From 1941 to 1945 the United States with its Allies, faced active war fronts in Europe, North Africa, and across the Pacific Ocean into Western Asia.

The battles were intense. However, there were “top secret” behind-the-scenes efforts that hastened the war toward an Allied victory.

Operation Neptune – The English

Channel

On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, the joint Allied Command began what was known as Operation Neptune (D-Day) invading the German-occupied French shores of Normandy. With military history, this is known as the largest seaborne invasion ever undertaken.

The invasion was comprised of 160,000 troops, nearly 12,000 aircraft, and 7,000 sea vessels designed to conquer a 50-mile shoreline which led to multiple inland conquests.

This massive military effort was activated by an important factor – the weather.

Hundreds of miles away from the English Channel was Maureen Flavin Sweeney who resided in northwest Ireland as a 21-year-old postal clerk. Part of her career responsibilities were to gather and report the weather. There were no weather satellites nor computer models at this time. Just basic equipment and her observations.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Allied military leaders set their sights for the D-Day invasion to be on Monday, June 5. The moon would be full and the tides favorable.

Through military intelligence, Sweeney was secretly and quietly brought into invasion preparations. She began gathering weather forecasts and reporting them every six hours. As the fifth drew closer, reports on every hour. Stormy and rainy weather was destined for the Channel on the fifth.

Her weather expertise switched the invasion to the sixth where the skies cleared and the seas were calmer.

The casualties for the Allies and Germany were horrific. However, this invasion established the footprint to win the war on the European front.

Sweeney passed away this past Dec. 17 at 100 years of age.

P.O. Box 1142 – Alexandria, Va.

Just across the Potomac River is northern Virginia. Approximately seven miles inland toward Alexandria lies what was formerly farmland owned by George Washington.

Established in the 1920s, by the then, War Department, was Fort Hunt. The campus was a military training site and into the 1930s was used by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Directly after Japan’s Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor the War Department took full command of Fort Hunt as a domestic East Coast military intelligence center.

The War Department identified Fort Hunt solely as P.O. Box 1142.

The complex was comprised of 87 temporary and permanent structures. The highly classified campus had three missions. The first was a temporary detention center where strategic interrogation of high-value POWs was conducted by the U.S. Army and Navy intelligence. The second program was an escape and evasion (E&E) program, which instructed servicemen before their European deployment on E&E methods and provided them with devices to help to evade capture or to escape if captured. The third program was a military intelligence research service.

During the facility’s 1942 to 1945 years of operation, 3,451 German military POWS and scientists were interrogated by Americans fluent in the German language. For the most part, the prisoners were comprised of high-level German military members, such as submarine and field commanders, as well as spymasters.

Documents revealed torture was never used. Rather, through relationship building, the use of probing questions. One former military member stated, “Information was extracted through a battle of wits.” This acquired information guided hundreds of well-directed air, sea, and land strikes upon the Germans.

Another technique utilized was to have Americans dressed in Russian uniforms appear. Interrogators stated if you do not provide us with information, we will send you to the Russian military.

Operation Paperclip was conducted at P.O. Box 1142 where German scientists provided in-depth information on their technological advancements in areas such as jet propulsion, rocket development, and naval and land-based weaponry. This valuable information carried over into America’s cold war with the Soviets.

The E&E program offered significant training for the Army Air Corps. They provided flight crews with hidden detailed escape maps to follow if they were shot down. Also, they were provided with uniform buttons with a hidden compass. Captured American military members were able to direct correspondence to P. O. Box 1142. In several instances, their coded messages helped ground troops locate them and escape.

When the war concluded the complex was torn down and bulldozed. In 1948 the property was turned over to the National Park Service. The Park Service was not aware of the top-secret use of this property until the early 2000s when documents were unsealed.

Building 26 – Dayton, Ohio

As World War II’s conflict increased, especially with sea transporting personnel and weapons, the British, Americans, Canadians, and Allies were confronted with Germany’s Enigma devices. These machines directed difficult to decipher coded messages to their submarine fleet.

The British developed a code-breaking machine called the Bombe which could “crack” the Germans’ three-rotor Enigma machine. However, when the Germans developed a four-rotor system, the British Bombe could no longer decipher the coded transmissions.

America’s War Department reached out to Dayton, Ohio’s National Cash Register (NCR) scientist and mathematician, Joesph R. Desch. He offered a background in designing and implementing devices such as an electronic calculator.

The course of the war with Germany would change because of Desch’s research being conducted in NCR’s building number 26.

Along with military intelligence, select NCR personnel, Navy officers and enlisted, as well as 300 plus female WAVES, the top-secret project was to create a Bombe to break Germany’s four-rotor Enigma device.

NCR had opened Building 26 intending to serve as a night school for its employees. It contained steel-reinforced concrete floors, high ceilings, and wide hallways. This design made it possible for workers to move the 2.5-ton wheeled Bombes along the production line. The building contained 23 classrooms – later used to compartmentalize work on the Bombes – and windows of glass brick which allowed light to enter workspaces but kept outsiders from seeing inside activities. Each room had a locked door which allowed individual rooms to be guarded.

Desch never saw an Enigma machine nor understood how it worked. It was a research project which began with numerous major challenges.

A 2016 Dayton Daily News account stated for security purposes a Naval officer resided at Desch’s residence and was always by his side. In addition, Desch also undertook preliminary research to break the Japanese codes.

The news account went on to reveal Desch was emotionally and mentally challenged by the fact that Bombe will acquire information which will kill thousands. But still end the war.

In 1947, in a secret ceremony, President Harry Truman presented Desch with the Presidential Medal of Merit, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Desch passed in 1987.

In the late 1990s unsealed top-secret accounts and documents revealed of the 120 U.S. Bombe machines produced, 119 were disassembled and buried. One unit remains and is on display at Fort Meade Maryland’s National Cryptologic Museum.

Jeffrey D. Brasie is a retired health care CEO. He frequently writes historic feature stories and op-eds for various Michigan newspapers. As a Vietnam-era veteran, he served in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Naval Reserve. He served on the public affairs staff of the secretary of the Navy. He grew up in Alpena and resides in suburban Detroit.