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From: scw@locus.ucla.edu (Stephen C Woods)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Subject: Re: Military funding in maths
Message-ID: <3257@curly.ucla-cs.UCLA.EDU>
Date: Tue, 2-Dec-86 13:48:52 EST
Article-I.D.: curly.3257
Posted: Tue Dec  2 13:48:52 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 2-Dec-86 22:04:16 EST
References: <307@stracs.cs.strath.ac.uk> <2274@mtgzz.UUCP> <344@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <354@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> <191@spectrix.UUCP>
Reply-To: scw@LOCUS.UCLA.EDU (Stephen C Woods)
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Lines: 62

<leeper>==<2274@mtgzz.UUCP> leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (Evelyn Leeper?)
<weemba>==<344@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU(Matthew P Wiener)
<desj>== <354@cartan.Berkeley.EDU> desj@brahms (David desJardins)
<clewis>==<191@spectrix.UUCP> clewis@spectrix.UUCP (Chris Lewis)

<leeper> ...Cryptography did NOT turn the tide in WWII...

<weemba>Nonsense.  Cryptography *was* the tide, major battle after battle, from
<weemba>Britain to El Alemain to Ardennes II to Stalingrad to Kursk to Midway to
<weemba>Leyte Gulf.   Read Hinsley et al for starts before spouting off like the
<weemba>above.

<desj>   I agree cryptography and intelligence are of great importance, but I
<desj>think it is ridiculous to claim that the Axis would have won the war if
<desj>they had [...] in June 1941 when Germany invaded
<desj>Russia (if not sooner); from that point on they didn't have a chance.

<clewis>... you cannot base any claims for who won/lost the war for any one
<clewis>reason.  If Stalin [...] Atlantic.  If ULTRA hadn't worked
<clewis>as well as it did, the Battle of Britain would have been lost.  Or,
<clewis>there would have been more Coventrys.  Or, without the unbelieveable
<clewis>courage of the RAF pilots...  Or, [...] would have lasted longer.
<clewis>Or, if Hitler had started operation "Sea Lion" he might have won.  Or
<clewis>not (I've seen in depth analysis done by various strategic planners -
<clewis>from both AXIS and ALLIED commands - done in the 50's I think, that
<clewis>said that it wouldn't have worked after all).  And so on, and so on....

For a comprehensive analysis of the Battle of Britian (and a fairly close look
at "Sea Lion") I highly recomend Len Deighton's 'Fighter' (ISBN 0-586-04611-9).
In essense he says that The German Navy was NOT prepaired to support ANY
landings unless they would be unopposed, and that the plans issues were more
staff studies than real invasion plans (typical invasion plans are about
the size of an encyclopedia).

On a different subject, according to Deighton (and contrary to popular belief):

'  It was an act of faith to send the jamming signals into the ether,
not knowing how effective where these countermeasures. And yet on the
night of 14-15 November there came a horrifying indication of what was
being achieved; it was one that the experts would readily have forgone.
An error in the adjustment of the modulation made it relatively easy to
distinguish the sound of the signal from the sound of the jamming(1).
KGr 100 put over 1,000 incendiaries precisely onto Coventry to lead
three separate streams of bombers there with high explosive.'

and this footnote.

'(1)In spite of recient nonsense written about Churchill and the Enigma
machine, this technical error was the sole reason that the German
attack was so successful.'

Having read several (!) books about the state of the RAF nightfighter
force in WWII, I can see no way that they could have interferred
effectivly (if at all) with a raid of this size at that time, even if
they had had extremly precise information as to the exact routing and
timeing of the attacking force they probably could not have attacked
more than 5% of the involved aircraft.

<scw>

Stephen C. Woods; UCLA SEASNET; 2567 BH;LA CA 90024; (213)-825-8614
UUCP: ...!{inhp4,ucbvax,{hao!cepu}}!ucla-cs!scw  ARPA:scw@locus.UCLA.EDU