The first person of Great Britain, Sir Winston Churchill, receiving information from Bletchley Park, could not always share it even with members of the Cabinet. In fact, Churchill allowed only the head of the army intelligence and the head of the Intelligence Service to use the decryption materials. Even the appearance of the very name "Ultra" is still shrouded in darkness - there are only versions, according to one of which the British simply did not find the classic labels "secret" and "top secret" enough.
At the beginning of the program, the information flow from the think tank was small and it was relatively easy to ensure its nondisclosure. But when the specialists in Bletchley Park started working at full power, it became more difficult to cope with the secrecy regime - inevitably someone would have blabbed, and the Germans, who had stuffed the island with their agents, might suspect something was wrong. In this regard, the recipient of any information on "Ultra" could not transfer it to anyone or, God forbid, copy it. All actions related to the program must be issued in the form of combat orders or decisions without reference to decrypted radiograms. So, according to the idea of the British, it was possible to divert the suspicions of the Germans about the source of intelligence. Immediate actions on the battlefields of the Second World War, based on decoded German radiograms, must be preliminarily masked.
And actions at sea were no exception. For example, in the fall of 1942, the British Navy systematically sent German convoys to the bottom, delivering fuel to the "desert fox" Rommel in his African corps. The attacks were planned on the basis of intelligence from Bletchley Park, but it was forbidden to hit the sailors "in the forehead" - before each combat exit of ships and aircraft, a winged reconnaissance officer was sent into the sky. The unfortunate Nazis should have had the impression that they were sunk after all after being discovered from the air. But one of the German convoys was destroyed in complete fog, and it would be naive to refer to the British for aerial reconnaissance. They had to stage a whole theatrical performance, according to the script of which the chief of the Intelligence Service, Stuart Menzies, sent a radio message to a certain mythical agent in Naples, who allegedly "leaked" the German convoy. Of course, the text was encrypted in a very primitive way - in the end, the Germans easily fell for such a trick, blaming the loss of ships on a traitor. There is even a version that because of this focus, the Nazis removed the entire leadership of the Neapolitan port, from which the convoys were heading to death.
The German battleship Scharnhorst was sunk based on the Enigma's interception data, but this was carefully concealed.
With the help of Enigma's radio intercepts, the British fished out very valuable information about the location of the battleship Scharnhorst. He was sent to the bottom, but in all sources a random English boat was assigned the culprit for the discovery of the German ship. Winston Churchill, it seems, most of all was sick of maintaining the secrecy of "Ultra" and demanded that none of the recipients of information about the program had the right to voluntarily expose themselves to the danger of captivity. Many of the senior officers associated with Bletchley Park were unable to take part in the fighting at all. At the same time, Defense Department analysts had to bring up the staff of the radio interception stations, of which there were many. The military rightly believed that if the specialists work "blindly", then in the end someone will blabber about the ever-growing volume of intercepted messages. In addition, the content of the interceptions did not reach the station employees either: they generally believed that the Enigma's encryption could not be deciphered. It could also cause unnecessary fuss. Therefore, the radio operators were alerted to the extreme importance of the Ultra program, added salaries and reminded of loyalty to the royal family.
British Coventry is the most famous victim of Ultra's unprecedented secrecy.
However, at times the secrecy had to be paid for in the blood of the British civilian population. The Nazis called the barbaric bombing of British Coventry on November 15, 1940, "an act of intimidation". They bombed 437 aircraft that dropped 56 tons of incendiary bombs, 394 tons of land mines and 127 parachute mines, which killed several hundred people, destroyed an aircraft factory and reduced the production of British military aircraft by 20% at once. At the same time, the Germans lost only one (!) Aircraft. Hitler was so pleased with the Luftwaffe's success that he promised to "co-venture" the rest of Britain. A typical episode of world massacre? But in Bletchley Park they knew in advance about the impending air raid and warned the leadership in time, but Winston Churchill considered that the aircraft factory and the civilian population could be sacrificed to preserve the Ultra regime. A little later, Roosevelt, initiated into the mystery, said: “War forces us to act more and more like a god. I don't know how I would have done …"
Leslie Howard died on June 1, 1943, along with the passengers of flight number 777 London-Lisbon. The rescue of the plane by the British secret services could reveal Ultra's successes.
Less well known is the tragic case of the world famous actor Leslie Howard, who also served in British intelligence. Operatives instructed Howard to transfer an important package to one of the agents in Portugal and bought tickets for flight number 777 London-Lisbon. However, German agents conveyed the nuances of the actor's upcoming journey to the Berlin leadership - this became known from the Enigma transcripts. What did Churchill do? That's right, did nothing, and on June 1, 1943, a passenger DC-3 Dakota was shot down by a German fighter jet over the Bay of Biscay. This manner of sacrificing the lives of civilians for the sake of state interests has been inherent in Winston Churchill since the First World War. The cruise liner Lusitania was sunk in the same way - the British knew about the impending attack in advance and could well warn the Americans. But, firstly, Churchill (the naval minister of that time) really needed the States to join the war, and, secondly, they should have known about the success of the cryptanalysts of Foggy Albion only at home. Churchill was so aware of the secrecy of Operation Ultra that even in his post-war memoirs, out of inertia, he did not say a word about it. In Great Britain, the results of the use of Bletchley Park's brains in decryption were very highly appreciated. For example, Air Force Marshal Slessor wrote: "Ultra" was an incredibly valuable source of intelligence, which had an almost fabulous influence on the strategy, and sometimes even on the tactics of the allies. " The commander-in-chief of the Western Allies, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was the most categorical: "Ultra" became the decisive factor in the victory of the Allies. " On the other side of the “front” after the war, other assessments appeared, the German military historian Rover wrote floridly: “If we distribute all the factors that influenced the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic in descending order of importance, then Operation Ultra will be at the top. It was a manifestation of annoyance at the failure of the German "Enigma" or an objective assessment - we are unlikely to know.
Mansion in Bletchley Park - this is where the British finally "hacked" "Enigma".
Alan Turing.
Officially, the UK admitted the fact of the Enigma decryption only on January 12, 1978 - from that moment on, Bletchley Park employees were allowed to talk about their involvement in such a significant case, without disclosing all the details of the operation. The main brain of "Ultra", mathematician and cryptanalyst Alan Turing, did not live up to this moment. He committed suicide in 1954 after undergoing forced hormone therapy (chemical castration) that turned him into a walking vegetable. The death of a homosexual, persecuted by British society, who has done so much for the country, has become one of the reasons for their modern "guilt complex" towards the sexual minorities of Great Britain.
