Codes & Cyphers Officer's Duties

[Buster11]

A slightly obscure question here. My father was a codes and cyphers officer, captured in 1941 at Heraklion after the German invasion of Crete. He was an RAFVR Fg Off at the time. As is often the case, he didn’t talk much about his activities there and now it’s thirty years too late to ask, but could anyone suggest what sort of duties he might have had? He was never much good at crosswords, so I doubt if anything too cryptic would have been involved.

[Timelord]

I suspect that it was an administrative appointment. He would have been responsible for the safe custody of and accounting for what we now call “crypto”; issuing it to users (probably the aircrew and the signals personnel), changing it on given dates and destroying it securely when it was out of date or In his case, when you are about to be overrun!

He may also have been responsible for encoding and decoding secret messages but not cracking the enemy’s codes.

One of the many unsung responsibilities that keep a force operating.

[Mogwi]

I would imagine that he would have been in charge of the unit's code books and cyphers. These would have been highly classified and I guess that he would have been a very busy man in the hours before his capture, destroying anything that would have allowed the enemy to read allied communications.

They could have ranged from low-level (hourly-changing?) tactical codes for authentication purposes to more secure command codes. I am not sure if Typex machines were in use for secure comms at that stage of the war but if they were, he might have held the daily set-up codes for these.

All-in-all a very responsible job and a most unenviable one with Johhny foriegner parachuting onto your position!

Mog

[ian16th]

Where is Ricardian when you need him?

[Buster11]

Many thanks, gentlemen, for the clarifications. I know he was based in a cave near the airfield, from which he observed the parachute and glider landings. Probably tricky to decide at what stage to burn one's boats.

[Training Risky]

Christopher Lee (of Dracula fame) was a Cypher Officer with a Hurricane Sqn in the Desert!

[ricardian]

Where is Ricardian when you need him?

Typex might have been in use at high level (main airfields, headquarters, etc) overseas posts and was certainly used to distribute ULTRA information (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra) via Special Liaison Units (https://bletchleypark.org.uk/our-story/the-path-of-a-message/dissemination).
Lots more info on Typex here (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typex) and here (http://www.jproc.ca/crypto/typex.html). There's a personal account here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/84/a6840984.shtml).
Using One Time Pads was very secure but extremely cumbersome & laborious, in practice only used for short messages.
And for general crypto info try here (http://www.cryptomuseum.com/index.htm).
This is all long before my time, I used this (http://www.jproc.ca/crypto/bid610.html) and this (http://www.jproc.ca/crypto/kw26.html) but even those have long since been superceded and are now in museums

[Buster11]

Lots more interesting stuff there Ricardian, so your expertise is much appreciated.

[ricardian]

A lot of new information about the American Indian code-talkers of WW1 and WW2 (https://army.togetherweserved.com/army/newsletter2/18/newsletter.html#article6)

[ian16th]

A lot of new information about the American Indian code-talkers of WW1 and WW2 (https://army.togetherweserved.com/army/newsletter2/18/newsletter.html#article6)

Didn't the UK use Welshmen in the same role?

[ricardian]

Didn't the UK use Welshmen in the same role?

I'm not aware of such use in wartime but I have witnessed Welsh speaking chaps on the insecure phone discussing classified material when the secure phone was unavailable

[Mogwi]

Slight thread drift .. But I recently had a tour of the Computer Museum at Bletchley Park - absolutely fascinating! They have a funtioning, rebuilt Colossus there amongst other stuff. This was the "computer" used to decipher 12-rotor Lorenz (?spelling?) traffic from German High Command. Lorenz machines were later used by USSR for many years after they captured them from the Germans. Wrongly, as it transpired, 'cos we could read most of their traffic 🤓 !!!

Bletchley Park itself has a functioning Bombe, which decoded Enigma messages as well as Typex machines on view. Well worth a couple of days' visit.