11 Facts About John Tiltman

John Tiltman joined the British Army in August 1914, initially with the London Scottish Regiment, and saw service at the front during World War I with the 6th Battalion King's Own Scottish Borderers.

John Tiltman won the Military Cross for bravery at The Third Battle of the Scarpe in May 1917, where he was severely wounded.

John Tiltman was seconded to MI1 shortly before it merged with Room 40.

John Tiltman worked with a modest group of people and was involved in directing interception and traffic analysis as well as working on cyphers; he said he was exceptionally lucky to have this experience in other branches of Signals Intelligence.

John Tiltman was an early and persistent advocate of British cooperation with the United States in cryptology.

John Tiltman's advocacy helped achieve smooth relations during World War II.

John Tiltman became Senior GCHQ Liaison Officer at the Army Security Agency from 1949 to 1954.

In 1951 John Tiltman met William Friedman, one of the leading scholars involved in the attempt to decipher the mysterious Voynich manuscript.

John Tiltman undertook an analysis of the ancient manuscript himself, and then in the 1970s he assigned an NSA cryptanalyst named Mary D'Imperio to take over the Voynich crypto-analysis, when Friedman's health began becoming a challenge.

John Tiltman made the transition from the manual ciphers of the early 20th century to the sophisticated machine systems of the latter half of the century; he was one of a very few who were able to do so.

On 1 September 2004, John Tiltman was inducted into the "NSA Hall of Honor", the first non-US citizen to be recognised in that way.