Hugh Foss

Hugh Rose Foss (13 May 1902 – 23 December 1971) was a British

and headed the section tasked with breaking Japanese Naval codes.

Early life and education

Foss was born in Kobe, Japan, one of five children of the Rt Revd Hugh Foss, Bishop of Osaka and his wife Janet Ovans. As a child of a missionary family stationed in Japan he developed fluency in Japanese from an early age.

Foss was later educated at Marlborough College and graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge in 1924.

Foss's elder brother Charles Calveley Foss was awarded the Victoria Cross in the First World War.

Career as a cryptanalyst

In December 1924 he joined the

]

At Bletchley Park in World War II, Foss headed the Japanese Naval Section (Hut 7) from 1942 to 1943. In December 1944 he went to Washington and worked with U.S. Navy cryptographers on Japanese ciphers. A sandal-wearer, he was known as "Lend-lease Jesus". Gordon Welchman was told that Foss was highly esteemed by the Americans, and says that "before the war he was one of the most brilliant of the professional cryptographers of the Government Code and Cypher School".

Foss' paper "Reminiscences on Enigma", written in 1949, is included as chapter 3 in Action this Day.

Deviser of Scottish Country Dances

Foss devised many Scottish country dances, including Fugal Fergus, John McAlpin, Polharrow Burn and The Wee Cooper o'Fife.^[2] He published several volumes of these from his own imprint, Glendarroch Press.^[3]

Later life

Foss retired from GCHQ in 1953 to live at Glendarroch in

, Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland. He died in 1971 and is buried with his wife Alison in Dalry Kirkyard.

Notes and references

Sources

• Dictionary of National Biography
• Erskine, Ralph;
  ISBN 978-1-84954-078-0
  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 978-0-947712-34-1
  New edition updated with an addendum consisting of a 1986 paper written by Welchman that corrects his misapprehensions in the 1982 edition.