Hugh Foss

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Hugh Rose Foss (13 May 1902 – 23 December 1971) was a British cryptographer. He was born in Kobe, Japan where his father was a missionary Bishop, and he learned Japanese. He was educated at Marlborough College and Christ's College, Cambridge.

He joined the Government Code and Cipher School in December 1924. He recalled seeing two models of the Enigma machine in 1926; the large non-reciprocal typing [B model], and the Small index [C model]. In 1927 Travis gave him a Small (reciprocal) machine to examine, and he wrote a paper The Reciprocal Enigma on solving the non-plugboard Enigma. The Small [C Model] Enigma was developed by the German services, and the standard WWII British Typex machine was also developed from it. In September 1934 Foss and Oliver Strachey broke the Japanese Naval Attachés cipher.

At Bletchley Park in WWII he was head of the Japanese Naval Section (Hut 7) from 1942 to 1943. He went to Washington in December 1944, and worked with U.S. Navy cryptographers on Japanese ciphers. A sandal-wearer, he was known as 'Lend-lease Jesus'. Gordon Welchman was told there he was highly esteemed by the Americans, and says that "before the war he was one of the most brilliant of the professional cryptographers of the Government Code and Cypher School".

His paper Reminiscences on Enigma (written in 1949) is included as Chapter 3 of Action this Day.

He retired from GCHQ in 1953, and died in St. John's Town of Dalry, Scotland in 1971.

[edit] References

• Dictionary of National Biography
• Action this Day edited by Michael Smith & Ralph Erskine (2001, Bantam London) ISBN 0593049101
• The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes by Gordon Welchman (1982, McGraw Hill USA & Allen Lane England) ISBN 0713912944