The 'N' word in the film 'Dambusters'.

[theclaud]

They have good credenzas

Moss-covered, three-handled family credenzas?

Yup I can't watch it now but I know the sketch. Likely to be an improvement on Fry's screenplay, I reckon.

 

[Black Sheep]

Exactly. I don't plan to watch 'U571'.

"Out of some 15 captures of Naval Enigma material during World War II, all but two were by the British – the Royal Canadian Navy captured U-774, and the U.S. Navy seized U-505 in June 1944. By this time the Allies were already reading Naval Enigma routinely...

...In 2006, screenwriter David Ayer admitted that U-571 distorted history and stated that he would not do it again. Ayer told BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme that he "did not feel good" about suggesting Americans captured the Naval Enigma cipher rather than the British"

Although I did enjoy 'Band of Brothers', an excellent and honest portrayal, it seemed to me.

The British government had bletchley park's equipment smashed and reccords burnt at the end of the war and sold the rights to claim to have broken the codes / invented the 'computer' to the Americans as they didn't want it being known, incase it all kicked off again, that we were capable of it.

word only got out because someone broke silence in the 90's before the official secrets act about it expired.

I'm more offended by the fact they remade the film at all! If they hadn't, it wouldn't be an issue.

Same with The Dukes of Hazard - no confederate flag on the General Lee...

It's like pulling down the statue of Lenin in Red Square after Russia adopted 'democracy.' Let's all pretend the past never happened.

BTW I used to fix Tornados on 617 Squadron in the mid-'80s...

Thought it did have in the film?
there were two films made, one (dukes of hazzard, the beginings) it did have / gained the flag as it's vital to part of the story-line, the one shown in cinemas might not have had the flag...

 

[PaulB]

Moss-covered, three-handled family credenzas?

No, you know,


1. That which entitles one to confidence, credit, or authority.2. credentials Evidence or testimonials concerning one's right to credit, confidence, or authority: The new ambassador presented her credentials to the president.tr.v. cre·den·tialed, cre·den·tial·ing, cre·den·tials Usage ProblemTo supply with credentials: "trained, professional, credentialed child care"
Credenzas!

 

[asterix]

The British government had bletchley park's equipment smashed and reccords burnt at the end of the war and sold the rights to claim to have broken the codes / invented the 'computer' to the Americans as they didn't want it being known, incase it all kicked off again, that we were capable of it.

word only got out because someone broke silence in the 90's before the official secrets act about it expired.






Thought it did have in the film?
there were two films made, one (dukes of hazzard, the beginings) it did have / gained the flag as it's vital to part of the story-line, the one shown in cinemas might not have had the flag...

My mother died in 1992 and left a load of documents which my father kept until his death in 2003. Have been looking at what's there this year and find my mother was a Y station operative at HMS Flowerdown when she'd always told us she was a VAD (which she was at the start of the war). Will be trotting down to Bletchley later this year to find out more.

There's also a load of letters from my aunt who was a missionary in Africa in the 40's and 50's. Some pretty interesting stuff about what went on from a brief glance.

 

[Flying_Monkey]

My mother died in 1992 and left a load of documents which my father kept until his death in 2003. Have been looking at what's there this year and find my mother was a Y station operative at HMS Flowerdown when she'd always told us she was a VAD (which she was at the start of the war). Will be trotting down to Bletchley later this year to find out more.

That's fascinating. Here's a relevant little excerpt from my PhD thesis that you might find interesting...

As a Naval Wireless Telegraphy (W/T) Receiving Station, Scarborough's job was what was then known as ‘Procedure Y’ work, covert interception of foreign radio signals, in this case intercepted by ships of the Royal Navy on active duty[1]. There was another Naval W/T station at Cleethorpes though this was apparently not used for ‘Y’ work, and one at Cambridge, as well as the central Naval Intelligence Division 25 (NID 25), located in Room 40, of the Admiralty Building, Whitehall[2]. The Cambridge site was closed at the end of WW1 and its functions transferred to Scarborough, which was for a time, the only Naval W/T site. Some time after WW1 two small stations at Stockton and Felixstowe were also set up, though Stockton closed and Felixstowe was moved to Pembroke in the 1920s. Finally by 1932 Pembroke’s functions were transferred to Flowerdown near Winchester, though the Pembroke site was again in use during WW2, while Scarborough continued to flourish.

Following the creation of the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) from the amalgamation of Room 40 and Military Intelligence 1i (b) in 1920, this organisation set up its own W/T Receiving Stations, but also continued to make use of Naval W/T stations which remained under Admiralty control despite the merger. Thus when new teleprinter services were installed in September 1935[3], they were linked via the Central Telegraph Office to GC&CS Headquarters, then at Queen Anne’s Gate, and only later to the Admiralty in Whitehall[4]. Up until this point most interceptions were still conveyed from the W/T Stations to London by General Post Office courier, which meant intercepts were twenty-four hours old by the time they reached GC&CS for interpretation[5]. The teleprinters were originally intended for emergency use only, this being the time of Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia and soon afterwards the Spanish Civil War, and even in 1937 it was envisaged that this new technology would “not be required in peace time”[6]. They were thus limited to year on year approval by the Treasury, although eventually, by 1939, they were put onto a more permanent basis.

In 1945, following expansion during the WW2 years, there were eight Admiralty W/T Stations[7]: Chicksands, in Bedfordshire, Cupar, near Fife; Flowerdown; Pembroke; Portrush; Scarborough; Shetland; and Sutton Valence; employing a total of 217 operators. Scarborough was still by far the largest Station in terms of personnel with 118, followed by Flowerdown with 66. However the Navy’s SIGINT operation, although larger than that of the Foreign Office, was still dwarfed by both the Army and the Royal Air Force operations; indeed two of the Navy’s sites, Sutton Valence and Chicksands Priory were simply small units within larger RAF Stations. Nigel West also mentions Leafield in Oxfordshire as an Admiralty site[8], though I can find no record of this in contemporary historical sources. He also lists Flowerdown as an Army Y service site. It is certain that Flowerdown did eventually become an army site - it is now occupied by the Army Training Regiment (Winchester) - however I have been unable to verify its status at this time. Naval operations certainly continued there until January 1960 when its functions were transferred to a brand new purpose-built site, HMS Forest Moor, near Harrogate in Yorkshire[9], which was also to serve as a back-up Naval Terminal Control Station should Whitehall (‘The Citadel’) be destroyed[10]. It seems that after this time Flowerdown continued as an outstation of the Composite Signals Organisation (CSO), a subsection of GCHQ, which was also used by the UK government as an official cover organisation name during the time when the existence of GCHQ was officially denied. Flowerdown ceased to operate as a CSOS in 1977[11].

[1] Clarke, W. F. (1945) GC&CS - Its foundation and development with specific reference to its naval side, in History of GCCS and Naval Section 1919-1945 Historical Notes and Memos. Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office, Kew.

[2] West, Nigel (1986) GCHQ: The Secret Wireless War, Weidenfield & Nicholson, London

[3] Memo from J. S. Barnes, Secretary, Admiralty to Under-Secretary, Foreign Office, 15th April 1936, Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office.

[4] Minutes of a meeting held at the GC&CS, 29th December 1937, Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office.

[5] Minute from Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), 30th August 1935, Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office.

[6] ibid.

[7] Tozer, Col. Nigel (c.1950) History of Military SIGINT with Special Reference to Interception and to War Office and Overseas Sites, Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office, Kew. All WW2 information in this paragraph from this source unless otherwise noted.

[8] West 1986 op cit.

[9] Notice of the Commissioning of HMS Forest Moor, January 1960, Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office.

[10] Minute from C. P. Mills, Director of Signal Division, Admiralty, 29th August 1955, Unpublished Papers, Public Record Office.

[11] Lanning, Hugh and Norton-Taylor, Richard (1991) A Conflict of Loyalties: GCHQ 1984-1991, New Clarion Press, Cheltenham.

 

[davefb]

The British government had bletchley park's equipment smashed and reccords burnt at the end of the war and sold the rights to claim to have broken the codes / invented the 'computer' to the Americans as they didn't want it being known, incase it all kicked off again, that we were capable of it.

word only got out because someone broke silence in the 90's before the official secrets act about it expired.

luckily the poles broke enigma and gave us the info, the subs had 'a better version'/lorenz that needed code books to break , it had more rotors........

or luckily the fact the germans would repeat the same info about weather and stuff...

i remember reading about colossus around 1980, which would agree with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra saying it was 1973 when it 'broke'

i also suspect that churchill had better new colossus at gchq when he smashed the ones at bletchley

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Nigger nigger nigger!!

There, said it.

 

[asterix]

FM, thanks for your extract and also the references. From what I can see even today it's still one of the more covert aspects of the war. (Flowerdown was certainly a Naval station in 1944/5 under a Naval commander. Anything that is left of it appears to be buried beneath a field!).

 

[asterix]

Nigger nigger nigger!!

There, said it.

You have indeed. Has anyone considered the possibility that Nigeria may well change its name to Digeria after the release of this film?

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

You have indeed. Has anyone considered the possibility that Nigeria may well change its name to Digeria after the release of this film?

Digeria?? it sounds like some sort of disease or scientific term. Actually, Niger might be better to be named Diger, although even that sounds a bit like a French relation of the Diggers in Fraggle Rock!

 

[dellzeqq]

Digger might be better because the Morse code for D is only one dot less than for N.

with filming costing a million dollars a minute of finished product, that's a tne thousand dollar saving!

 

[Yellow Fang]

Interestingly enough, I came across the word in an early sci-fi book called 'The Secret People' by John Wyndham (whose most famous book was Day of the Trifydds). It says, "I wouldn't like to be in Miguel's shoes when that nigger gets going." Miguel is the villain and the nigger is one of the good guys. John Wyndham was British and the book was written before the war. So I suppose that means the term wasn't so offensive here in those days.

 

[theclaud]

John Wyndham (whose most famous book was Day of the Trifydds)

Was that the little-known Welsh edition?

 

[Mr Phoebus]

Was that the little-known Welsh edition?

They mostly Dai in it.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Well actually, the original spelling was trifid. Tri meaning three and fid deriving from fidus, the Latin for divided (link)