At Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Barnard: Craig Bauer and John Ulrich, “The Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” Cryptologia 30, no. 4 (2006): 306–339. RG 38, Box 113, “CNSG-A History of OP-20-3-GR, 7 Dec 1941–2 Sep 1945,” says that the first year, cooperating schools were Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, and Goucher. Vassar was “under consideration” but does not seem to have cooperated that year. The second year, Vassar and Wheaton were added.
If pressed, they could say: Bauer and Ulrich, “Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” 310.
In their introductory meetings: Kurtz, “An Alumna Remembers”; Kurtz, “From Women at War to Foreign Affairs Scholar”; Bauer and Ulrich, “Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” 310.
They hid homework under desk blotters: Carpenter and Dowse, “Code Breakers of 1942.”
At Goucher, it was an English professor—Ola Winslow: Frederic O. Musser, “Ultra vs Enigma: Goucher’s Top Secret Contribution to Victory in Europe in World War II,” Goucher Quarterly 70, no. 2 (1992): 4–7; Janice M. Benario, “Top Secret Ultra,” Classical Bulletin 74, no. 1 (1998): 31–33; Robert Edward Lewand, “Secret Keeping 101: Dr. Janice Martin Benario and the Women’s College Connection to ULTRA,” Cryptologia 35, no. 1 (2010): 42–46; Frederic O. Musser, The History of Goucher College, 1930–1985 (London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 40, https://archive.org/details/historyofgoucher00muss.
One of the most well-liked students in the Goucher class: Ida Jane Meadows Gallagher, “The Secret Life of Frances Steen Suddeth Josephson,” The Key (Fall 1996): 26–30; Fran Josephson, uncut interview with South Carolina Educational Television conducted for a DVD called South Carolina’s Greatest Generation.
At Vassar, nestled in the hills: Edith Reynolds White, naval code breaker, interview at her home in Williamsburg, Virginia, on February 8, 2016.
At first, the Army approached some of the same colleges: RG 38, Box 113, “CNSG-A History of OP-20-3-GR, 7 Dec 1941–2 Sep 1945.”
At Indiana State Teachers College: Dorothy Ramale, Arlington Hall and naval code breaker, interviews at her home in Springfield, Virginia, on May 29 and July 12, 2015.
The Army dispatched handsome officers: Dr. Solomon Kullback, oral history interview on August 26, 1982, NSA-OH-17-82, 72; Ann Caracristi, Arlington Hall code breaker, interviews at her home in Washington, D.C., between November 2014 and November 2015.
And so it was that on a Saturday: Dorothy Braden Bruce, Arlington Hall code breaker, interviews at her home near Richmond, Virginia, between June 2014 and April 2017; Personnel Record Folder for War Department Civilian Employee (201) file: “Bruce, Dorothy B., 11 June 1920 Also: Braden, Dorothy V., B-720,” National Personnel Records Center, National Archives, St. Louis, MO.
Introduction: “Your Country Needs You, Young Ladies”
Listening in on enemy conversations: David Kahn talks about the intelligence uses of code breaking in many of his writings, including “Pearl Harbor and the Inadequacy of Cryptanalysis,” Cryptologia 15, no. 4 (1991): 273–294, DOI: 10.1080/0161-119191865948.
The chain of events that led to the women’s recruitment: The naval recruiting program, the meetings between the college leaders, and the letters from Comstock, Safford, Noyes, and Menzel are described in Craig Bauer and John Ulrich, “The Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” Cryptologia 30 (2006): 306–339. The repository of many of these letters, which I also consulted, is Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library, “Office of the President Correspondence and Papers: 1941–42, Harvard-NA, II, Ser. 2,” Box 57: 520–529, “National Broadcasting—Naval Communications.”
Even before Comstock received: Virginia C. Gildersleeve, “We Need Trained Brains,” New York Times, March 29, 1942; “Women’s College Speed Up,” New York Herald Tribune, January 24, 1942.
The women’s college leaders met at Mount Holyoke: Bauer and Ulrich, “Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” 306. Radcliffe, “National Broadcasting—Naval Communications.”
Most were in the top 10 percent: Bauer and Ulrich, 313.
(A memo from a Radcliffe administrator explaining: Radcliffe, “National Broadcasting—Naval Communications.”
The chosen women not only were cautioned: Bauer and Ulrich, 310.
Pembroke, the women’s college affiliated with Brown University: RG 38, Box 113, “CNSG-A History of OP-20-3-GR, 7 Dec 1941–2 Sep 1945.”
There was controversy over whether the course: Bauer and Ulrich, “Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” 312. Radcliffe, “National Broadcasting—Naval Communications.”
He added that, in the Navy’s view: Bauer and Ulrich, “Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” 311.
By mid-April 1942, Donald Menzel: Ibid., 312.
The women were told that just: Ann White describes this in Mary Carpenter and Betty Paul Dowse, “The Code Breakers of 1942,” Wellesley (Winter 2000): 26–30. Many other women described it as well.
“Whether women can take it over successfully”: Bauer and Ulrich, “Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel,” 310. Radcliffe, “National Broadcasting—Naval Communications.”
The women recruits were entering an environment: Robert Louis Benson, A History of U.S. Communications Intelligence During World War II: Policy and Administration (Washington, DC: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 1997), provides invaluable background on the wartime competition between the Army, Navy, and any number of other federal agencies. Also see RG 38, Box 109, “Resume of Development of American COMINT Organization, 15 Jan 1945.” There is also an excellent discussion of the Army-Navy competition in Stephen Budiansky, Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 87.
“Nobody cooperated with the Army, under pain of death”: Prescott Currier, oral history interview on November 14, 1980, NSA-OH-38-80, 37.
One British liaison described: Budiansky, Battle of Wits, 296.
In the field of astronomy, women long had been employed: Patricia Clark Kenschaft, Change Is Possible: Stories of Women and Minorities in Mathematics (Providence: American Mathematical Society, 2005), 32–38.
“It was generally believed”: Ann Caracristi, “Women in Cryptology” speech presented at NSA, April 6, 1998.
“The women who gathered together in our world”: Ann Caracristi, interview, undated, Library of Congress Veterans History Project, https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/loc.natlib.afc2001001.30844/transcript?ID=mv0001.
“Don’t worry, you’ll always have enough”: Jeanne Hammond, interview at her home in Scarborough, Maine, on September 30, 2015.
Edith Reynolds, recruited out of Vassar: Edith Reynolds White, naval code breaker, interview with the author.
Suzanne Harpole, a Wellesley code breaker: Suzanne Harpole Embree, naval code breaker, interview at the Cosmos Club in Washington, D.C., on August 11, 2015.
“Come at once; we could use you in Washington”: Jeuel Bannister Esmacher, Arlington Hall code breaker, interview at her home in Anderson, South Carolina, on November 21, 2015.
“Nothing had been filed”: Jaenn Coz Bailey, oral history interview on January 13, 2000, WV0141.