At Bletchley Park, Alan Turing was assigned to Hut 8, the section responsible for attacking German naval Enigma messages. He arrived at Britain’s wartime codebreaking centre in 1939 and took responsibility for the especially difficult naval problem.
Hut 8 developed methods for working out the settings of Kriegsmarine Enigma machines. Turing created Banburismus, a statistical technique that helped reduce the number of possible rotor settings that had to be tested by electromechanical bombes. His work was part of a larger team effort involving mathematicians, cryptanalysts, clerical staff, and machine operators.
The hut number can be confusing because Bletchley’s sections had different assignments. Hut 6 worked primarily on Army and Air Force Enigma, while Hut 3 handled intelligence analysis and translation for much of the non-naval traffic. Naval Enigma decrypts from Hut 8 were passed to Hut 4 for translation and naval intelligence work. The designation remained “Hut 8” even after the section moved into Block D.