Author(s): Phil Shanahan

Espionage | World War II

The capture of the Enigma codes helped shorten the Second World War by at least a year. Churchill took a special interest in the information that came out of Bletchley Park's Station X and he guarded his contact well so that the Germans would never find out the source.Without the quick actions of three men from HMS Petard, who clambered aboard a sinking German U-boat, the codes might never have been broken. On the night of 30 October 1942, First Lieutenant Tony Fasson, accompanied by Able Seaman Colin Grazier and Tommy Brown, climbed aboard U-559. Passing codebooks up through the hatch, Fasson and Grazier were caught aboard the sub as she suddenly sank. Brown was saved, along with the code books, and the rest, they say, is history...It wasn't until 1969 that the men were mentioned for their work in rescuing the Enigma codes, and even then it was in the comic "The Hornet". Phil Shanahan tells the extraordinary story of the three men who saved countless Allied lives and shortened the war by a year, as well as the efforts to recognise their bravery.