Ultra

Allied intelligence project that, in tapping the very highest-level communications among the armed forces of Germany and Japan, contributed to the Allied victory in World War II. In the early 1930s Polish cryptographers first broke the code of Germany's cipher machine Enigma.

In 1939 they turned their information over to the Allies, and Britain established the Ultra project at Bletchley Park to intercept and decipher Enigma messages. The Japanese also had a modified version of the Enigma, known as “Purple” by the Americans, who were able to duplicate it well before Pearl Harbor. The intercept of signals helped Allied forces win the Battle of Britain and the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway and led to the destruction of a large part of the German forces following the Allied landing in Normandy.