The Wizard war

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1. wrsSep 2024
   I’m traveling so can’t look on the shelf, but off the top of my head I’d recommend The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945, R. V. Jones, 1978.
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2. joezydecoApr 2019
   There's lots more in The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939-1945 by R.V. Jones.

   https://www.amazon.com/Wizard-War-Scientific-Intelligence-19...

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3. MattHeardMay 2014
   > In his 1974 book The Ultra Secret, Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham asserted that the British government had advance warning of the attack from Ultra: intercepted German radio messages encrypted with the Enigma cipher machine and decoded by British cryptoanalysts at Bletchley Park. He further claimed that Winston Churchill ordered that no defensive measures should be taken to protect Coventry, lest the Germans suspect that their cipher had been broken.[1] Winterbotham was a key figure for Ultra; he supervised the "Special Liaison Officers" who delivered Ultra material to field commanders.[2]

   > However, Winterbotham's claim has been rejected by other Ultra participants and by historians. They state that while Churchill was indeed aware that a major bombing raid would take place, no one knew what the target would be.[3][4]

   > Peter Calvocoressi was head of the Air Section at Bletchley Park, which translated and analysed all deciphered Luftwaffe messages. He wrote "Ultra never mentioned Coventry... Churchill, so far from pondering whether to save Coventry or safeguard Ultra, was under the impression that the raid was to be on London."[5]

   > Scientist R. V. Jones, who led the British side in the Battle of the Beams, wrote that "Enigma signals to the X-beam stations were not broken in time," and that he was unaware that Coventry was the intended target. Furthermore, a technical mistake caused jamming countermeasures to be ineffective. Jones also noted that Churchill returned to London that afternoon, which indicated that Churchill believed that London was the likely target for the raid.[6]

   Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coventry_Blitz#Coventry_and_Ul...

   References:

   1. Winterbotham, F. W. The Ultra Secret, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974 ISBN 0-297-76832-8; also London, Futura, 1975, ISBN 0-86007-268-1

   2. Ray, John, "The Night Blitz", Cassel & Co 1996, ISBN 0-304-35676-X p. 155

   3. "Defending Coventry" (http://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/blitz/defend-cov.php). Historic Coventry.

   4. Hunt, David (28 August 1976), "The raid on Coventry", The Times: 11

   5. Calvocoressi, Peter (1981). Top Secret Ultra. New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 85–86. ISBN 0-345-30069-6.

   6. Jones, R. V. (1978). Most Secret War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–1945. London: Hamilton. p. 149. ISBN 0-241-89746-7. This book was also published in the US under the title The Wizard War.

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4. hgaAug 2010
   One issue is that a lot of this wasn't declassified until long after the initial histories were written. Winston Churchill's fantastic multi-volume history makes no mention of ULTRA and I recall that a lot of the engineering stuff was only declassified in the '70s.

   I remember well searching for the book The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence, 1939-1945 (http://www.amazon.com/Wizard-War-Scientific-Intelligence-193...) in the summer of 1978, the year it came out (the library hadn't yet gotten its copy).

   I'm almost finished reading a UK printing of The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (http://www.amazon.com/Deceivers-Allied-Military-Deception-Se...) which was first published in 2005 and it comments that a lot of its material was only recently declassified. Prior to it the only detailed history was the bit known as The Man Who Never Was: World War II's Boldest Counter-Intelligence Operation (http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Never-Was-Counter-Intelligence...) from the '50s, which wildly overstates the importance this particular bit of deception used for the invasion of Sicily. It was one of many pieces which in total achieved complete success, but it and they don't hold a candle in "boldness" to FORTITUDE SOUTH and QUICKSILVER (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude) which convinced Hitler and most of the Wehrmacht high command for well over a month that the Normandy landing was only a feint.

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