The Battle of the Atlantic: Allied Naval Intelligence in World War II


WAVES with High-Speed Bombe
U.S. Navy photograph in the collections of The Mariners' Museum

Women volunteers usually performed the arduous but strategically decisive work of solving enemy codes and ciphers during World War II. Advanced "high speed" versions of the computer-like Bombe machines were mass-produced in the United States under a contract with Bell Laboratories, General Electric, and the National Cash Register Company.