American Production
"Woman Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) handles a National Cash Register N-530 Bombe decryption machine used for decoding German Kriegsmarine naval cyphers encoded with their 4-rotor Enigma machine." Jan. 1944.
Source: www.nationalmuseum.af.mil
Although the British were able to decrypt Axis communications using Bombe machines, Britain’s machines alone were not enough to make a significant impact on the war. The responsibility to mass produce Bombe machines fell to America. With multiple machines working simultaneously, thousands of messages were decoded each day, vastly improving the amount and quality of intelligence gained. This intelligence was so important that it was given its own classification: Ultra.
“The American bombe was in its essentials the same as the English bombe though it functioned rather better as they were not handicapped by having to make it, as Keen was forced to do owing to production difficulties, on the framework of a 3 wheel machine. By late autumn [1943] new American machines were coming into action at the rate of about 2 a week, the ultimate total being in the region of 125”
- A. P. Mahon, codebreaker at Bletchley Park during WWII
“Of course when the Americans came into the war in December '41 we had already begun some development of a cryptanalytical partnership with them, and when they came into the war that partnership became almost so complete as to constitute a single joint cryptanalytical effort.”
-Sir Harry Hinsley, codebreaker at Bletchley Park during WWII
Ultra