The Secret in Building 26: the Untold Story of America's War Against the U-Boat Enigma Codes.

• Author: Kreyche, Gerald F.
• Position: Book Review

THE SECRET IN BUILDING 26: The Untold Story of America's War Against the U-Boat Enigma Codes

BY JIM DEBROSSE AND COLIN BURKE RANDOM HOUSE, 2004 273 PAGES, $26.95

The breaking of the Enigma Code virtually was as important to winning World War II as the Manhattan Project. It was one of the best-kept secrets of the war, despite nearly 1,000 people working on the problem. Among them were top mathematicians, scientists, engineers, Navy and civilian personnel, and 600 WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).

As early as the 1920s, Germany got possession of a complicated secret code to be known as Enigma. With 15 years of updating, it plagued the Allies by directing Nazi U-boats to Allied convoys of troop and merchandise shipping. (Germany had broken the British code and knew where the convoys were.) Wolf packs sunk the ships with abandon, almost to the point of completely cutting off supplies needed by Britain to carry on the war. Tonnage sunk in the North Atlantic tripled between 1941 to 1942, so breaking that German code was of the highest priority.

Some decoding progress was made by Poland before that country was overrun by the Blitzkrieg and this information was conveyed to France and England. The latter immediately went to work on the project, carried on in Bletchley Park, outside of London and known as Ultra. The machine invented by the Poles was called the Bombe, as were subsequent models. Mathematical whiz Alan Turing invented a complicated machine that tried to run the Enigma Code backwards in order to decipher the messages. Each time the Germans made a variation of the code, England had to reprogram its device.

When the U.S. entered the war, it mounted its own Enigma-breaking initiative, sponsored and run by the Navy in conjunction with The National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio. Building 26 was the...