How did the Bombe revolutionise Cryptanalysis in WWII?

How did the Bombe revolutionise Cryptanalysis in WWII?

Few inventions have so profoundly altered the course of a World War and revolutionized cryptology as much as Alan Turing’s legendary decryption machine, ‘The Bombe’, has. Many tried to crack the German enigma, but their attempts remained fruitless purely due to this one reason: they were manually attempting to crack each intercepted code. This was practically impossible, as the enigma was a machine which continued to change the encrypted pattern, and the analysts were not physically able to keep up with the rate of encryption. The Bombe played a significant role in the development of cryptanalysis devices by succeeding in decrypting the notorious German encryption machine that was referred to as ‘The Enigma ’ (Appendix A), by using a unique electro-mechanical method to crack repeating patterns in the intercepted messages, thus further enabling the Allies to defeat the Axis Powers in World War II.

Appendix A

The creation of the Bombe required the cryptanalysts to have a thorough understanding of its counterpart: The Enigma. “The German encryption machine was invented by the German inventor Arthur Scherbius (Appendix B), who based its mechanism on a basic rotor machine prototype. He aptly named it ‘The Enigma’, derived from Greek word which means ‘a riddle’. The machine was initially used for commercial encryption, but the Nazis adapted it for military and diplomatic communications” (Enigma History n.pag). They used U-boats [submarines] to attack Allied shipping, causing significant losses as the Allies struggled to intercept the encrypted attack plans. The Bombe machine revolutionised coded communications, enhancing encryption security and code-breaking in warfare and federal use. The Enigma, proved to be a source of frustration for the allies as they did not know how to break it without a machine , hence ‘Hut 8’ was formed [a specialised unit at Bletchley park had the sole task of decrypting the German naval ciphers], subsequently becoming the birthplace of the British Bombe.

Appendix B

Although the Bombe is often seen as a British invention, its development was actually built upon earlier work by Poland’s cryptologists, who laid the groundwork for automating the decryption of the Enigma’s daily ciphers. Efforts to create a method which could handle the cipher daily since the conception of the enigma, but none had initially thought of creating a machine to automate the method daily in order to truly crack it, thereby completely decimating the threat it posed. “The first ever prototype of a machine intended to decrypt the German ciphers was by Polish cryptologist and mathematician Marian Rejewski* (Appendix C), who made the ‘bomba’ [bomb] to decrypt German naval encryptions, as he had already been working on them for a long time” (Raikar n.pag)*. The Polish Bomba, however, required a tedious process to set up, and was not as effective as the Poles might have anticipated. Although the British copycat was not the same [with additions made by both Turing and fellow cryptographer G. Welchman], they chose to name it after the Polish prototype since it was, after all, a breakthrough in itself.

Appendix C

The breakthrough which we know as the [British] Bombe owes its existence to Alan Turing **(Appendix D)** , a highly revered British mathematician with a PhD in Mathematics at the University of Princeton. He was highly involved in the field of inventions, creating a contraption referred to as ‘The Turing Machine’. “It was rather like a typewriter, except it can also read and alter symbols on a long piece of tape [which has been considered to be one of the earliest pieces of computation] and laid the foundations for modern day artificial intelligence with his paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ ”(Han n.pag) (Hut 8 n.pag). He later became fixated on the field of cryptanalysis in an attempt to assist the government in cracking the enigma, an attempt which would later prove to be fruitful.

Appendix D

The Bombe worked by using an electro-mechanical rotor to systematically analyze the encrypted messages produced by the Enigma to discover the recurring patterns hidden in the daily settings. What made the Enigma so hard to break was the fact that the Enigma’s ciphers changed daily in order for the cryptanalysts to not be able to consistently crack the ciphers. Turing’s method, as it would later be called, included refinements by Gordon Welchman (Appendix E), a fellow British mathematician, which would prove to be invaluable in the final product. Turing’s method was particularly ingenious, as it found an astonishingly simple answer to the jackpot question which was baffling every leading cryptanalyst. He simply combined the genius of a cryptanalysts’ mind with the speed and efficiency of a machine, and thus the Bombe was born.

Appendix E

Cornell University’s observations dictate that the method consisted of programming the Bombe to find ‘cribs’ in the intercepted German messages and consistently find a pattern to continuously crack the Enigma sequence. “ ‘Cribs’ (Appendix F) were essentially known pieces of text in a longer encrypted message which could be used to figure out the overall encoded message. An example of a crib would be talking about the weather, for instance, the stereotypical ‘Wettervorhersage’ [‘weather forecast’ in German] would nearly always be accompanying the actual important encryption”(Zou, Wang, Huang n.pag). This allowed Turing to find common patterns in the daily messages, which led him to understand the method of encryption the Enigma used and ultimately beat the system.

Appendix F

Despite its technical pros and cons, the Bombe machine’s real measure was its impact during WWII. It wasn’t merely about the positives and negatives of its design but about how it contributed to success in that critical moment. In fact, most intellectuals believe that there were no particular ‘negatives’ to the Bombe machine, as it served its purpose and did not have anything which could hugely hinder its function. “The first prototype of the British Bombe was relatively slow in comparison to the future versions, but it was able to serve its purpose until further innovations came” (Jackson n.pag). The prototype had malfunctions that could easily be attended to, so they weren’t a nuisance either. Perhaps we can only say that the only negative phenomenon that the Bombe had caused was perhaps the huge amount of losses accrued by Nazi Germany, which in hindsight is widely considered to be a favourable development by experts from various fields. On the other hand, the Bombe machine [as aforementioned] played a huge role towards the end of an entire world war, as its successful conception ensured that the Allies would get their shipments on time to further allow them to provide proper supplies to the soldiers.

Although there are no recent versions of the Bombe itself, the mechanism behind the Bombe has led to many breakthroughs in the field of cryptography. “For instance, the original prototype of the british bombe, ‘Victory’(Appendix G), initially led to many new and improved types of Bombes, such as the ‘Agnus Dei’ [a faster version of the original], the ‘Ogre’ [two bombes combined together in order to break messages more accurately] or the US versions (Appendix H) : The ‘Autoscritcher’ and the improved ‘Superscritcher’ (Jackson n.pag) (Crawford n.pag)” . Later on, the Bombe became replaced with more efficient methods with the advancements in technology , primarily computerized decryption using modern day cryptanalysts called ‘hackers’.

Appendix G

Appendix H

In conclusion, although the Bombe may not initially seem like a contraption worth praise, we can see that after further grasping the topic, there is a lot to the Bombe. The vast majority of historians would argue that the Bombe single-handedly changed the course of the second World War by completely shattering German communications, and consequently becoming the pioneering device and catalyst to a plethora — or rather, a revolution — of innovations in the [rather newly-found] field of technologically advanced cryptanalysis. In addition, other historians might double down and say that the fact that the Enigma was, as its name suggested, an enigma beyond the capacity of all the decryption technology available, an invention which require an entire task force out-of-box thinking and efforts that went into the cryptanalysis and wiring as part of the conception of the Bombe itself was a testament to the remarkable technological breakthrough that it was. To finalise, instead of viewing the Bombe as merely a fragment of our eventful past, we should use how one instance can forever change the course of history in ways more than one (i.e WWII and the field of cryptanalysis). Whether it be for the better or for the worse, and perhaps it is time to truly grasp what humans at their full potential are capable of and use it to fuel our future, be it in cryptanalysis or in any aspect of life.

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