The Newmanry History

39D Page 296

Decoding Resources consisted of a Supervisor; 13 machines 10 operators and 3

The Supervisor registered messages to be decoded, and issued them to

Operators needed to be touch-typists and to be able to recognise P and to be

In the later stages, tape decoding was introduced. It was found to be much

Rewrites of poor or unreliable cipher text could be obtained through the

In the early days decoding had to be interrupted for short periods while

The number of machines steadily increased to the final total of 13 and

The Cribs Watch was created, to read decoded material "en passant", and

Its duties were:

(i) To pick out possible retransmissions from incomplete decodes still on
the machines, to assist operators in correcting breakdowns by suggesting
probable clear text, and to expedite the issue of particularly urgent
messages.

(ii) To check the general accuracy of completed decodes, and to route the
different messages found in each decode, to the appropriate actions.

(iii) Later, to reread the duplicate copy of each decode (returned from Room
12) with the object of marking any information of interest to Sixta and of
informing Mr.Page's section of any possible cribs.

(iv) To sort amended and typed decodes from Hut 3 and extract and file
examples of routine messages for the benefit of Room 41.

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