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operator which positions the wheels had been twisted to before the message was enciphered. As
explained in Chapter 11, Knox realized at Pyry that the Germans might eliminate this flaw at
any moment—which they soon did, in May 1940, disastrously for the Polish methods. The use-
fulness of the bomby had in fact steadily diminished up until that point. Major setbacks came
in December 1938, when the German operators were given two more wheels to choose from,
and in January 1939 when the number of letters that were scrambled by the plugboard was
increased from five to eight.^13 The change that the Germans made to their operating procedures
in May 1940 was the final nail in the coffin. But fortunately, in the wake of the Pyry meeting,
Turing had set out to create an improved version of the bomba, called at first the ‘superbombe’.^14
His design incorporated not only the Polish method of attack, but also another more general
method intended to remain viable if the loophole that the Poles were using should close.^15
Victory
Engineer Harold ‘Doc’ Keen took on the job of transforming Turing’s logical design into
hardware. Keen’s men began building Turing’s bombe in October 1939, and the first, named
simply ‘Victory’, was installed at Bletchley Park in the spring of 1940, just a few weeks before
the Germans closed the Rejewski loophole.^16 The robustly built Victory spent no more than 42
hours out of action during its first 14 months of service.^17 Because space was in short supply,
Turing’s bulky new machine was housed in the sick bay, Hut 1.^18 It cost approximately £ 6500—
about one-tenth of the price tag of a Lancaster bomber, and around £250,000 in today’s money.^19
In the light of what the bombes would achieve, they were among the most cost-effective pieces
of equipment of the war.
During 1940, Victory and the second bombe, named ‘Agnus Dei’ (Lamb of God) between
them broke more than 98% of the messages they attacked.^20 When Victory and ‘Aggie’ were
moved out of the sick bay, around March 1941, their home became Hut 11, constructed in
the Mansion’s pleasure-garden maze.^21 Hut 11 was called the Bombe Hut until February 1942,
when a larger structure, Hut 11A, was erected next to it in order to house the growing number
of bombes.^22
The arrival of Victory marked the start of Bletchley Park’s industrialization of codebreaking.
By the end of 1941, Keen’s factory in Letchworth was turning out new bombes by the dozen.
It was cyberwar on a previously unknown scale. Workers arrived at Bletchley’s outstations
in industrial numbers to operate the bombes. The workers, all female, were members of the
Women’s Royal Naval Service and known colloquially as ‘Wrens’. Eventually more than 1500
women were operating the bombes.^23 Turing called them ‘slaves’.^24 The bombes ran 24/7 and the
Wrens worked in three shifts. They slept, often in multi-tiered bunks, in outlying dormitories
with peeling paint, inadequate heating, and terrible food.
Huts 6 and 8
The bombes were used by Huts 6 and 8. These two small buildings housed many of the front-
line Enigma cryptanalysts, Hut 6 dealing with Army and Air Force Enigma, and Hut 8 with
Naval Enigma. Like the Wrens, the cryptanalysts worked round the clock in three shifts.
Some were civilians and some wore military uniforms, but military discipline never ruled the