Decrypting The Codes

A war that involved the brilliant skills of mathematicians and chess players. The war of the codebreakers. Twice in 50 years the ability to crack the enemy's most secret codes, and so learn the battle plans of enemy commanders in the field.

The German Enigma machines were portable cipher units with a set of rotors to encode scrambled signals which were theoretically unbreakable.

The Purple Cipher was probably one of the most complex codes used during WWII. Used by the Japanese to secure its communications it took almost two years to crack then the Allies routinely read German and Japanese messages.

The Battle of Midway, fought in the Pacific during WWII, took place on June 5, 1942. The United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, marking a turning point in the war in the Pacific theater.

This episode concentrates on the work of the code breaking activities of the then secret Bletchley Park, the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War known as Station X.

The final part of this series covers the American and British efforts to protect their convoys carrying essential supplies and munitions to Europe from attack by the German U-boat Wolfpacks.