The Secrets of Station X: The Fight to Break the Enigma Cypher

by Michael Smith

Overview

When the British military commandeered Bletchley Park in 1939 no one would have guessed that by 1945 its inmates would have contributed decisively to the Allied war effort.

A melting pot of Oxbridge dons and maverick oddballs worked night and day at Station X to decode the Enigma cypher used by the Germans for high-level communications. That they succeeded, changing the course of the war, is testament to an indomitable spirit that wrenched British intelligence into the modern age, as World War II segued into the Cold War.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781849540957
Publisher:	Biteback Publishing, Ltd.
Publication date:	12/20/2011
Series:	Dialogue Espionage Classics
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Michael Farris Smith has been awarded the Transatlantic Review Award, Brick Streets Press Short Story Award, Mississippi Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowship, and the Alabama Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. He is a graduate of Mississippi State and the Center for Writers at Southern Miss. He lives in Columbus, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Chapter 1 Captain Ridley's Shooting Party 1

Chapter 2 Confidential Work for the Foreign Office 17

Chapter 3 Early Beginnings: Very Small Beer- Full of Foreign Bodies 41

Chapter 4 The Fall of France and the Battle of Britain 59

Chapter 5 Breaking Naval Enigma 90

Chapter 6 A Crime "Without a Name 115

Chapter 7 Action This Day 136

Chapter 8 The Shark Blackout 162

Chapter 9 The Battle for North Africa 190

Chapter 10 The Birth of the Modern Computer 217

Chapter 11 The Invasion of Europe 250

Chapter 12 An Extraordinary Group of People 279

Endnotes 296

Index 320