10 Feb
2015
10 Feb
'15
9:10 a.m.
On 02/10/2015 08:20 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
Hmm. The descriptions I've seen of their
manufacture (e.g. Gordon Welchman,
"The Hut Six Story", pp. 138-141, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, "Enigma: The
Battle
for the Code", pp. 56-58) all indicate that the machines were manufactured by
British Tabulating Machines in their Letchworth factory (about half-way
between BP and Cambridge), and only came to BP once they were completed.
There was a lot of local sub-contracting of small sub-assemblies which didn't
require machining, though (see Welchman).
OK, but there are some descriptions that the actual wiring
of the rotors was done AT
Bletchley, for security reasons. If a German spy was to get
his hands on the drawings
for even one (wired) rotor, they would have realized how
thoroughly the British
had penetrated the Enigma system, and would have to come up
with a new system.
So, it makes sense that the actual rotor wiring was REALLY
strictly compartmentalized.
So, did the Brits actually have 350 Bombes? Were they
Bletchley Bombes or NCR
Bombes? I'm guessing from what you say above they were the
Bletchley (slow)
version. If they did have 350 of them, they would have
taken up a HUGE amount
of space, something like 10,000 square feet, given some
space to work around
each unit. Ft. Meade had theirs in a huge warehouse like
building, with a team
of cipher clerks working around them constantly to record
when the got hits.
Jon