| Hugh Foss |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT HUGH FOSS | |
| 1902 births | |
| foss, hugh | |
| 1971 deaths | |
| cryptographers | |
| pre-computer cryptographers | |
| people associated with bletchley park | |
| alumni of christs college, cambridge | |
| old marlburians | |
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He joined the Government Code And Cipher School in December 1924. He recalled seeing two models of Enigma in 1926; the large non-reciprocal typing model , and the Small index model . In 1927 Travis gave him a Small (reciprocal) machine to examine, and he wrote a paper ''The Reciprocal Enigma'' on solving the non-plugboard Enigma. The Small Model Enigma was developed by the German services, and the standard WWII British Typex machine was also developed from it. In September 1934 Foss and Oliver Strachey broke the Japanese Naval Attachés cipher. At Bletchley Park in WWII he was head of the Japanese Naval Section (Hut 7) from 1942 to 1943. He went to Washington in December 1944, and worked with U.S. Navy cryptographers on Japanese ciphers. A sandal-wearer, he was known as 'Lend-lease Jesus'. Gordon Welchman was told there he was highly esteemed by the Americans, and says that "before the war he was one of the most brilliant of the professional cryptographers of the Government Code and Cypher School". His paper ''Reminiscences on Enigma'' (written in 1949) is included as Chapter 3 of ''Action this Day''. He retired from GCHQ in 1953, and died in Dalry, Scotland in 1971. REFERENCES
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