Fish (cryptography)

Fish (sometimes FISH) was the UK's GC&CS Bletchley Park codename for any of several German teleprinter stream ciphers used during World War II. Enciphered teleprinter traffic was used between German High Command and Army Group commanders in the field, so its intelligence value (Ultra) was of the highest strategic value to the Allies. This traffic normally passed over landlines, but as German forces extended their geographic reach beyond western Europe, they had to resort to wireless transmission.

In June 1941, the British "Y" wireless intercept stations, as well as receiving Enigma-enciphered Morse code traffic, started to receive non-Morse traffic which was initially called NoMo. NoMo1 was a German army link between Berlin and Athens, and NoMo2 a temporary air force link between Berlin and Königsberg. The parallel Enigma-enciphered link to NoMo2, which was being read by Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, revealed that the Germans called the wireless teleprinter transmission systems "Sägefisch" (sawfish), so the name "Fish" was adopted for this traffic. The enciphering/deciphering equipment was called a Geheimschreiber (secret writer) which, like Enigma, used a symmetrical substitution alphabet. The teleprinter code used was the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2)—Murray's modification of the 5-bit Baudot code.

When the Germans invaded Russia, during World War II, they began to use a new type of enciphered transmission between central headquarters and headquarters in the field. The transmissions were known as Fish at Bletchley Park. The German army used Fish for communications between the highest authorities in Berlin and the high-ranking officials of the German Army on the field. The Fish traffic which the personnel at Bletchley Park intercepted, contained discussions, orders, situation reports and many more details about the intentions of the German Army. However, these transmissions were so challenging to decrypt that even with the assistance of decryption machines, such as Colossus, the messages could not be read until several days later. “Vital intelligence was obtained about Hitler’s intentions in the run up to D-Day 1944.”

...
Wikipedia