A Lorenz SZ42 cipher machine on display at Bletchley Park museum
Wartime cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park who decoded the German high command’s vital ‘Tunny’ messages
One of the dwindling band of veterans of Bletchley Park who worked on the German “Lorenz” cipher, John Wright was a toiler at the coalface of intelligence gathering, deciphering encrypted German signals traffic at their highest level of command.
In early 1942, before Wright was diverted from the Royal Armoured Corps where he was a radio operator, the Lorenz cipher system — codenamed Tunny by the British code-breakers — had been cracked. The system was used to encrypt messages between the German Army HQ in Berlin and field commanders of huge forces on all the key battle fronts. The system could be used only by the most senior commanders and by Hitler himself.
Unlike the now better-known Enigma cipher machine, the Lorenz (pictured right) had 12 rotors, as distinct from Enigma’s three, and incorporated three levels of encryption. The system had proved impossible to break until August 1941, when a German operator requested a resend that provided the code-breakers with encrypted versions of the same message but with minor human error variations. After intensive work, these allowed them to break the code. Wright was a member of a 21-man and woman group working in three shifts to cover the 24 hours. Listening stations radioed the still encoded German teleprinter traffic to Bletchley Park where it would be decoded using the calculated German rotor settings of the day. Each message was then converted from five-symbol groups into German language before translation into English.
This work was exacting routine; yet those working on each process had to be alert to indications that a message related to a previous one or to any German operational decision or strategic deployment and give it priority attention. Speed was as important as precision, as the knowledge of enemy intentions could be of vital importance to Allied decision-making and counter action. As with all members of Bletchley Park staff, Wright had to undertake to keep secret the nature of his work, even after the war had ended.
After the close of hostilities in 1945 he joined what is now known as the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) that continued to monitor, decode and translate the radio and electronic communications traffic of various countries having interests that might be considered counter to those of the United Kingdom. As well as at the main base of GCHQ at Cheltenham, Wright worked for the organisation in Australia and the US.
After retirement he travelled abroad extensively, something that had been restricted during his service, and was active in the local Probus group of former professional and business persons of responsibility in the fields of commerce, industry and education in Gloucestershire.
Born in Southwark, the only son of Sam and Desdemona Wright, John Thomas Wright attended Kingston Day Commercial School. He is survived by his wife, Doreen, née Arthur, and a son and daughter.
John T. Wright, cryptanalyst, was born on May 5, 1924. He died on March 7, 2013, aged 88
Gilbert Turck
Офицер SOE, узник Бухенвальда и кавалер британского и французского Военного Креста
Turck: he was tortured by the Gestapo but gave nothing away and was sent naked in a truck to Buchenwald
French SOE agent who with his fiancée ran a secret escape group before being captured by the Gestapo
Before the Franco-German armistice of June 1940, Gilbert Turck had been a liaison officer of the French Deuxième (Intelligence) Bureau with Section D of the Foreign Office in London. Having escaped from France after the armistice, he joined the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was dispatched on an early SOE operation into Vichy-controlled France.
He and fellow SOE agent Jacques de Guélis were parachuted into central France on the night of August 6, 1941. De Guélis landed safely but Turck knocked himself out exiting the aircraft, landed in a quarry and recovered consciousness in the hands of the Vichy police. This was before the German occupation of the whole of France, so Pétain’s police were not yet in the Germans’ pocket. Those who arrested Turck released him accepting his story, that he had bribed the RAF to drop him back into France as he could not bear les Anglais.
On locating de Guélis, they headed for Marseilles, where Turck rented lodgings as his base for future operations. De Guélis passed the address on to SOE headquarters on his return to London.Turck had been instructed to sound out the Bergerac region for setting up a subversion and sabotage organisation and four sabotage instructors were dropped by parachute near Bergerac on the night of October 10. One, who had the address of the lodgings on his person, was captured. The Vichy police were able to arrest the other three when they called there to make contact with Turck.
Ten more agents were trapped in the same way before SOE in London realised that the address was compromised. Aware that Vichy police were hunting him, Turck crossed into the German-occupied zone of northern France and changed his alias to Georges Delanoe.
He took refuge in Paris with his fiancée and they took over the running of a commercial transport company, financed by Pierre de Vomécourt, head of the SOE Autogiro circuit, which was used to smuggle escapees from occupied France into the Vichy zone, and agents and sabotage materials in the opposite direction. When the Autogiro circuit was compromised and snuffed out, de Vomécourt did not reveal his association with Turck.
A too casually arranged meeting that proved to be a Gestapo trap led to Turck’s own arrest in July 1942. He gave away nothing about SOE under torture and was sent naked and starving on a three-day journey via cattle truck to Buchenwald concentration camp. There he spent 15 months before transfer to the Dora sub-camp, where he remained until the liberation.
Gilbert Charles Georges Turck was educated in Paris, studied engineering and was working as an industrial architect on the outbreak of war.
The arrest of the SOE agents at the Marseilles lodgings had led SOE headquarters to suspect him of treachery. Indeed, one agent caught there, George Bégué, after release at the war’s end asserted that Turck had met him outside the villa only seconds before his arrest. This led to Turck being interrogated by British intelligence, but he was exonerated as it was surmised that the individual who met Bégué had been a Vichy policeman of similar build to Turck, who could have passed for him in the evening light. Turck then rejoined the French Army and received the MC. He was also appointed to the Legion of Honour and received the Croix de Guerre.
On return to civilian life he resumed work as an architect and undertook the restoration of the château at Le Frestoy-Vaux, in the Oise where he followed his father as the mayor.
He is survived by his wife, Christa, and a son and daughter.
Gilbert Turck, MC, veteran of the SOE, was born on September 3, 1911. He died on December 11, 2012, aged 101
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