The Post Office Guy Who Helped Pick D-Day

[POSTMAN]

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Interesting...


Tommy Flowers, who built the world's first electronic computer, Colossus, was developing the idea of an electronic telephone exchange for the Post Office when World War II broke out.



Alan Turing asked Flowers to work at Bletchley Park. Flowers was asked to devise a machine to break a new teletype-based German code which was more complex than Enigma.

Flowers proposed a machine using 1800 vacuum tubes. The management wouldn't back it, but suggested Flowers build it himself which he did. The machine was called Colossus.

Colossus was ready on June 2nd 1944. On June 5th 1944, Colossus decoded an intercepted German message which showed that Hitler thought the preparations for D-Day were a feint and ordered that no more troops should be sent to Normandy.

The decoded message was handed to Dwight Eisenhower. After reading it, Eisenhower said: ""We go tomorrow."

[Thorby Bislam]

D-Day was originally planned for June 4th but was delayed 2 days by bad weather and rough seas.