BATEy | 105
The first brief message that we broke said ‘Today is the day minus three’, with a command
to acknowledge. Unbelievably this had three full stops, including the bonus eight-letter crib
at the end. It alerted us to the fact that the Italian fleet was going into action, and so we had to
work flat out for three days and nights to discover where and what they were going to attack.
It turned out to be a large convoy setting sail from Alexandria and bound for Greece. After the
Battle of Matapan was won, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the British Commander-in-
Chief Mediterranean, came to the Cottage for a celebratory drink. He was much amused that
Dilly, punning on XALTX, called the celebration our ‘exaltations’.
Bombe attack
Turing’s gigantic bombe was an awesome sight, with its many rotating drums whizzing around.
Dilly, a Lewis Carroll addict, thought of Turing as his ‘bombe-ish boy’, after Carroll’s ‘Come to
my arms, my beamish boy’, and as dealing the final blow in ‘slaying the Jabberwock’.
The bombe was inspired by, but certainly not based on, the simpler Polish ‘bomba’ (see
Chapter 12). Dilly had told Turing about the bomba when they met at his home on his return
from Warsaw. Dilly emphasized the folly of the Poles in basing all their techniques on the
doubly enciphered indicators. He made it clear that, while he himself intended to do every-
thing he could to provide the Zygalski sheets that the Poles needed, Turing should go all out in
devising a method for breaking messages using ‘cribs’, rather than focusing exclusively on the
message’s indicator, as the Poles had done. The bombe-ish boy followed Dilly’s advice: this was
indeed a blessing, since it was while the first of the bombes was cranking into action that the
Germans abandoned doubly enciphered indicators.
Dilly managed to acquire an empty former plum store, located opposite the Cottage, as a
small workshop for trying out experimental gadgets. Turing was in his element in the plum
store, as his bombe-ish ideas took shape. When Turing told Dilly that the bombe would indeed
test cribs, running at high speed through possible machine settings, Dilly was delighted to hear
it. (See Chapter 12 for a full explanation of Turing’s bombe.) On 1 November 1939 a meeting
was held in the Cottage, with Welchman and Twinn also present, to set down the requirements
for the bombe, so that a design could be sent through to the group of engineers who would
build it at the British Tabulating Machine Company’s factory in Letchworth. The first bombe,
Victory, was ready for action against Naval Enigma in the spring of 1940. No doubt Dilly organ-
ized a suitable celebration.
All was not going well for Dilly, however, and around this time, early in the spring of 1940,
he wrote a six-page letter of resignation to Stewart Menzies, head of SIS, complaining about
Denniston’s proposals for a production-line system to break Enigma messages. Hut 6, dealing
with army and air force traffic, was now up and running, thanks to Welchman, a true organiza-
tion man. Welchman had already planned all this in the Cottage during October 1939, set-
ting out what was needed—even down to where the electric power points would be placed in
the skirting boards, for optimal use of the lamps that they used for inspecting Zygalski sheets
on glass-topped tables. Welchman had also specified where the power points should be put
for Turing’s bombe, even though at that time the bombe was little more than wishful think-
ing. Dilly’s personal beef about the accommodation was that Cottage 3, home to his Research
Section, was deemed a security risk and shut down. This was because Turing’s loft was open to