WORLD WAR II

Communications Intelligence

Table of Contents

MAGIC was the "compartmentation code assigned to Japanese diplomatic traffic that was intercepted by American intelligence as a result of the breaking of Purple, the Japanese diplomatic code, in 1940." O'Toole, Encyclopedia, p. 285.

Beginning in 1940, the British designated as "Ultra" the material being recovered from the German Enigma machine. Winterbotham, The Ultra Spy, p. 202. Later, the term was applied to "all intelligence recovered from cryptanalysis, regardless of its national origin.... Thus ULTRA came to include the American MAGIC, the U.S. designation for intercepts of Japanese diplomatic communications." Sexton, Signals Intelligence in World War II, p. xxiii.

See Gilman McDonald [CDR/USNR (Ret.)], "About ULTRA: Fact and Fiction," Intelligencer 14, no. 2 (Winter/Spring 2005): 113-117 (with editorial additions, 117-120), for the argument that the term ULTRA was simply a security classification or label applied to the U.S. Top Secret or above the British Most Secret.

Reference Materials

U.S.-U.K. Cooperation:

A - B

C - O

P - Z

Materials on MAGIC:

William F. Friedman

A - C

D - K

L - R

S - Z

The Chicago Tribune, Midway, and MAGIC

Materials on ULTRA

Return to Main Table of Contents

Return to WWII Table of Contents

Return to Cryptography Table of Contents