Obituary: Mavis Batey

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-mavis-batey-8960761.html

By MARTIN CHILDS
independent.co.uk
24 November 2013

Mavis Batey was a garden historian and conservationist, but unknown to 
many until recently, was also one of the leading female Bletchley Park 
codebreakers whose skills in decoding the German Enigma ciphers proved 
decisive at various points of the war. On the outbreak of war she broke 
off her German studies to enlist as a nurse, but was told she would be 
more use as a linguist. She had hoped to be a Mata Hari-esque spy, 
seducing Prussian officers, but, she said, "I don’t think either my legs 
or my German were good enough, because they sent me to the Government Code 
& Cipher School."

Batey was the last of the Bletchley "break-in" experts – codebreakers who 
cracked new codes and ciphers. She unravelled the Enigma ciphers that led 
to victory in the Battle of Cape Matapan in 1941, the Navy’s first fleet 
action since Trafalgar, and played a key role in breaking the 
astonishingly complex Abwehr (German secret service) Enigma. Without this, 
the Double Cross deception plan which ensured the success of D-Day could 
not have gone ahead.

Born in Dulwich, south-east London, in 1921, Mavis Lilian Lever was the 
daughter of a postal worker and a seamstress. The family holidayed 
annually in Bournemouth, but on passing "O" Level German, she persuaded 
her parents to take her to the Rhineland, which was to spark her interest 
in the country. She was reading German romanticism at University College 
London when war broke out. Recruited to the government agency, she worked 
briefly in London checking the personal columns of The Times for coded 
messages. Having shown promise, she was sent to Bletchley Park to work 
with Alfred "Dilly" Knox, whose research unit led the way in breaking 
Enigma. When she arrived, he greeted her with the words, "Hello, we’re 
breaking machines. Have you got a pencil? Here, have a go." After his 
initial success with Enigma, Knox, the archetypal British eccentric, was 
working on new, and as yet uncracked, variants.

Batey began working on the updated Italian Naval Enigma machine, checking 
all new traffic and even the wheels, cogs and wiring to see how it was 
constructed. She reconstructed the wiring from the machine to discover a 
major machine flaw that helped her team break even more coded messages. 
"You had to work it all out yourself from scratch," she recalled, "but 
gained the ability to think laterally." In March 1941 she deciphered a 
message, "Today’s the day minus three," which told them that the Italian 
Navy was up to something.

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