Филлип Милнер Барри: шахматист, криптограф и государственный деятель

British codebreaker, civil servant, and chess player

Sir Philip Stuart Milner Barry (20 September 1906 – 25 March 1995) was a British chess player, chess writer, World War II codebreaker and civil servant. He represented England in chess both before and after World War II. He worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, and was head of "Hut 6", a section responsible for deciphering messages which had been encrypted using the German Enigma machine. He was one of four leading codebreakers at Bletchley to petition the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill directly for more resources for their work. After the war he worked in the Treasury, and later administered the British honours system. In chess, he represented England in international tournaments, and lent his name to four opening variations.

Born in Hendon, London, Philip Stuart was the second of six children to a schoolteacher, Edward Leopold Milner Barry, who died in 1917, and his wife, Edith Mary. His grandfather was William Besant, a mathematical fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. His older sister, Alda Milner Barry, worked for MI1b during World War One and went on to be Professor of German at University College Galway and vice principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. A talented chess player, Milner Barry won the first British Boys' Championship in 1923. He was a pupil at Cheltenham College, and won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained firsts in classics and moral sciences. Between 1929 and 1938 he was a city stockbroker, although he was unhappy with the work. From 1938, he was the chess correspondent for The Times, succeeded in 1945 by Harry Golombek. This places him at a solid Grandmaster standard, although he never received this title. He reached as high as No. 65 in the world between June and August 1941, according to Chessmetrics, which ranks historical chess performances retrospectively, using modern algorithms. He represented England in chess, and played in the international Chess Olympiads of 1937 and 1939. The latter tournament, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, coincided with Britain's declaration of war on Germany in September 1939. Milner Barry, with teammates who included Hugh Alexander (at that time the British chess champion) and Harry Golombek, abandoned the tournament unfinished, and returned to Britain. His full Olympiad results are listed later in the article.

Upon their return, all three soon joined the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. Milner Barry was recruited by mathematician Gordon Welchman, who had been his contemporary at Trinity College; Arriving in early 1940, he joined Welchman's "Hut 6" section, whose task was to solve the Enigma cipher machine as used by the German Army and Air Force. Nonetheless, with his knowledge of the German language, he made a study of the decrypts and found that they contained stereotyped patterns and forms of address that could be exploited as "cribs" – reliable guesses for the plain language message that matched a given piece of encrypted text. Finding reliable cribs was a critical task for Hut 6, as Enigma was broken primarily with the aid of "bombes", large electromechanical machines which automatically searched for parts of the correct settings. Bombes were reliant on a suitable crib in order to succeed. In autumn 1940, Milner Barry was put in charge of the "Crib Room". He was billeted with Alexander, who was working in Hut 8, the counterpart to Hut 6 working on German Naval Enigma. Their close friendship let them easily resolve the competing needs of their sections for the limited available bombe time. By October 1941, he was deputy head of Hut 6 under Welchman. At this time, Bletchley Park was experiencing a shortage of clerical staff which was delaying the work on Enigma, and the management of GCCS appeared unable to obtain the resources needed. This affected both Hut 6 and Hut 8, which was run by mathematician Alan Turing with Hugh Alexander as his deputy. Together, Welchman, Milner Barry, Turing and Alexander bypassed the chain of command and wrote a memorandum directly to the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, outlining their difficulties. Within a month their needs were being met. He remained in charge until the end of the war, presiding over a number of technical challenges presented by the introduction of extra security devices to the German Enigma, including the Enigma Uhr and a rewireable "reflector" rotor.

In 1985, Milner Barry fiercely defended the reputation of Gordon Welchman, who had come under posthumous criticism for publishing details about the wartime work of Hut 6. He died on 25 March 1995 in Lewisham Hospital, London. There is a conference room named after him at the Civil Service Club, 13 – 15 Great Scotland Yard, London SW1A 2HJ.