SECRET IN BUILDING 26: The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-Boat Enigma Codes, THE

Sea Power, Jul 2004 by Munns, David W

THE SECRET IN BUILDING 26: The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-Boat Enigma Codes by Jim DeBrosse and Colin Burke, New York, N. Y.: Random House, April 2004. 272 pp. $26.95 ISBN: 0-375-50807-4

In 1942, the German Navy added a fourth rotor to the design of its Enigma code machine, further confounding Allied intelligence efforts to crack the seemingly indecipherable military communications code. As a result, American intelligence was solicited to shed light on the advanced Enigma code that European, specifically British, intelligence was unable to handle alone.

Joseph Desch was the head of electrical research at the National Cash Register (NCR) in Dayton, Ohio, when fourth-rotor panic ensued. On behalf of the U.S. Navy, he went to work with British intelligence at its code centers in Bletchley Park, England, to solve the code. The work eventually led him back to Dayton, and Building 26.

After 50 years of pledged secrecy by the NCR, Desch's dramatic role in this crucial period of military intelligence is finally recorded in The secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of America's War Against the U-Boat Enigma Codes by writers Jim DeBrosse and Colin Burke.

As one passage notes, Desch was impatient with his staff and the complexities of the code for obvious reasons: "What Desch couldn't tell his staff, and what had been pointed out to him repeatedly by his own Navy supervisors, was that too many ships were going down, too many men were dying at sea, while the team failed to produce a working code-busting machine that had been promised for delivery to the Navy three months before" in March 1943. Aside from pressure for the NCR's code-breaking efforts to help win the Battle of the Atlantic, Desch struggled with the even heavier pressure of scrutiny of his history as the son of a German immigrant mother.

Building 26, itself, was "hidden in plain sight: a nondescript glass-and-panel box of a building standing four stories high, flanked by parking lots and set far enough from the busy intersection [in Dayton, Ohio] ... that few motorists even notice it." Although this seemingly innocuous building still stands, few realize the tension infused with its mission nearly a half-century ago. Desch's efforts were constantly stifled, not just by the initial lack of British cooperation, but by a malcontented member of his own team, James Montgomery, who tried to divulge the team's secrets and progress to Axis leadership.

When German improvements to their naval Enigma machines pushed British code-breaking methods and machines beyond their limits, a crash program was begun at NCR. The result was a state-of-the-art, 2-1/2-ton code-breaking machine called "Bombe." As the head of the development of Bombe, Desch led nearly 1,000 people in the effort and suffered tremendous pressure that eventually leading to his nervous breakdown.

His hardship and brilliance is thoroughly documented in The Secret in Building 26, a vivid, thrilling expose addressing the frantic effort to crack this insidious, yet revered, naval code. This book is the first of its kind to address the personal lives of the NCR's leadership and to do so in a manner that is entertaining, gut-wrenching and conveys, in many ways, the true timeliness of Bombe's invention. Desch ultimately was recognized as an important patriot, who received the Congressional Medal of Merit for his efforts, the highest honor awarded to a civilian, despite even his own daughter being unaware of his valiant contribution to his country, and the world, at his death.