American 6813 Division History October 1945 Page 27

Tony Sale's Codes and Ciphers

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as such but converted into an opinion held by "source". Thus such and
such a document was believed by source to have originated with Army Group
G and so forth. At times the maintenance of this allegory seemed infantile,
but it served the purpose nevertheless of preventing any save a very few
from knowing that the signal intelligence was the basis of a large body of
intelligence. Doubtless some shrewd recipients speculated on the omniscience
of source and probably concluded that he had some connexion with codes and
ciphers but speculation could go no further. It was a simple and effective
device for avoiding security breaks of the type recently noted in the press.


There were of course officials who were in on the secret. The

Prime Minister knew the origin of the teleprints presented to him daily and
he was an avid reader and critic of B.P.'s output. The literary style of
Hut Three was never exempt from Mr Churchill's objections which he was not
hesitant in expressing. The transmission of information to Washington was
accomplished as an additional task by the American air and military advisers.


Hut Three Personnel. The task of Hut Three neccessitated the employ-

ment of large numbers of administrative personnel but the operational per-
sonnel consisted of watchkeepers, specialist consultants and military,
naval or air advisers.


Watchkeepers. In addition to the main watch which handled traffic

of high priority, there were backroom watches which concerened themselves
with specialist keys or traffic of lesser urgency (albeit of high importance)
coming to them after sorting in the main watch. Most of the American party
were members of the main watch. The senior member of the watch, designated
the Number 1, had the responsibility of passing on the accuracy and correct-
ness of all translations. All incoming traffic was sorted into catagories
of urgency either by Number 1 himself or by his deputy, designated the
Number 2. After sorting had been carried out, urgent traffic was dealt with
by associate watch keepers of whom there were from three to five on each watch.
Less urgent traffic was passed to backroom or specialist watches. The main
watch was on duty twenty-four hours a day, each separate watch working a
shift of eight hours. A programme of rotation was set up so that each watch
did its share of day, afternoon or midnight duty.
It would
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