Frank Birch

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Francis Lyall Birch , called Frank Birch (born  December 5, 1889 in London , †  February 14, 1956 ibid), was a British film actor , pantomime and cryptanalyst . During World War II he worked in a leading position in Bletchley Park ( BP ), the central military facility, located in the Second World War successfully with the deciphering of the German dealt message traffic. He headed the Naval Section ( Head of Naval Section ) of Hut 4 (Baracke 4) , i.e. the department within BP that evaluated the intelligence service analysis of the deciphered German naval radio messages (mostly encrypted with the Enigma-M3 or the Enigma-M4 ).

Life

Frank was educated at Eton and King's College , Cambridge . With the outbreak of the First World War , he joined the Royal Navy and in 1916 was transferred to Room 40 , the then top-secret and now legendary intelligence department of the British Admiralty , which successfully deciphered radio messages from the German Imperial Navy . For his services he was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1919 . As a result, he went back to King's College and worked there as a lecturer . In 1927 he moved to London and worked as an actor and pantomime artist. In 1930, he played the Widow Twankey in the pantomime Aladdin by the Irish playwright John O'Keefe at the London Palladium . In addition, he took part in a large number of feature films (see also: Filmography ).

With the outbreak of World War II he returned to the code breakers , now in the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & .CS) of BP First, he headed the German Naval sub-section and from mid-1941, the Naval Section of Hut 8 . This made him the intelligence equivalent of Alan Turing , the head of Hut 4 , in which the naval enigma was broken . This did not succeed immediately when the war began, but it was of essential importance for Great Britain. Birch is credited with the energetic instruction "they had to be broken" (they [the naval radio messages] must be broken), which later succeeded. His own team succeeded beyond in the summer of 1940, the breakdown of the German shipyard key , one of the Navy used hand key method . In March 1941, Dilly Knox and his colleagues Margaret Rock and Mavis Lever broke an important Italian Enigma radio message. This helped the Commander in Chief of the British Naval Forces in the Mediterranean, Admiral Andrew Cunningham , to success in one of the most important naval battles of the Second World War, namely the victory of the Royal Navy over the Italian fleet in the sea ​​battle at Cape Matapan .

U 110 and HMS Bulldog

With the hijacking of the German submarine U 110 by the British destroyer HMS Bulldog on May 9, 1941, the British were able to capture an intact Enigma-M3 as well as a large number of secret documents ( code books ) that were important for the war effort , including the crucial double-letter exchange tables for identification groups Hut 4 read the German submarine radio messages regularly.

However, there was a painful interruption ( black-out ) for the British when on February 1, 1942, the Enigma-M3 (with three rollers) was replaced exclusively for submarines by the Enigma-M4 (with four rollers). This procedure, called "Triton Key Network" by the Germans and " Shark " (German: " Hai ") by the British , could not be broken for ten months, a time in which the German submarine weapon was again able to record great successes. The break-in in Shark only succeeded in December 1942, after the British destroyer HMS Petard landed the German submarine U 559 in the Mediterranean on October 30, 1942 . A prize squad boarded the boat and stole important secret key documents such as the short signal booklet and weather short key , with the help of which Hut 8 and Hut 4 also managed to overcome the Enigma-M4.

Frank Birch later also ensured that BP's cooperation across the Atlantic with the American allies in the US Navy's OP-20-G , who were increasingly taking on the brunt of deciphering the Enigma-M4, worked smoothly. On March 1, 1944, Frank Birch was promoted to Deputy Director (Naval Section) . It was thanks to his initiative to set up receiving antennas directly in BP that the Allies received and received the German radio messages directly at the British headquarters of the Codebreaker on D-Day , i.e. the day the Allies landed in Normandy ( Operation Overlord ) could decipher there directly without a long delay.

After the war, he remained as Deputy Director at Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) , the successor organization to GC & .CS , and was entrusted with writing the official history of BP . Unfortunately, he died before he could complete this work.

Filmography (selection)

  • School for Stars (1935)
  • Jubilee Window (1935)
  • Cross Currents (1935)
  • Wolf's Clothing (1936)
  • Love at Sea (1936)
  • Such Is Life (1936)
  • Jump for Glory (1937)
  • Twin Faces (1937)
  • Victoria the Great (1937)
  • Jennifer Hale (1937)
  • Who Goes Next? (1938)
  • The Challenge (1938)
  • The Villiers Diamond (1938)
  • Lady in the Fog (1952)
  • Does any gentleman want ...? (1953)
  • Face the Music (1954)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank Birch's biography and filmography at the British Film Institute . Retrieved March 10, 2016.
  2. ^ Francis Harry Hinsley, Alan Stripp: Codebreakers - The inside story of Bletchley Park . Oxford University Press, Reading, Berkshire 1993, p. 27. ISBN 0-19-280132-5 .
  3. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, p. 130. ISBN 0-304-36662-5
  4. ↑ Friedrich L. Bauer : Deciphered secrets. Methods and maxims of cryptology. 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Springer, Berlin et al. 2000, ISBN 3-540-67931-6 , p. 457.
  5. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 , pp. 149 ff.
  6. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, ISBN 0-304-36662-5 , p. 225.
  7. ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60807-3 , p. 247.
  8. ↑ Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0737-4 , p. 50 ff.
  9. ↑ Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0737-4 , p. 66 ff.
  10. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, p. 345. ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .
personal data
SURNAME Birch, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Birch, Francis Lyall
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film actor, mime artist and cryptanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 1956
Place of death London