1. Wilhelm Tranow was born on 1891 and was a German cryptanalyst, who before and during World War II worked in the monitoring service of the German Navy and was responsible for breaking a number of encrypted radio communication systems, particularly the Naval Cypher, which was used by the British Admiralty for encrypting operational signals and the Naval Code for encrypting administrative signals.
The American historian David Kahn underscored the war-historical significance of this cryptography and cryptanalysis success of Wilhelm Tranow, citing an anonymous source:.
Wilhelm Tranow initially worked as a radio technician aboard the battleship Pommern.
Wilhelm Tranow, who was interested in codes and cryptology, broke the encipherment on the coded messages and forwarded the broken message back to fleet HQ.
On 28 April 1919, a new agency was created in Berlin, with eight former cryptographers, Wilhelm Tranow being one of them.
In late 1919, Wilhelm Tranow reconstructed Britain's enormous Government Telegraph Code which was used by the Admiralty to carry reports about warships.
The Kriegsmarine reconsidered their position and allowed Wilhelm Tranow to continue, in violation of Hitler's order.
Wilhelm Tranow's growing influence and the increasing importance of his specialty ensured his rise within B-Dienst and eventually, sometime after 1936 he was charged with running the complete cryptanalyst section, even though he was not a Nazi.
At the start of the war, Wilhelm Tranow knew the locations of all the major Fleet Forces.
Wilhelm Tranow started working on Naval Cypher No 1 in 1938 and by spring 1940, Wilhelm Tranow's work on British Naval Cypher No 1 had progressed sufficiently well, that B-Dienst was able to read everything of importance in the lead up to Operation Stratford and with messages revealing plans for the Anglo-French expedition against Norway under the cover name Operation Stratford.
The breaking of the cypher enabled Wilhelm Tranow to read the bulk of British naval traffic until 20 August 1940, when British Naval Cipher No 2 was introduced.
From September 1941, Wilhelm Tranow reconstructed the codebook of Naval Cipher No 2.
Later in 1942, Wilhelm Tranow compromised the British and Allied Merchants Ships code.
In March 1942, the capture of a Naval Cipher No 4 codebook from a merchant vessel in northern waters enabled Wilhelm Tranow to make limited penetrations of British Naval Cipher No 4 by October 1942.