Erskine, Ralph. "The Admiralty and Cipher Machines during the Second World War: Not So Stupid after All." Journal of Intelligence History 2, no 2 (Winter 2002). [http://www.intelligence-history.org/jih/previous.html]
Erskine, Ralph. "The Admiralty and Cipher Machines during the Second World War: Not So Stupid after All." Journal of Intelligence History 2, no 2 (Winter 2002). [http://www.intelligence-history.org/jih/previous.html]
From abstract: "[T]he British official history of intelligence’s claim that 'by 1939 the Admiralty had rejected the use of the [British cipher machine] Typex machine in ships' is categorically wrong -- only slow production prevented Typex entering service on ships.... The article explains why Typex (which was an improved version of commercial Enigma) was much more secure in practice than Wehrmacht Enigma, and describes the development of the Combined Cipher Machine (CCM) for joint use by the US, British, and Canadian navies. The CCM, and a post-war NATO version, are shown to have been very insecure, but wartime German codebreaking agencies could not break it."
[UK/WWII/Services/Navy]
Erskine, Ralph. "Captured Kriegsmarine Enigma Documents at Bletchley Park." Cryptologia 32, no. 3 (Jul. 2008): 199-219.
Abstract: "This paper lists Enigma-related Kriegsmarine documents captured by the British during the Second World War and describes the formation and functions of Naval Section VI, which dealt with captured documents in the British Government Code and Cypher School."
[UK/WWII/Ultra]
Erskine, Ralph.
"Churchill and the Start of the Ultra-Magic Deals." International
Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 10, no. 1 (Spring 1997):
57-74.
Erskine sucks dry available materials and concludes that "allegations of a double-cross or broken deal by 'perfidious Albion' [during the Sinkov mission in February and March 1941] are without the slightest foundation."
[CIA/Liaison; UK/WWII/Ultra; WWII/MAGIC][c]
Erskine,
Ralph. "Eavesdropping on 'Bodden': ISOS v. the Abwehr in the Straits
of Gibralter." Intelligence and National Security 12, no. 3
(Jul. 1997): 110-129.
"This article describes British efforts during the Second World War to counter an Abwehr ship-reporting organization in the Straits of Gibralter, known as the 'Bodden' line, which employed advanced infra-red equipment for night observation purposes."
[UK/WWII/Services/Navy][c]
Erskine,
Ralph.
1. "The First Naval Enigma Decrypts of World War II." Cryptologia 21, no. 1 (Jan. 1997): 42-46.
This article includes both Erskine's commentary and reproductions of "the first text derived from naval Enigma signals" at Bletchley Park. The decrypts are part of the six days of traffic (22-27 April 1940) initially read by the British. It would be early August 1941 before Bletchley would be able to read the main cipher of the Kriegsmarine on an almost continuous basis.
2. "Kriegmarine Short Signal Systems - And How Bletchley Park Exploited Them." Cryptologia 23, no. 1 (Jan. 1999): 65-92.
This article deals with those short signal systems that "were used by the British codebreakers in Hut 8 at Bletchley Park (BP) as cribs for breaking the two principal [German] naval Enigma ciphers," Heimische and Triton.
3. "Naval Enigma: An Astonishing Blunder." Intelligence and National Security 11, no. 3 (Jul. 1996): 468-473.
Message keys on the German naval Enigma cipher known as Süd, which was used in the Black Sea and Mediterranean, "were doubly enciphered until at least January 1944."
4. "Naval Enigma: The Breaking of Heimisch and Triton." Intelligence and National Security 3, no. 1 (Jan. 1988): 162-183.
5. "Naval Enigma: A Missing Link." International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 3, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 493-508.
Erskine believes that Hinsley's official history overstates the value of the "find" on U 110.
6. "The Soviets and Naval Enigma: Some Comments." Intelligence and National Security 4, no. 3 (Jul.1989): 503-511.
The article disputes the hypothesis in Geoff Jukes, "More on the Soviets and Ultra," Intelligence and National Security 3, no. 2 (Apr. 1988), 233-247, that the Soviets deciphered Admiral Dönitz' instructions (sometimes called the JW 55B message) to Scharnhorst (Rear Admiral Bey) on 25 December 1943 and that this indicates that the Soviets could break the Naval Enigma.
[UK/WWII/Ultra & Services/Navy]
Erskine, Ralph.
"The Holden Agreement on Naval Sigint: The First BRUSA?" Intelligence
and National Security 14, no. 2 (Summer 1999): 187-197.
The author suggests that the Holden Agreement of 2 October 1942 between the U.S. Navy and GCCS "probably has a stronger claim than BRUSA to being the forerunner of the UKUSA Agreement." It was the first agreement "to establish the special Sigint relationship between the two countries," and "it set the pattern for UKUSA, in that the United States was very much the senior partner in the alliance."
[WWII/Magic/Cooperation]
Erskine, Ralph. "The 1944 Naval BRUSA Agreement and Its Aftermath." Cryptologia 30, no. 1 (Jan. 2006): 1-22.
This article has substantial detail on how the U.S.-British agreements were implemented. He concludes that "GCCS was, on the whole, disappointed with the arrangements for sharing Japanese naval Ultra during the war." He notes, however, that "[p]oor communication facilities on the British side badly held up the implementation of the Agreement." The article includes three appendices: "The BRUSA Agreement: 14th January 1944"; "An Agreement between G.C.&C.S. and Negat [OP-20-G] on Japanese Naval Cryptanalytic Tasks," dated 23 October 1944; and "Proposals Made to OP-20-G on 4th June 1945 for British Sigint Effort on S.E.A.C. [Mountbatten's South East Asia Command]."
[WWII/Magic/Cooperation]
Erskine, Ralph. "The Poles Reveal Their Secrets: Alastair Dennison's Account of the July 1939 Meeting at Pyry." Cryptologia 30, no. 4 (Oct. 2006): 294-305.
Erskine provides both the document and commentary on "the only British first-hand account of the historic meeting near Pyry, outside Warsaw, on 26 and 27 July 1939." (footnote omitted) He also includes a letter from Dillwyn Knox to Dennison about the meeting.
[OtherCountries/Poland/Enigma; UK/WWII/Ultra]
Erskine, Ralph. "Ralph Erskine Cracks Open a Tale of the Titans Who Won Key Battle." Times Higher Educational Supplement, 6 Oct. 2006, 24-25.
This article is a review of B. Jack Copeland, et al, COLOSSUS: The Secret of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), but is worth reading beyond its review purpose for the substantive observations on Tunny that the author has included. Erskine notes that Tunny "was used mainly between the German High Command and army groups," and "provided more strategic intelligence than Enigma…. Breaking Tunny traffic was the greatest code-breaking feat of the war. The US Army’s reconstruction of Japan’s Purple diplomatic cipher machine was comparable to Bletchley’s solution of Tunny, but ascertaining Purple’s daily settings was relatively simple, while finding Tunny’s wheel patterns and settings required the highest cryptanalytic skills and involved advanced statistical techniques and some of the most complex electronic equipment of the war."
[UK/WWII/Ultra]
Erskine, Ralph.
1. "U-Boats, Homing Signals and HFDF." Intelligence and National Security 2, no. 2 (Apr. 1987): 324-330.
Sexton sees this as a "scholarly account of the importance of U-boat homing signals and Allied high frequency direction finding (HF/DF) facilities."
2. "Ultra and Some U.S. Navy Carrier Operations." Cryptologia 19, no. 1 (Jan. 1995): 81-96.
Operations by U.S. Navy escort carrier task groups against the German U-boats "show a significant difference of approach in the way in which the United States and British naval authorities employed Ultra (or special intelligence) from naval Enigma -- and escort carriers."
3. "Shore High-Frequency Direction-Finding in the Battle of the Atlantic:: An Undervalued Intelligence Asset." Journal of Intelligence History 4, no. 2 (Winter 2004). [http://www.intelligence-history.org/jih/journal.html]
From abstract: The author "reviews the operations of British and allied shore HF-DF nets during the Battle of the Atlantic." The article "includes Kriegsmarine assessments of shore HF-DF, and describes the measures ... adopted by the Kriegsmarine to counter HF-DF. It shows that shore HF-DF indirectly advanced the breaking of naval Enigma by about 12 months..., and that it was crucial to the breaking of the four-rotor naval Enigma cipher, Triton (codenamed Shark by Bletchley Park), at the height of the Battle of the Atlantic."
[WWII/Atlantic][c]
Erskine, Ralph.
"What Did the Sinkov Mission Receive from Bletchley Park?" Cryptologia
24, no. 2 (Apr. 2000): 97-109.
This article details the codes, ciphers, and solution methods received by the naval members of the Mission, who were also given the rotor wiring for Wehrmacht Enigma. A "substantial amount of information" was given to the army members about German, Italian, and Russian codes and ciphers but no list of the documents involved is available.
[WWII/Magic/Coop]
Erskine, Ralph. "William Friedman's Bletchley Park Diary: A Different View." Intelligence and National Security 22, no. 3 (Jun. 2007): 367-379.
The author argues that when Friedman, McCormack, and Taylor traveled to Bletchley Park in mid-1943, the group "had no negotiating authority whatsoever.... Maj.-Gen. George Strong, the US Army's G-2 (intelligence), who had sent them, was absolutely determined to reserve all policy decisions on Sigint to himself."
[WWII/Magic/Coop]
Erskine, Ralph, and Peter Freeman. "Brigadier John Tiltman: One of Britain's Finest Cryptologists." Cryptologia 27, no. 4 (Oct. 2003): 289-318.
The authors term Tiltman "Bletchley Park's finest cryptanalyst on non-machine ciphers." He worked with GCCS/GCHQ from 1920 until his retirement in 1954, but then continued work with GCHQ until 1964. After that, he served as a researcher and consultant with NSA until 1980.
[UK/Biogs&WWII/Ultra]
Erskine, Ralph, and Michael Smith, eds. Action This Day: Bletchley Park from the Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer. London and New York: Bantam, 2001.
Beard, I&NS 18.1, says that Action This Day consists of "22 essays covering the BP story from the aftermath of World War I to the era of Cold War cooperation that BP's success made possible.... The editors provide short introductions to each essay, putting them in context."
For Rohwer, JIH 2.1, this work contains "a great amount of new information on how things were achieved" at Bletchley Park. "Of special interest are the papers of the B.P. veterans, who reveal not only where they worked, but what they really did and how they achieved their successes."
Kruh, Cryptologia 26.2, states flatly that this is "the best book ever written about codebreaking at Bletchley Park.... [C]hapters by some of Britain's outstanding historians, former codebreakers and academics (plus two Americans) ... trace the legacy of BP from the innovative work that led to the breaking of Enigma and other wartime codes, to the invention of modern computng and its influence on Cold War codebreaking."
To Stout, Studies 47.4 (2003), this "collection offers a pleasing combination of scholarship and memoirs."
[UK/WWII/Ultra]
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