Tommy Brown (sailor)

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Thomas William "Tommy" Brown (born January or February 1926 in North Shields ; † February 13, 1945 in Ridges Estate, ibid) was a British seaman during the Second World War . Through heroic Capture top secret Enigma - Key documents he influenced the course of the war.

Life

After Tommy Brown in 1940 as a 14-year-old " Geordie " (how the inhabitants of the region around Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England calls) completed the school and in Northumberland had been looking in vain for work, he moved in the same year by Earl Shilton in the Leicestershire county . There he lived with his uncle and aunt and found a job at Abbotts' local shoe factory on New Street . In early 1942, shortly after his 16th birthday, he applied as a volunteer in the Royal Navy , the Navy of the United Kingdom . However, because he was too young, he was rejected. So he decided to fake his date of birth, and came as Kombüsenjunge ( English canteen assistant ) of the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) on the British destroyer HMS petard .

Similar to this identification group booklet captured by U 505 , the weather key and short signal booklet were printed with water-soluble red ink on pink blotting paper so that they could be destroyed quickly in the event of danger.

On October 30, 1942, the Petard had been chasing a German submarine for hours in the eastern Mediterranean , about 140 km north of Port Said ( Lage ) . Using depth charges , U 559 was forced to surface and was abandoned by the crew. Tommy Brown succeeded together with the accompanying him Lieutenant Tony Fasson (1913-1942) and Able Seaman Colin Grazier (1920-1942) to the submarine board and secret code books as short signal stitching and weather short key to, capture . The secret material was taken to Bletchley Park , the British central cryptanalysis center located about 70 km north of London , and helped the Codebreakers there to break into the Enigma-M4 rotor key machine used by the Kriegsmarine .

Fasson and Grazier drowned in this action and received posthumously the George Cross ( English George Cross ) . The surviving Tommy Brown received the George Medal (GM) , the second highest civilian award in the United Kingdom after the George Cross , “for great bravery and devotion to duty in the face of danger” ( German  “for great bravery and fulfillment of duty in the face of) Danger ” ). At only 16 years old, he is one of the youngest people to ever receive this medal.

In 1944 he was promoted to first cabin steward and served on the cruiser HMS Belfast , today's museum ship on the Thames in London. Shortly before the end of the war, when the Belfast , lying in Tynemouth , was being equipped for the war in the Far East in February 1945 , Tommy was briefly allowed to visit his parents' house in the nearby Lily Gardens, Ridges Estate. When a fire broke out there in the morning hours of February 13th, probably caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette, he died at the age of only 19 from the injuries he suffered while trying to rescue his four-year-old sister.

Posthumous honors

A grave memorial for Thomas Brown and his sister Maureen is located in Preston Cemetery in North Shields (see photo under web links ).

In the mid-1980s, his family presented their awards to the NAAFI . They were on display in the Bletchley Park Museum for a quarter of a century.

In 2002 a leaded glass window was unveiled in his hometown in his honor (see leaded glass window under web links ).

In 2010, his awards were presented to NAAFI headquarters in Darlington and are now close to his hometown and final resting place.

War-historical significance

Since February 1, 1942, when in the German submarine key network "Triton" , called by the British Shark ( German  "Hai" ), the previously used Enigma-M3 (with three rollers) through the M4 (with four rollers) had been replaced, the British secret service could no longer decipher the encrypted German radio messages . This painful interruption ( black-out ) lasted ten months and was a phase in which the German submarine weapon was again able to record great successes. The submariners called them their "second happy time" . With the help of the secret material captured by U 559, the British cryptanalysts succeeded in “reading” the German submarine radio messages again from December 12, 1942 . In this way, the convoys of war importance for the United Kingdom could be diverted around the German submarine packs and the British population and the war economy could be supplied with food and production goods.

Renowned British cryptologist and historian Ralph Erskine summed it up as follows in a report published in 1988:

“All the work that was done at Bletchley Park to crack Triton would have been completely inconclusive had it not been for the men at the front. Without the brave deed of Lieutenant Antony Fasson, Able Seaman Colin Grazier and 16-year-old Tommy Brown, who recovered the weather key and the short signal booklet on U-559, we would not have had any special intelligence services during the first half of 1943, which was decisive for the further course of the battle in the Atlantic Get information from Triton. There are few acts of personal bravery that have ever had such far-reaching consequences. Without the special knowledge from Triton, the submarines would have been defeated in the long run, but the loss of human life in this global conflict would have been far worse than it already was. "

- Ralph Erskine

literature

  • Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0737-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, pp. 63-64. ISBN 3-8132-0737-4 .
  2. ↑ Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, p. 50 ff. ISBN 3-8132-0737-4 .
  3. ↑ Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, p. 66 ff. ISBN 3-8132-0737-4 .
  4. ^ The London Gazette, September 14, 1943, PDF; 340 kB (English) accessed on December 12, 2017
  5. ↑ Tommy Brown - George Medal PDF; 850 kB (English) accessed on December 13, 2017
  6. ↑ monument to SMN William Thomas "Tommy" Brown in the database of Find a Grave (English)
  7. ↑ Liz Walker: Hero sailor Tommy Brown's family delighted at medals return. The Journal, February 24, 2010.
  8. ^ Hugh Sebag-Montefiore: Enigma - The battle for the code . Cassell Military Paperbacks, London 2004, p. 225. ISBN 0-304-36662-5 .
  9. ↑ Michael Smith: Enigma decrypted - The "Codebreakers" from Bletchley Park . Heyne, 2000, p. 181. ISBN 3-453-17285-X .
  10. ^ Rudolf Kippenhahn: Encrypted messages, secret writing, Enigma and chip card . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1999, p. 247. ISBN 3-499-60807-3 .
  11. ↑ Stephen Harper: The Battle for Enigma - The Hunt for U-559 . Mittler, Hamburg 2001, p. 135, ISBN 3-8132-0737-4
personal data
SURNAME Brown, Tommy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brown, Thomas William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British sailor
DATE OF BIRTH January 1926 or February 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH North Shields
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1945
Place of death North Shields