Check Point 10: HYDRA Building
Communication Centre/ Residence
COMPLETE FOR REWARDS.
A unique features of Camp X was Hydra, a highly sophisticated telecommunications
One of the unique features of Camp X was Hydra, a highly sophisticated telecommunications relay station[7] established in May 1942 by engineer Benjamin deForest Bayly. Bayly was the assistant director, with British army rank of lieutenant colonel.[25] He also invented a very fast offline, one-time tape cipher machine for coding/decoding telegraph transmissions labelled the Rockex or "Telekrypton". The book Inside Camp X indicates that the facility was located on Lake Ontario, 30 miles across from the U.S., because it was an ideal location for receiving radio communications from Europe and South America via the U.S. The camp was an appropriate location for the safe transfer of code due to the topography of the land; it was also an excellent site for picking up radio signals from the United Kingdom. A news article also indicates that "HAM Operators at Camp X used transmitters to send and receive coded messages from Britain behind enemy lines".[14] Hydra sent and received Allied radio (including telegraph) signals from around the world. The Government of Canada later stated that Hydra provided "an essential tactical and strategic component of the larger Allied radio network, secret information was transmitted securely to and from Canada, Great Britain, other Commonwealth countries and the United States".[26] The Hydra station was valuable for both coding and decoding information in relative safety from the prying ears of German radio observers and Nazi detection.[7] Hydra also had direct access via land lines to Ottawa, New York City and Washington, D.C. for telegraph and telephone communications.[7] The main transmitter was previously used as that of American AM station WCAU's shortwave sibling W3XAU, and upon severance of W3XAU in 1941, the transmitter was refurbished and became the transmitter for Hydra. Other radio apparatus was purchased discreetly from amateur radio enthusiasts, brought to the building in pieces and assembled on site.[27] After use by the Canadian Forces during the Cold War, the transmitter was scrapped in 1969.
Rockex, or Telekrypton, was an offline one-time tape Vernam cipher machine
Known to have been used by Britain and Canada from 1943.[1] It was developed by Canadian electrical engineer Benjamin deForest Bayly, working during the war for British Security Coordination.[2] Rockex equipment "Rockex" was named after the Rockefeller Center,[3] together with the tradition for naming British cipher equipment with the suffix "-ex" (e.g. Typex). In 1944 an improved Rockex II first appeared.[3] There were also a Mark III and Mark V. After the war it was used by British consulates and embassies until 1973, although a few continued in use until the mid-1980s.[4] After WW2 the Rockex machines and the code tapes were manufactured in great secrecy under the control of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, at a small factory at Number 4 Chester Road, Borehamwood on the northern outskirts of London. To minimise the number of people who knew about the process, MI6's head of communications, Brigadier Sir Richard Gambier-Parry, took out a personal lease on the factory buildings and employed people through the local labour exchange as an entirely private venture ostensibly unconnected with the government. The end product was then sold to the government departments that used the machines. This was not discovered by the UK Treasury until 1951 who were most concerned that no form of financial auditing had ever been exercised over the organisation. The Treasury officials were eventually convinced that the factory needed to be treated as a special case and they allowed it to continue privately but with a special arrangement for top secret auditing
Camp X History Tour
Mission Tour : QR Check Points