20120205

Intercepted conversations - Bell Labs A-3 Speech scrambler and German codebreakers

One of the most interesting codebreaking successes for the German side ,during WWII ,was the solution of the American A-3 speech scrambling device. This system was used in the radio-telephone link between Washington-London throughout the war. Up to summer 1943 it was the only speech privacy system employed on this link. From then on the new SIGSALY device entered service and carried the top secret conversations.

The efforts of Post Office engineer Kurt Vetterlein have been mentioned in numerous books, so that part of the story is well known. However there was also another team under the Army Ordnance, Development and Testing Group, Signal Branch - Wa Pruef 7 which successfully solved the A-3 system.

As far as I know the work of this second team has not been mentioned in any book or article.

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