Dilly Knox
Alfred Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox | |
---|---|
Born | Alfred Dillwyn Knox 23 July 1884 Headington, Oxford |
Died | 27 February 1943 Wycombe, Buckinghamshire | (aged 58)
Other names | Dilly |
Citizenship | British |
Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge |
Occupations |
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Employers |
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Title |
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Spouse |
Olive Rodman (m. 1920) |
Children | 2 |
Parent | Edmund Arbuthnott Knox |
Relatives |
Alfred Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox,
As Chief Cryptographer,
At
Personal life and family
Dillwyn Knox, the fourth of six children,
Dillwyn—known as "Dilly"—Knox was educated at
He married Olive Rodman in 1920, forgetting to invite two of his three brothers to his wedding.[15] The couple had two sons, Oliver and Christopher.[citation needed]
He was an
Academic scholarship
Between the two World Wars Knox worked on the great commentary on Herodas that had been started by Walter Headlam, damaging his eyesight while studying the British Museum's collection of papyrus fragments, but finally managing to decipher the text of the Herodas papyri. The Knox-Headlam edition of Herodas finally appeared in 1922.[16]
Codebreaking
First World War
The sailor in Room 53
has never, it's true, been to sea
but though not in a boat
he has served afloat —
in a bath in the Admiralty.— Alice in ID25 byFrank Birch[17]
Soon after war broke out in 1914,
Among other tasks, he was involved in breaking:
- the Zimmermann Telegram, which contributed to bringing the USA into the war.[1]
- much of the German admiral's flag code by exploiting an operator's love of romantic poetry.[2]
Between the wars
Government Code and Cypher School
Oh, if a time should ever come when we're demobilized How we shall miss the interests which once life comprised!
— Dilly the DodoFrank Birch
During the First World War he had been elected Librarian at King's College, but never took up the appointment. After the war Knox intended to resume his research at King's, but was persuaded by his wife to remain at his secret work; indeed, so secret was this work that his own children had no idea, until many years after his death, what he did for a living, and his contribution to the war effort.[13]
Commercial Enigma
The Enigma machine became available commercially in the 1920s. In Vienna in 1925,[20] Knox bought the Enigma 'C' machine evaluated by Hugh Foss in 1927 on behalf of GC&CS. Foss found "a high degree of security" but wrote a secret paper describing how to attack the machine if cribs — short sections of plain text — could be guessed.[3] When — a decade later — Knox picked up this work, he developed a more effective algebraic system (rodding) based on the principles described by Foss.[20]
Spanish Enigma
The Germany Navy (Kriegsmarine) adopted Enigma in 1926, adding a plug-board (stecker) to improve security. Nazi Germany supplied non-steckered machines to Franco's Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. On 24 April 1937, Knox broke the Spanish Enigma but knowledge of this breakthrough was not shared with the Republicans.[3][b] Soon afterwards, Knox began to attack signals between Spain and Germany encrypted using steckered Enigma machines.[3]
On the eve of the Second World War
Polish–French–British meetings
GC&CS began to discuss Enigma with the
Knox grasped everything very quickly, almost quick as lightning. It was evident that the British had been really working on Enigma ... So they didn't require explanations. They were specialists of a different kind, of a different class.
Knox attended the second
Although
It was such an obvious thing to do, really a silly thing to do, that nobody, not Dilly Knox or Tony Kendrick or Alan Turing, ever thought it worthwhile trying it.
After the meeting, he sent the Polish cryptologists a very gracious note in Polish, on official British government stationery, thanking them for their assistance and sending "sincere thanks for your cooperation and patience".[2] Enclosed were a beautiful scarf featuring a picture of a Derby winner and a set of paper 'batons'.[21]
I don't know how Knox's method was supposed to work, most likely he had hoped to vanquish Enigma with the batons. Unfortunately we beat him to it.
These 'batons' were known as rods to the British and had been used to solve the Spanish Enigma. Knox's rodding method was later used to break the Italian Naval Enigma.[2]
Turing's bombe
Second World War
Knox's rodding method
To break non-steckered Enigma machines (those without a plugboard), Knox (building on earlier research by Hugh Foss) developed a system known as 'rodding', a linguistic as opposed to mathematical way of breaking codes.[3] This technique worked on the Enigma used by the Regia Marina (Italian Navy) and the German Abwehr.[23] Knox worked in 'the Cottage', next door to the Bletchley Park mansion, as head of a research section, which contributed significantly to cryptanalysis of the Enigma.[6]
Knox's team at The Cottage used rodding to decrypt intercepted Italian naval signals describing the sailing of an Italian battle fleet, leading to the
Intelligence Services Knox
In October 1941, Knox solved the Abwehr Enigma.
Death
Knox's work was cut short when he fell ill with lymphoma.[24] When he became unable to travel to Bletchley Park, he continued his cryptographic work from his home in Hughenden, Buckinghamshire, where he received the CMG.[25] He died on 27 February 1943.[25] A biography of Knox, written by Mavis Batey, one of 'Dilly's girls', the female codebreakers who worked with him, was published in September 2009.[26]
Classified poetry
These have knelled your fall and ruin, but your ears were far away
English lassies rustling papers through the sodden Bletchley day.— Dilly Knox, Epitaph on Matapan to Mussolini[2]
Knox celebrated the victory at Battle of Cape Matapan with poetry, which remained classified until 1978.[2]
References
Notes
- ^ "Dillwyn [Knox, son of an Evangelical bishop] was from his student years an unwavering atheist." Alan Hollinghurst, "The Victory of Penelope Fitzgerald" (a review of Hermione Lee, Penelope Fitzgerald [a niece of Alfred Dillwyn Knox]: A Life, Knopf, 488 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXI, no. 19 (4 December 2014), p. 8. (The article comprises pp. 8, 10, 12.)
- ^ Keeley 2008 States "Professor Denis Smyth, of the University of Toronto, an expert on Second World War intelligence operations, said that the British codebreaker Alfred Dilwyn Knox cracked the code of Franco's machine in 1937, but 'this information was not passed on to the Republicans.'"
Citations
- ^ a b Gannon 2011
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Batey 2011
- ^ a b c d e f g h Smith 2010
- ^ a b c d e f Batey 2009, p. xi
- ^ a b c Staff writer 2004
- ^ a b c d e Batey 2004
- ^ "Peck, Winifred Frances, (Lady Peck)", Who Was Who, online edition, Oxford University Press, 2014, retrieved 9 May 2014 (subscription required)
- ^ Fitzgerald 2002
- ^ Dod's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage of Great Britain and Ireland, Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1904, p. 983
- ^ The Spectator, vol. 20, 1847, p. 1171
- ^ The Gentleman's Magazine, vol. 177, 1845, p. 311
- ^ Bt, Sir William Arbuthnot. "Table E part 2". www.kittybrewster.com. Archived from the original on 15 June 2006.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ a b c "Richmond, John Classics and Intelligence - 'Classics Ireland' Volume 9 (2002)". Archived from the original on 30 March 2022. Retrieved 22 June 2012.
- ^ Thorpe 2010, p. 27
- ^ Batey 2009, p. xii
- ISBN 978-1290531078
- ^ a b Andrew 2011
- ^ Goebel
- ISBN 9781849542623. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
- ^ a b Foss 2011
- ^ a b c Budiansky 2000, pp. 95–96
- ^ Copeland 2011, p. 313
- ^ Carter, p. 1
- ^ Sebag-Montefiore 2000, p. 350
- ^ a b Fitzgerald 2002, pp. 249–250
- ^ Batey 2009
Works cited
- ISBN 978-1849540780. (Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001)
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37641. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Batey, Mavis (2005), "Marian and Dilly", in Rejewski, Marian (ed.), Marian Rejewski, 1905–1980: Living with the Enigma Secret, pp. 67–74
- ISBN 978-1-906447-01-4.
- ISBN 978-1849540780. (Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001)
- ISBN 978-0-684-85932-3
- Carter, Frank, Bletchley Park Technical Articles: Rodding (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 11 April 2007, retrieved 14 February 2015
- ISBN 978-1849540780. (Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001)
- ISBN 978-1849540780. (Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001)
- ISBN 978-0-00-711830-4.
- Gannon, Paul (2011), Inside Room 40: The Codebreakers of World War I, London, UK: Ian Allan Publishing, ISBN 978-0-7110-3408-2
- Goebel, Greg. "Codes, Ciphers, & Codebreaking". [4.1] Room 40 & the Zimmermann telegram/German codebreakers. Retrieved 14 February 2015.
- ISBN 978-0-395-42739-2
- Keeley, Graham (24 October 2008), "Nazi Enigma machines helped General Franco in Spanish Civil War", The Times, p. 27, retrieved 15 May 2020
- ISBN 978-0-89093-547-7
- ISBN 0-7538-1130-8
- ISBN 978-0-19-957814-6.
- Staff writer (17 November 2004), "Peter Twinn", The Telegraph, London, UK, archived from the original on 2 March 2007, retrieved 14 February 2015
- Thorpe, D.R. (2010). Supermac: The Life of Harold Macmillan. Chatto & Windus.
External links
- Description of rodding at Frode Weierud’s CryptoCellar