were always in and out of the big room, R.R. and M.R. and it was perfectly obvious all the time that work was being used.
Time Checks.
19. It was essential that there should be no unnecessary delays in handling of the traffic either by us or by sections servicing us. The only way it was possible to improve times and find out the causes or delays was by time stamping the traffic at each of its stages and analysing the results. Vague general complaints merely produced acrimonious arguments - people quite genuinely do not believe that they are being unduly slow and everyone blames delays on everyone else. Once figures are produced (the first lot usually horrify everybody!) action gets taken and almost immediate improvement results. We halved the time from Scarborough to Hut 8 and halved the time of traffic through the hut simply by discovering what was really happening. When we started time checks the average times were about an hour from time of intercept at Scarborough to receipt in Hut 8 and about 40 minutes through the hut; the Scarborough average went down to 25 minutes and the time through the hut to 15 - 20 minutes.
Use of Printed Forms.
20. We had quite a large number of printed forms of various kinds all of which justified their existence over and over again. It is almost impossible to have too many forms - any written work however simple done in a standard way is worth a form of its own. The total effect of labour saving devices of this kind was very great.
21. In fact the sort of things that make for efficiency in an operational cryptographic section are very much the same as in a business organization. The idea is to get business efficiency while preserving the atmosphere of a cooperative enterprise voluntarily undertaken for its own sake.
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