Jim DeBrosse - The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of Americas Ultra War Against the U-boat Enigma Codes

Contents

For Ira and Charline

JIM DEBROSSE

To my wife, Rose, who gave me my son, Andy,
my very special gift in life

COLIN BURKE

Acknowledgments

A NONFICTION BOOK jointly authored by a journalist and an historian would appear to be a natural partnership: both professions dig as deeply as possible into the truth of a story. But while the journalist often validates with telling details and insightful quotes, the historian insists on the bedrock of written documentation and unbiased data. Coauthors Jim DeBrosse, a reporter for the Dayton Daily News, and Colin Burke, a leading authority on American intelligence agencies and the emergence of the computer, found theirs an uneasy alliance at timesmuch like the British and American codebreakers featured in this book. But they hope that, together, they have made accessible a highly arcane but significant piece of modern American history to a wider public.

The collaboration grew out of an eight-part series that DeBrosse wrote for the Dayton Daily News, NCR and World War II: The Untold Story. Burke was the expert source for the articles. Soon af-ter the series appeared in the paper in spring 2001, Burke called DeBrosse and announced that he had gathered further information on the U.S. Bombe program, including a dramatic espionage attempt.

The two agreed that DeBrosse would research the human side of the story, with as many interviews with survivors and their families as possible, and Burke would supply the historical spine of the book with archival documentsa process he had begun more than a decade before. DeBrosse was responsible for the writing of the text and for creating a narrative; Burke outlined the books historical themes, established the accuracy of its facts, and helped his coauthor grasp the more daunting technical aspects of the German Enigma machines and their electromechanical foes, the Bombes. Together, the two aimed for a balancebetween the claims of the British and the claims of the Americans, between a technical treatise for codebreaking aficionados and a compelling narrative for the uninitiated, between a grand reinterpretation of history and a complacent acceptance of past writings.

Little information was available when, in the late 1980s, Burke began exploring the origins of the modern computer, in which the NCR Bombes played a part. The National Security Agency, the Navy, and the Army had kept the militarys 1930s and 1940s computer research under Top Secret and Ultra protections. Histories of the American intelligence agencies released to the National Archives at the time were vague and typically censored. Many surviving participants in America could not talk about their work, and British documents were hopelessly locked away. Even F. H. Hinsleys authoritative series of books on British intelligence in World War II contained little useful information.

Burkes first book, Information and Secrecy: Vannevar Bush, Ultra and the Other Memex, had to rely heavily on open primary sources, especially those related to the history of computers and computing, hoping that enough bits of evidence could be gathered and pieced together to yield some answers. He spent years with the Hagley Museums magnificent and well-managed collection of computer industry documents, with deep gratitude to its helpful staff.

The Hagleys collections provided enough hints to direct Burkes research into primary sources at the Smithsonian Institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Rockefeller Archives, Dartmouth College, the U.S. Patent Office, the Library of Congress, the Washington and Suitland branches of the National Archives, the Navys legal branch, and the Naval Historical Center.

Along the way, many other institutions were contacted for help, including the hundreds of libraries badgered by Burkes home universitys interlibrary loan department. Especially tolerant were the archivists and historians at the NCR Archive, the Charles Babbage Institute, the National Security Agencys history office, IBM, and the Eastman Kodak Company. Professor Brian Randall of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England also was very gracious.

Although Burkes training as an historian made him skeptical of oral history and after-the-fact reminiscences, several former intelligence officials provided helpful information, including two men who were willing to have their names cited, Waldron S. MacDonald and Joseph Eachus, the latter generously consenting to interviews by both authors. MacDonald and Eachus were considerate and forthright while still protecting the secret aspects of their work.

By the late 1980s, Burke had gathered enough from open sources to persuade the government to release classified documents related to Americas codebreaking machines during the 1930s and 1940s. Letters citing the Freedom of Information Act were sent to the National Security Agency, and a few years later, a very large box of documents appeared at Burkes door, which, for convenience, was called the RAM (Rapid Analytical Machines) File.

Unfortunately, the FOIA documents were very heavily censored, with some of the most important facts covered with impenetrable black lines. Burke spent several years trying to turn the unreadable into useful information while also pursuing other leads. He traveled to libraries, historical societies, and government offices in large and small towns in the Midwest and border South. Special thanks must go to the historians who kept the records of the Miami Valley Chatauqua and to Brian Hackett, executive director of the Montgomery County Historical Society in Dayton.

More FOIA requests were sent out to the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, the Selective Service, the CIA, the Army record centers, and the Social Security Administration.

By 1992 Burke felt he had exhausted the primary sources and knew enough to draw some valid conclusions about the Navys early computer efforts. Soon after the publication of his book, he was contacted by Joseph Deschs daughter, Debbie Desch Anderson. After a decade-long quest of her own to uncover the truth of her fathers secret labors during the war, she was organizing a reunion of the Navy WAVES who had worked on the NCR Bombes. Fortunately for all, the reunion in late 1995 came just as the federal government began to relax some of the restrictions on the Bombe project, allowing many participants to grant interviews.

Anderson, who became a friend of both Burke and DeBrosse, first brought them together. She, along with historians at the Montgomery County Historical Society, who are the guardians of the massive, four-million-item NCR Archive, approached DeBrosse in the fall of 2000 about writing a newspaper story on Deschs and NCRs unheralded role in Ultra. Anderson, in turn, recommended Burke as an expert source.

Anderson deserves much credit for bringing the U.S. Bombe proj-ect out of the technical history books and into the public eye. Her quest to unravel her fathers secret work laid the human foundation for this book and brought credit not only to her father and the other NCR engineers on the Bombe project but to hundreds of Navy WAVES who were never told the purpose of their work.