Operation Lucid

[edwin astill]

Working on my late father-in law's papers and have letters sent from an old ship-mate refering to their part in Operation Lucid (they were on MASB 55) - 1940. Sentence reads "Weather vibration made chart reading v. difficult and it took three of us to hold the Syco-machine to enable sparks to decypher." The "Syco" bit is unclear....... was this the name of the gadget, and anyone know what it did?

Thanks

Edwin

[steve roberts]

Hi Edwin.I know that the Poles had captured a German Enigma Code machine in 1939,but not the code books to enable us to read their signals.Perhaps this garbled word refers to some kind of Encryption Device based on Enigma,that we were trying out? A Long shot I know,but probably one of our "Sparks" on the forum would have a better idea about it.
Regards Steve.

[navalis]

The RN used a machine encryption device known as 'Typex'.

See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typex

[emason]

Working on my late father-in law's papers and have letters sent from an old ship-mate refering to their part in Operation Lucid (they were on MASB 55) - 1940. Sentence reads "Weather vibration made chart reading v. difficult and it took three of us to hold the Syco-machine to enable sparks to decypher." The "Syco" bit is unclear....... was this the name of the gadget, and anyone know what it did?
Edwin

SYKO was a low-grade British Air Force code and Aircraft Movement code. Others include COFOX, MEDOX, FOXO and LOXO. SYKO required a special machine of movable alphabets. It was quite compact and carried in a case about the size of a small suitcase.

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