Review of Inside Room 40: The Codebreakers of World War I by Paul Grannon

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Notes

¹Hall's nickname resulted from his constant blinking.

²He was director of Room 40 in name only after having accepted the position at Edinburgh.

³Kahn notes about Hoy: “Starting in November of 1916, Hugh Cleland Hoy, secretary to the director of naval intelligence, read through hundreds of intercepts to sift the wheat from the chaff and to send the kernels on to the proper division of government—the Cabinet, the War Office, or Scotland Yard.” [15, p. 274]

⁴James was known as “Bubbles” because of his appearance, as a child, in a painting blowing bubbles. The image later appeared in Pears Soap Company advertisements.

⁵Hall was Director of Naval Intelligence at that time, and Room 40 was part of the Naval Intelligence Division.

⁶The story of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre from 1939 until 1945 is told in [3].

⁷Gannon refers to Beesly's book as a “semi-official history.” [pp. 7, 21]

⁸Another recent contribution is a 2008 book by David Ramsay [16]. Although Ramsay's book is a biography of Admiral Sir Reginald (“Blinker”) Hall, much of its content is about Room 40 and Hall's position as “spymaster.”

⁹ID 25 (Intelligence Division 25) was the official name for Room 40. Francis (Frank) Birch served in the Royal Navy prior to joining Room 40 at the end of 1915 or the beginning of 1916. He served in Room 40 until 1919. He joined the Naval section at Bletchley Park in September 1939 and became its head.

¹⁰In early 1915 Alfred Dillwyn (Dilly) Knox was recruited into Room 40 by Ewing. Knox chose to join Room 40's successor, the Government Code and Cipher School after World War I. Knox made one of the first breaks into Enigma.

¹¹An early official British view of Room 40 is “Strategic Use of Communications during the World War: British Cryptography, Radiogoniometry, German Cryptography,” which appeared in the August 1928 Monthly Information Bulletin, Office of Naval Intelligence. This article was obtained by Louis Kruh and was reprinted in Cryptologia in 1992 [1].

¹²On page 264 of a 2007 Cryptologia article “Searching for Cryptology's Great Wreck” by Jukka Rislakki (Cryptologia 31(3):263–267), there appears a similar comment by David Kahn: “The book was never in the water. I have held it in my hands, and it shows no signs of immersion.”

¹³Gannon notes on page 32 that Clarke joined Room 40 in 1916 and that he was described by another codebreaker as “only a sort of honorary member.”

¹⁴Gannon quotes a later letter by Clarke that refers to Hoy as being “only a drunken typist who knew nothing.” [p. 255]

¹⁵Gannon senses in Clarke's writings a “tearing at the soul of [one of] those who had to work inside Room 40 and MI1(b). They lived with the tension of holding their secrets and resisting telling the world about the wonderful things they had done to help win the war.” [pp. 255 − 256].

¹⁶He notes, however, that “available at Kew … are many thousands of the original unalloyed intercepted messages.…”

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Notes on contributors

Chris Christensen

Chris Christensen teaches mathematics and cryptology at Northern Kentucky University. His family connections with World War I are slim (US ancestors) and not so slim (German ancestors). An uncle served with an artillery unit of the US Army and arrived in Europe just prior to the end of the War. The only damage inflicted by his artillery unit was the destruction of a French lighthouse caused by a misdirected round that was meant for a target barge. German ancestors served in the Kaiserlichen Marine.