information given him by Ultra was to be by way of an operation order or command or instruction which in no way referred to the Ultra signal and could not lead the enemy to believe his signals were being read. No recipient of Ultra could voluntarily place himself in a position where he could be captured by the enemy.
The procedures used within Hut 3 were also altered in the light of lessons learned during the Battle of France. The amount of material coming in had strained its resources to the limit. Hut 3 itself became more organised and the number of staff increased with four reporters on each watch and with one officer from each of the Air and Military Sections of MI6 sat on each watch as Air or Army advisers, significantly upgrading the basic two-man watches that were clearly not sufficient during the fighting in Norway and France. ‘Hut 3 and Hut 6were side by side,’ said Ralph Bennett, one of the watch intelligence reporters. ‘They were linked by a small square wooden tunnel through which a pile of currently available decodes were pushed, as I remember by a broom handle, in a cardboard box, so primitive were things in those days.’
The messages arrived through the wooden tunnel from Hut 6 in batches of between fifteen and twenty and were immediately sorted into different degrees of urgency by the Watch No. 2, or Sorter. They were split into four separate piles. Pile 1, by which the Hut 3 priorities would remain known throughout the war, was the most urgent messages. Pile 2 was less urgent but still needed to be processed and turned into agent reports within four to eight hours and Pile 3 needed to be reported but could be safely sent to MI6 headquarters at Broadway Buildings in London by overnight bag. The fourth pile was nicknamed the Quatsch pile after the German word for rubbish and did not need to be processed at all, although they were kept on file for future research.
‘Skimming the incoming material to assess urgency and importance remained the most responsible and tricky job,’ recalled Lucas.
It would have been sufficiently troublesome, even if all decodes had arrived in an easily readable state (as a small proportion did throughout), since the pure intelligence problems involved were often extremely difficult to solve on the spur of the moment – a difficulty which became even worse later on, as our work grew more complicated. But since a high proportion of decodes were corrupt, sometimes very corrupt, it was often impossible, on a necessarily cursory reading, to assess the importance, or even the simple sense, of a message. Thus, in times when there was much material (and in Hut 3 we usually had too much to do or else, though rarely, too little) the Sorter had a heavy responsibility , since by a simple mistake he could cause an obscure but urgent message to be laid aside for hours or even days.
Hut 3 was set up like a miniature factory with the Watch Room at its centre. The Watch sat around a circular or horseshoe-shaped table, with the Watch No. 1 at the head of the table, while the air and military advisers sat at a rectangular table to one side. There were up to half-a-dozen men on the Watch, each of whom had to deal with a message taken from the highest priority pile in which there were messages, first of all ‘emending’ them, i.e. filling in any gaps left because of radio interference or garbled letters, a process that had similarities to solving a crossword puzzle. They then compiled an alleged agent’s report based on the message, working from the original German, rather than translating it first, in order to guard against the introduction of errors.
‘The watchkeepers were a mixture of civilians and serving officers, Army and RAF,’ said William Millward, an RAF officer who worked in Hut 3 as an air adviser.
I cannot remember any women involved in this part of the operation, presumably because it was still thought to be wrong for a woman to work on the night shift or because it was
The procedures used within Hut 3 were also altered in the light of lessons learned during the Battle of France. The amount of material coming in had strained its resources to the limit. Hut 3 itself became more organised and the number of staff increased with four reporters on each watch and with one officer from each of the Air and Military Sections of MI6 sat on each watch as Air or Army advisers, significantly upgrading the basic two-man watches that were clearly not sufficient during the fighting in Norway and France. ‘Hut 3 and Hut 6were side by side,’ said Ralph Bennett, one of the watch intelligence reporters. ‘They were linked by a small square wooden tunnel through which a pile of currently available decodes were pushed, as I remember by a broom handle, in a cardboard box, so primitive were things in those days.’
The messages arrived through the wooden tunnel from Hut 6 in batches of between fifteen and twenty and were immediately sorted into different degrees of urgency by the Watch No. 2, or Sorter. They were split into four separate piles. Pile 1, by which the Hut 3 priorities would remain known throughout the war, was the most urgent messages. Pile 2 was less urgent but still needed to be processed and turned into agent reports within four to eight hours and Pile 3 needed to be reported but could be safely sent to MI6 headquarters at Broadway Buildings in London by overnight bag. The fourth pile was nicknamed the Quatsch pile after the German word for rubbish and did not need to be processed at all, although they were kept on file for future research.
‘Skimming the incoming material to assess urgency and importance remained the most responsible and tricky job,’ recalled Lucas.
It would have been sufficiently troublesome, even if all decodes had arrived in an easily readable state (as a small proportion did throughout), since the pure intelligence problems involved were often extremely difficult to solve on the spur of the moment – a difficulty which became even worse later on, as our work grew more complicated. But since a high proportion of decodes were corrupt, sometimes very corrupt, it was often impossible, on a necessarily cursory reading, to assess the importance, or even the simple sense, of a message. Thus, in times when there was much material (and in Hut 3 we usually had too much to do or else, though rarely, too little) the Sorter had a heavy responsibility , since by a simple mistake he could cause an obscure but urgent message to be laid aside for hours or even days.
Hut 3 was set up like a miniature factory with the Watch Room at its centre. The Watch sat around a circular or horseshoe-shaped table, with the Watch No. 1 at the head of the table, while the air and military advisers sat at a rectangular table to one side. There were up to half-a-dozen men on the Watch, each of whom had to deal with a message taken from the highest priority pile in which there were messages, first of all ‘emending’ them, i.e. filling in any gaps left because of radio interference or garbled letters, a process that had similarities to solving a crossword puzzle. They then compiled an alleged agent’s report based on the message, working from the original German, rather than translating it first, in order to guard against the introduction of errors.
‘The watchkeepers were a mixture of civilians and serving officers, Army and RAF,’ said William Millward, an RAF officer who worked in Hut 3 as an air adviser.
I cannot remember any women involved in this part of the operation, presumably because it was still thought to be wrong for a woman to work on the night shift or because it was
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