Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II

by Liza Mundy

After the war, the U.S. Army and Navy code-breaking operations merged to become what is now the National Security Agency. It was women who helped found the field of clandestine eavesdropping—much bigger and more controversial now than it was then—and it was women in many cases who shaped the early culture of the NSA.

The women were brought in to free men to go forth and, potentially, die. Yet the work they were doing was intended to ensure that those men lived.

That women were considered better suited for code-breaking work—as the letter that Rear Admiral Noyes sent to Ada Comstock suggested—wasn’t a compliment. To the contrary. What this meant was that women were considered better equipped for boring work that required close attention to detail rather than leaps of genius.

One of the best code-breaking assets is a good memory, and the only thing better than one person with a good memory is a lot of people with good memories.

In 1942, only about 4 percent of American women had completed four years of college.

It was not easy being a smart girl in the 1940s. People thought you were annoying.

It was a rare moment in American history—unprecedented—when educated women were not only wanted but competed for.

One electrical company asked for twenty female engineers from Goucher, with the added request, “Select beautiful ones for we don’t want them on our hands after the war.”

The Axis powers never mobilized their women to the extent that the Allies did. Japan and Germany were highly traditional cultures, and women were not pressed into wartime service in the same way, not for code breaking or other high-level purposes.

Through their brainwork, the women had an impact on the fighting that went on. This is an important truth, and it is one that often has been overlooked.

This means that of the Army’s 10,500-person-strong code-breaking force, nearly 70 percent was female. Similarly, at the war’s outset the U.S. Navy had a few hundred code breakers, stationed mostly in Washington but also in Hawaii and the Philippines. By 1945, there were 5,000 naval code breakers stationed in Washington, and about the same number serving overseas. At least 80 percent of the Navy’s domestic code breakers—some 4,000—were female. Thus, out of about 20,000 total American code breakers during the war, some 11,000 were women.

He stated, “I believe that our cryptographers… in the war with Japan did as much to bring that war to a successful and early conclusion as any other group of men.” That more than half of these “cryptographers” were women was nowhere mentioned.

Code breaking required literacy, numeracy, care, creativity, painstaking attention to detail, a good memory, and a willingness to hazard guesses. It required a tolerance for drudgery and a boundless reserve of energy and optimism. A reliable aptitude test had yet to be developed.

was Barnard’s Elizabeth Reynard who came up with the acronym WAVES—Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service—and every word was chosen with care. “Volunteer” assured the public that women were not being drafted, and “emergency,” as Gildersleeve characterized the strategy, “will comfort the older admirals, because it implies that we’re only a temporary crisis and won’t be around for keeps.”

she joked that the attitude of her male colleagues was like that of the eighty-eighth psalm: “Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves.”

A number of code breakers admitted that the Mainbocher uniform was one reason they enlisted; some felt it was the most flattering piece of clothing they ever owned. Others chose the Navy over the Army because they preferred the classic Navy blue over the drab khaki that was the fate of the WACs. The Army women even had to wear khaki bras and girdles, which the WAVES thought was hilarious. In true competitive-service fashion, Navy women felt superior in being able to wear their own underwear.