Testery

The Testery was a department headed by Ralph Tester and named after him in Bletchley Park (BP), the central military service that successfully deciphered the encrypted secret communications of the German Wehrmacht during World War II .

history

A radio telex sent encrypted from Berlin to Army Group Courland on February 14, 1945 using the Lorenz key machine , which was deciphered in BP as a Tunny message .

The main task of the Testery was to continue as continuously as possible the first successful break of the German Lorenz key machine in the spring of 1942 by the British code breaker Bill Tutte . 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 Wehrmacht High Command based in Wünsdorf near Berlin and the army headquarters in cities such as Rome, Paris, Athens, Copenhagen and Oslo , Königsberg, Riga, Belgrade, Bucharest and Tunis. The British gave him the code name Tunny ("tuna").

On July 1, 1942, Testery took over this task under the leadership of Ralph Tester and continued it successfully in Europe until the end of the war . During this time, the number of employees grew from four to 118 employees, including nine cryptanalysts . Like its sister organization, Newmanry named after Max Newman , it was based in Block F , one of the brick buildings built on the BP site in the second half of the war, which was demolished in 1987.

Employee

Under the direction of Ralph Tester, the Testery worked around the clock in three shifts . Important employees were:

• Ralph Tester - Head of Testery , linguist but not a cryptanalyst
• Jerry Roberts - Shift Supervisor, Linguist, and Cryptanalyst
• Peter Ericsson - Shift Supervisor, Linguist and Cryptanalyst
• Victor Masters - shift supervisor but not a cryptanalyst
• Denis Oswald - linguist and cryptanalyst
• Peter Hilton - mathematician and cryptanalyst
• Peter Benenson - Cryptanalyst
• Peter Edgerley - Cryptanalyst
• John Christie - Cryptanalyst
• Jack Thompson - Cryptanalyst
• Roy Jenkins - Cryptanalyst
• Tom Colvill - General Manager

literature

• James A. Reeds, Whitfield Diffie , JV Field: Breaking Teleprinter Ciphers at Bletchley Park: An edition of I. J. Good , D. Michie and G. Timms: General Report on Tunny with Emphasis on Statistical Methods (1945) . Wiley - IEEE Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-470-46589-9 .
• 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 .
• Jerry Roberts : Major Tester's Section in Jack Copeland : Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers . Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006, pp. 249-259. ISBN 978-0-19-284055-4 .

Web links

• The Testery Description (English) as well as historical photos (from the 1980s) of the Testery . Retrieved January 23, 2017.
• Jack Copeland : Colossus: Breaking the German 'Tunny' Code at Bletchley Park . The Rutherford Journal. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
• General Report on Tunny in AlanTuring.net (English). Retrieved January 23, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes . Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, p. 11. ISBN 0-947712-34-8
2. ^ Donald Michie : Colossus and the Breaking of the Wartime "Fish" Codes . Cryptologia , 26: 1, pp. 17-58, 2002. doi: 10.1080 / 0161-110291890740 . DOC; 220 kB .
3. ↑ A Virtual Tour of Bletchley Park by Tony Sale (English). Retrieved December 23, 2016.