April 2018

Trivia: Cracking the Code

Mankind has been using codes since we could scrape images on cave walls. Through thousands of years, cryptology secrets were trusted to only a few, which were almost always men. Much of that changed during World War II when thousands of women served as cryptologists in the Army and Navy.

Which photo depicts a female cryptologist using the U.S. Navy Cryptanalytic Bombe, a device that would save countless lives during WWII?

This is the correct photo:

US Government courtesy of the National Cryptologic Museum

While many women entered the field of cryptology during World War I, some of the best known women cryptologists entered the profession post-war and were followed by thousands more during WWII. These women made history by serving our nation behind the veil of secrecy in the United States Army’s Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and in the United States Navy as Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

A major part of the WAVES’ job was building and operating the Navy Cryptanalytic Bombe, a 2.5 - ton electromechanical device developed to break the four-rotor enigma messages from German U-boats. Six hundred WAVES worked three eight-hour shifts, seven days a week at the National Cash Register Company (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio, where they learned how to solder and connect wires, read electrical diagrams, assemble rotors, and build 121 of these machines with no idea what they were building or why.




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