Noel Currer-Briggs

Noel Currer-Briggs (born  November 21, 1919 near Leeds , †  September 20, 2004 in Sutton-in-the-Isle , East Cambridgeshire ) worked as a cryptanalyst in the central military service in Bletchley Park , where during the Second World War those of the German military's encrypted radio messages were deciphered . Bletchley Park is about 70 km northwest of London .

Life

Noel attended Bryanston School as a boy before continuing his education at St Catharine's College in Cambridge from 1938 . Shortly afterwards the Second World War broke out. The young Currer-Briggs was hired as a code breaker by Bletchley Park because of his linguistic skills . There he worked from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945 on the deciphering of manual key procedures of the Wehrmacht and for a short time in 1942 on the cryptanalysis of the Enigma , the most widely used German machine key at the time . The Allied armed forces owe him and his colleagues to a large extent the success of the successful invasion of Sicily ( code name : " Operation Husky "). The Allies obtained important intelligence information about the German combat formation there and in Tunisia via modified Playfair ciphers ( double box keys ) of the Wehrmacht broken by Noel Currer-Briggs .

In his later days, Currer-Briggs also worked as a genealogist and historian and wrote numerous books on this subject. He died after a brief serious illness at his home in Sutton-in-the-Isle, Cambridgeshire, at the age of 84.

Fonts (selection)

• English Wills of Colonial Families , Polyanthos, 1972
• Handwriting analysis in business - the use of graphology in personnel selection (with Brian Bishop Kennett and Jane Paterson), Wiley, 1973, ISBN 047018955X
• The Carters of Virginia - their English ancestry , Phillimore, 1979, ISBN 0850333075
• Worldwide Family History , Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, ISBN 0710009348
• The Holy Grail and the Shroud of Christ - The Quest Renewed , ARA Publications, 1984, ISBN 0-9509468-0-X
• The Search for Mr. Thomas Kirbye - Gentleman , Phillimore, 1986, ISBN 0850335329
• The Shroud and the Grail - A Modern Quest for the True Grail , Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987, ISBN 0297790625
• Army Ultra's Poor Relations in Francis Harry Hinsley, Alan Stripp: Codebreakers - The inside story of Bletchley Park . Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 209-230, ISBN 0192801325
• Debrett's Guide to Your House , Headline, 1993, ISBN 0747241589
• Debrett's Guide to Tracing Your Family Tree (with Royston Gambier), Headline, 1999, ISBN 0747223319
• Huguenot Ancestry (with Royston Gambier), Phillimore, 2010, ISBN 1860771734

literature

• Klaus Schmeh: Code breakers versus code makers - The fascinating history of encryption . W3l-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3937137890 , p. 40.

Web links

• Noel Currer-Briggs in the honor roll (Roll of Honor) of Bletchley Park

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituary (English). Retrieved January 22, 2016.
2. ^ Army Ultra's Poor Relations in Francis Harry Hinsley, Alan Stripp: Codebreakers - The inside story of Bletchley Park . Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 209-230, ISBN 0192801325 .