially played a key role in Project Whirlwind, an ambitious project at MIT which would, for the first time, apply computers to air traffic control and air security. Once again his insightful mind recognized the need for original work on the problems of computer applications. He also gave the first course of lectures on programming for a digital computer at MIT for the electrical engineering department. After working for several companies in the fledgling American computer industry, he joined the MITRE Corporation in 1962. MITRE had been tasked with the development and integration of digital computers to monitor US airspace, detect potential threats, and coordinate tactical responses. His work with MITRE led to numerous classified publications and several inventions which now lie at the heart of American air defence systems. While his work at BP contributed to the birth of the digital age, his post-war career helped nurture it through its infancy.

  After reading Welchman’s book I became intrigued by BP and when I joined the Open University in 1977, I was delighted to discover that it was only a few miles away. I subsequently took every opportunity to snoop around the place, read books about it and take my children there when it opened to the public in the 1990s. After leaving the Open University in 2010, I joined BP as a volunteer supporter, historian, and later as a parttime member of the management team. I quickly realized that colleagues who had been researching BP for many years held Welchman in the highest esteem. Soon I started to think about writing his biography and, after getting the support of the Welchman family, I began researching this book.

  Today, BP is a Museum and Heritage Site which receives thousands of visitors weekly from around the world. A number of the wartime huts and buildings remain, although many are in need of urgent repair. The story of GC&CS’s wartime activities is told through guided tours, demonstrations of some of the technologies developed there, such as the bombes and Colossus and numerous displays. While visitors marvel at the achievements of those who worked there, most are hearing the names of the story’s key players for the first time. Only two, Alan Turing and Dilly Knox, have inspired serious biographies. Yet they, along with Alastair Denniston, Edward Travis, John Tiltman, Bill Tutte, Tommy Flowers and Gordon Welchman, remain unknown to the general public. Each, in his own way, made BP’s achievements possible but, like Turing’s, Welchman’s contribution is seen by many historians and former BP colleagues as being fundamental to its ultimate success.

  As Welchman’s BP colleague Sir Stuart Milner-Barry wrote in his obituary in 1985:

  It was indeed a classic example of the hour producing the man. Without the fire in his belly, without the vision which again and again proved his intuition correct, and his capacity for inspiring others with his confidence, I do not believe that the task of converting the original break-through into an effective organization for the production of up-to-date intelligence could have been achieved.

  Joel Greenberg

  Acknowledgements

  When I first started to think about writing this book, I approached the Bletchley Park Trust to seek their support. I am grateful to Simon Greenish, the Trust’s former CEO, for offering it unreservedly. Simon introduced me to Mark Baldwin, whom I would like to thank for putting me in touch with the Welchman family. Nick Welchman’s loft held a treasure trove of his father’s letters and documents, which he had faithfully kept safe since his father’s death in 1985. Sadly, Nick passed away before this book was finished. Gordon’s two daughters, Susanna and Rosamond, have also kindly shared memories of their father with me. The Welchman family has generously donated a considerable amount of material, including personal items and documents, to the Bletchley Park Trust. At the beginning of the project I sought the advice of my friend and colleague Frank Carter. I regard Frank as one of the world’s foremost experts on the mathematics and technologies used at BP during the war. Frank’s advice and knowledge has been invaluable to me and he has contributed technical material which can be found in Appendix 2. I am grateful to John Gallehawk who directed me to a number of relevant documents in the National Archives. I would also like to thank Michael Smith for his insightful views on a suitable structure for this book. Finally, I would like to thank my lovely daughters for their interest and encouragement.

  Prologue

  The weather was cool and dry with slightly above average sunshine in the British summer of 1974. It was also a turbulent political time on both sides of the Atlantic. The IRA had begun its bombing campaign on mainland Britain and had targeted the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, and pubs in Birmingham. In the United States, after the Watergate Scandal, Richard Nixon had become the first US president to be forced to resign. Gordon Welchman and his wife Teeny arrived in England in mid-July after visiting Teeny’s relatives in Germany. Her mother was Welchman’s second cousin, her father Bavarian and she had grown up in a mountain valley near the Austrian border.

  The couple stayed with Teeny’s godmother in England and, during the visit, her son-in-law happened to show Welchman an article in the 28 July issue of the Sunday Telegraph. The article was part two of a preview of a book by Frederick Winterbotham called The Ultra Secret due to be published on 2 October. The previous week’s edition of the paper was still in the house and Welchman was able to read the entire article. After scrupulously avoiding all conversation about the Second World War and his part in it with anyone apart from one or two former wartime colleagues, for almost thirty years, one can only imagine his thoughts as he read about the revelations in Winterbotham’s book. As he said in The Hut Six Story:

  I felt that this turn of events released me from my wartime pledge of secrecy. I could at last talk to my friends, relatives, and colleagues about the activities of one of these two organizations, Hut 6, with which I was closely associated from the outset. I could even write my own account of what actually happened. I began to think of a book.

  While on holiday in the UK in May 1972, he had met his old BP colleague Joe Hooper. Sir Leonard (Joe) Hooper had stayed on at GCHQ after the war and became its Director in January 1965, a post he held until November 1973. Welchman had explained to Hooper why several aspects of his Hut 6 experience could be extremely valuable in the types of military research and development with which he had become involved. Hooper had assured him that within a few years he would be able to disclose all aspects of his experience, including the basic reasons for Hut 6’s success and German failure in the field of Enigma security.

  During his visit in 1974 Welchman wrote to George Goodall, a GCHQ official, to clarify GCHQ’s position on the release of wartime documents and also to what extent he could use his knowledge of German battlefield communications in his consultancy work for the US Air Force. An old Hut 6 colleague, Harold Fletcher, who had remained on at GCHQ after the war until his retirement in December 1971, had put him in contact with Goodall. Welchman and Fletcher had remained friends after the war and the Welchmans visited the Fletchers in Cheltenham during their summer trip to England. Having become an American citizen in 1962, Welchman also asked Goodall if he was still eligible for a UK passport.

  After returning to the US, he received a reply on 18 September. In his letter, Goodall said that there would be some relaxation on revealing the existence of material and its use but not on the means by which it was obtained. GCHQ was not concerned as long as Welchman restricted himself to the way in which German battlefield communications were organized, equipped and operated, but he should not discuss how they were exploited by the Allies. He suggested that Welchman wait to see what new policy emerged and said that he would keep him informed of developments, an undertaking he failed to honour. At least he was able to confirm that as Welchman had not renounced his UK citizenship, he was eligible to apply for a British passport at any time.

  Welchman had also attached two papers he had written as part of his consultancy work for the MITRE Corporation in the USA that he thought GCHQ might be interested in: ‘Selective Access to Tactical Information’
(dated August 1970) and ‘An Integrated Approach to the Defence of West Germany’ (dated February 1974). Goodall said that they had aroused considerable interest and were still circulating in GCHQ.

  Fletcher was also very interested in Welchman’s current work. Like several others who had stayed on in GCHQ after the war, he had found himself in a difficult position. He could not deny to colleagues that he had been in the same organization during the war but the easiest way to avoid awkward questions about Hut 6, to friend and foe alike, was simply to say that he had been involved in other work at BP. This had become second nature to him, so his initial reaction to Welchman’s questions had been to say ‘please leave me out’. However, Fletcher had decided that, as it had been ten years since he had ceased to operate at a high level and over three years since he had retired completely, the time for awkwardness or potential damage caused must surely be over. Fletcher and Welchman were also delighted to learn at that time that their old friend and BP colleague Stuart Milner-Barry had been knighted in the New Year Honours list

  On returning to America, Welchman and his wife held a dinner party for some friends. One of those attending was Diana Lucy, who had actually introduced Welchman to his wife Teeny. In 1969 she had been working at the local hospital and had treated a couple, Elisabeth Wimer (known as Teeny by friends and family) and her then husband Bill, who had been in a car accident. The couple’s car had been written off and they needed transport to the airport. Diana had given them the keys to her house which was not far away and told them that they could relax there. After work, her husband had driven the couple to the airport. Diana kept in touch with Elisabeth by letter and in late July 1971 she had a telephone call from her. Much to Diana’s surprise, Teeny was in Newburyport, visiting a distant relative, and wondered whether Diana would like to come for tea. The distant relative was none other than Gordon Welchman and Diana and he subsequently became great friends.

  At the party, the subject of Winterbotham’s book came up and Welchman announced to the gathering that he could at last tell them what he had been doing during the Second World War. Diana’s astonished reaction was matched by Welchman’s when she revealed that she had been an intercept operator throughout the war. As Diana Stuart she had volunteered for the WAAF in August 1941 and undergone four months of training with the Post Office in Manchester and three months at a coastal RAF station. She had been sent to Chicksands Priory where she remained until 1945. After the war she had married an American, Frank Lucy, and settled in Newburyport in the spring of 1946. Later she would prove to be a valuable source of information to him about the inner workings of the intercept stations within the ‘Y’ Service.

  In late 1981, just before his book was published, Welchman had become aware of the work of the Poles and in particular of Marian Rejewski, which had taken place years before GC&CS arrived at BP. His book, The Hut Six Story had been written with little knowledge of the immense contribution of the Poles and, as his book was about to go to press, he was only able to make minor corrections and include Rejewski in the dedication. Following its publication, MITRE was forced to withdraw his security clearance, which in effect prevented him from continuing to work for them as a consultant. He decided to put the record straight in 1985 by publishing a paper in the first issue of a new academic journal, Intelligence and National Security, titled ‘From Polish Bomba to British Bombe: The Birth of Ultra’. Scarred by his previous experience, he submitted his article to the Defence, Press and Broadcasting Committee (better known as the D-Notice Committee) which subsequently cleared the article in writing on 8 July 1985. About one week later, Welchman received a letter from the then Director of GCHQ, Sir Peter Marychurch. This was only the second official letter that Welchman had received from GCHQ since the war. It included the following extraordinary statement:

  I ask you to consider not only the direct damage to security but also the knock-on effect of your actions; each time a person like yourself, of obviously deep knowledge and high repute, publishes inside information about the inner secrets of our work, there is more temptation and more excuse for others to follow suit.

  The so-called inner secrets that Welchman had published were about technologies which had been obsolete in intelligence terms for many years. Despite an apparent vendetta against him by the intelligence services, Welchman, along with most of his former BP colleagues remained largely unknown to the general public. After his death his case was taken up by commentators on the intelligence services such as Nigel West and David Hooper .

  As Sir Stuart Milner-Barry said in a letter to the Guardian after his death:

  To talk of ‘direct damage to security’ in the context of Welchman’s article in ‘Intelligence and National Security’ is surely absurd. The secrets of the Enigma and how it was broken are of fascinating interest historically, and it is a sad pity that the authorities still prevent the story being properly told. But to suppose that the battles which we had to wage before the birth of the first electronic computer (which must seem to present-day cryptanalysts rather like fighting with bows and arrows) could be relevant to security now is just not credible.1

  Chapter 1

  Origins: From Algebraic Geometry to Cryptography

  Fishponds, a suburb of Bristol known for its aeronautical industries in both world wars, was the birthplace of William Gordon Welchman on 15 June 1906. Gordon, as he became known, was the youngest of three children of William Welchman (1866–1954), a missionary who became a country parson and later Archdeacon of Bristol, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Edward Moule Griffith. Gordon’s paternal grandfather George and great grandfather William were also clergymen.

  When Welchman was about eighteen months old, his father became vicar of the medieval Temple Church in Bristol. The vicarage was in Berkeley Square, Clifton, which had a large central area of lawn, trees and flower beds on rising ground. The road outside the Welchman house fell gently to the left, and on the other side of the road was a stone ramp sloping up to railings that enclosed the lawn area. One day, Gordon was left in his pram outside the house but the brakes had not been properly adjusted. Before long the pram started to move down and across the road. When it reached the ramp on the other side, it turned over and threw him out. Miraculously, a pillow inside the pram also flew out and he landed on it unhurt. If his head had hit the pavement, one can only speculate on how history may have been changed.

  Welchman was much younger than his brother and sister and felt out of place in his clerical home. While his sister Enid May pursued a career as a nurse, his brother Eric, thirteen years his senior, was one of the first officers to be killed at Mons in 1914 at the beginning of the First World War. Gordon overcame a childhood stammer through singing and this no doubt led to his lifelong passion for music and in particular, madrigals. He also decided to teach himself to dance and practised his steps with a broomstick, with which he became quite proficient. After completing his early schooling, he was sent to Marlborough College, a public school in Wiltshire, which seemed to suit him very well. Founded in the 1840s, Marlborough was much younger than Harrow, Eton or Winchester. In the early twentieth century, many believed that institutional longevity was more important than academic strength, the latter being quite evident at Marlborough. Its Officer Training Corps offered marches, drills and lessons in map reading and target practice. In later life, Welchman shared with his son Nick,1 who would also go to Marlborough, happy memories of elaborate wargames and manoeuvres. A career as an artillery officer might have beckoned but he had developed a close bond with a mathematics teacher called Alan Robson, an alumnus of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which would set him on a different course.

  While at Marlborough, Welchman would frequently cycle to a farm where his cousin Sara lived with her husband George Hussey and their two daughters, Myrtle and Gladys. Welchman became quite close to both girls and little did he know that Myrtle in due course would marry a Bavarian gentleman and have a daughter whose path he would cross many
years later.

  After attending Marlborough College from 1920 to 1925, he became a Mathematical Scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1925 and distinguished himself in the Tripos, gaining a first class in Part I in 1926 and was a ‘wrangler’ in Part II in 1928. ‘Wrangler’ was the quaint Cambridge word for a student who gained first-class honours in the third year. After teaching at Cheltenham Boys’ School for one year, he returned to Cambridge in 1929 and was elected a fellow of Sidney Sussex College. The college needed another supervisor in mathematics and he was considered to be an admirable choice. Apart from having the highest professional qualifications, he also had considerable artistic and athletic interests that allowed him to find common ground with an unusually large number of undergraduates. His students remembered him as having a genial approachability and a capacity to understand and respond to their points of view. The College soon elected him to the office of Dean.2 He was a musician and in great demand by the madrigal groups.3 Music would continue to be a prime leisure interest throughout his life.4 Unfortunately, a motorcycle accident would hamper his expertise as a budding trombonist.