Hugh Foss

Hugh Rose Foss (born  May 13, 1902 in Kobe , † December 23, 1971 in St John's Town of Dalry , Dumfries and Galloway , Scotland ) was a British cryptanalyst . During the Second World War , he contributed significantly to the breakdown of the German rotor key machine Enigma and to the deciphering of Japanese encryption in the Government Code and Cypher School ( GC & CS ; German: "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule") in Bletchley Park, England .

Life

Hugh was born in 1902 in the Japanese city of Kobe as one of five children to his parents, the Anglican Bishop of Osaka , Hugh Foss, and his wife, Janet Ovans. Growing up in Japan, he was fluent in English and Japanese. As the son of a Church of England clergyman , he was later educated at Marlborough College in the English county of Wiltshire . In 1924 he graduated from Christ's College , Cambridge .

In December 1924 he joined GC & CS and, on the instructions of his boss Edward Travis , dealt in 1926 with two early and then ultra-modern models of the German Enigma key machine , the Enigma B and the Enigma C , which were different from the later German ones Wehrmacht used Enigma I did not yet have a plug board . In 1927 he wrote a treatise on this with the title "The Reciprocal Enigma" (German: The reciprocal Enigma). In September 1934, Foss and his colleague Oliver Strachey broke the encryption of the Japanese naval attaché .

In November 1940, after he was able to resume his service in August of that year after an illness, he was the first British code breaker to break into the Enigma-M3 used by the German navy , which in contrast to those used in the German army and the Luftwaffe used Enigma I was still unbroken at this time. It was a radio message that was several months old and dated May 8, 1940. In recognition of his outstanding performance, his colleagues in Blechtley Park named May 8th in his honor as “Foss's Day” (German: “Foss Day”).

From 1942 to 1943 he headed Hut 7 (German: Baracke 7), which successfully dealt with the deciphering of Japanese naval codes. In December 1944 he went to the US capital Washington and worked there with US cryptanalysts on the same topic.

After the war he stayed with GC & CS , which was renamed GCHQ for Government Communications Headquarters shortly afterwards . In 1953 he retired and moved to Scotland. He died there at the age of 69.

Publications

• Hugh Foss and Hugh Rose Foss: Reminiscences on the Enigma . In Action This Day , edited by Ralph Erskine and Michael Smith. Bantam Press, London 2001.

literature

• 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 .
• Francis Harry Hinsley , Alan Stripp: Codebreakers - The inside story of Bletchley Park . Oxford University Press, Reading, Berkshire 1993, pp. 119-122. ISBN 0-19-280132-5
• David Kahn : Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939-1943 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, USA, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59114-807-4 .
• Hugh Sebag-Montefiore : Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, pp. 174-176. ISBN 0-304-36662-5
• Gordon Welchman : The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, ISBN 0-947712-34-8 .

Web links

• Portrait photo
• Hugh Foss in the honor roll (Roll of Honor) of Bletchley Park
• Cracking the Japanese Naval code in WW2 (English)
• Foss's Day by Tony Sale (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Foss's Day by Tony Sale. Retrieved May 27, 2015.