Ralph Tester

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Ralph Paterson Tester ( June 2, 1902 , † May 1998 ) was a British linguist and officer. During the Second World War he worked in a leading position in the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) (German about: "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule") in the English Bletchley Park (BP), so the military service that is successful with the decipherment of German communications.

Life

Before World War II, Ralph Tester was an accountant . In this role he had worked for Unilever in Germany for several years and was therefore very familiar with the German culture and language. In 1939, when the war broke out , he worked for the BBC's listening service , which specifically analyzed the propaganda programs of German radio . Shortly thereafter, he was in the British Armed Forces convened and, after BP. With the rank of Major , and later as Colonel (Colonel), he led from 1941 initially a small group of cryptanalysts whose job it was Playfair - encryption to break as the time of the German police were used.

On July 1 of the following year 1942, the task changed. From now on, it was a matter of deciphering the important military radio traffic that was encrypted with the German Lorenz key machine. The Wehrmacht used this highly complex key machine (own name: Schlüsselzusatz 42; short: SZ 42) to encrypt their strategic telex connections , in particular between the OKW based in Wünsdorf near Berlin and the army headquarters in cities such as Rome, Paris, Athens, Copenhagen, Oslo and Königsberg , Riga, Belgrade, Bucharest and Tunis. The British gave him the code name Tunny ("tuna"). After Bill Tutte succeeded in breaking into Tunny in the spring of 1942 , Tester and his team were supposed to take over the deciphering work and continue it as a routine. Tester succeeded in doing this in the organizational unit now named after him as Testery . With great empathy, knowledge of human nature and a talent for organization, he successfully led his group until the victorious end of the war in Europe, when the workforce had risen to 118 employees, including nine cryptanalysts.

For a short time he was a member of the British-American TICOM team (Target Intelligence Committee) , an organization that looked for German cryptologists towards the end of the war and interrogated them with regard to their machines and methods. Then he returned to his old employer, Unilever .

Ralph Tester was a brilliant organizer and distinguished himself with outstanding leadership qualities. He looked after his young employees like a father. One of them, the cryptanalyst Donald Michie , who had just turned 19 at the time , later recalled the following anecdote: It was towards the end of 1942, during the time when the German Africa Corps under Erwin Rommel was after the battle of El Alamein had to retreat to Tunisia when suddenly the German encryption procedures changed. This led to a critical blackout ( dropouts ) and a failure by the British to continue to “read” the German telex on the route from Berlin to Tunis . Accordingly, the mood was “in the basement”. The boss, whose cryptanalysis skills were nowhere near enough to help his team with it, stayed with them around the clock and knew how to motivate them and lift their spirits again. The then just forty-year-old said tactfully to his only half his age code breakers : “You know, it's easy for me. Most things go downhill with age. Stamina for some reason goes the other way. So you're no good at this sort of thing until you're at least forty. Another coffee, anyone? "(German:" You know, it's easy for me. Most things go downhill with age. But for some reason persistence is different. You're not that good at it yet, as long as you are not at least forty. Anyone else want a coffee? ")

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ 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 , p. 11.
  2. ^ BP Roll of Honor (English). Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  3. ^ 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 , p. 177.
  4. ^ Donald Michie : Colossus and the Breaking of the Wartime "Fish" Codes . Cryptologia , 26: 1, p. 22, 2002. doi: 10.1080 / 0161-110291890740 . DOC; 220 kB .
personal data
SURNAME Tester, Ralph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tester, Ralph Paterson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British linguist and officer
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1902
DATE OF DEATH May 1998