Talk:Ultra (cryptography)

Harris
The reference to Sir Arthur Harris of RAF Bomber Command, though it correctly relates what Frederick Taylor says in his book about Dresden, is misleading. The only result of Harris's objections to the bombing campaign against German oil plants (as a non-Ultra, he could not know how effective these attacks really were) was his tetchy correspondence on the subject with the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal, which was a kind of bureaucratic insurance in case the oil plan didn't work. It does not mean that Harris failed to bomb the oil plants or dragged his feet in any way. He was a military officer and he obeyed orders. His orders were to continue with 'area bombing' of cities and also to attack, among other things, oil plants, so he did. The 3,000 heavy bombers of US Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces dropped about 48,000 tons on oil plants. The 1,000 heavies of Harris's command dropped some 64,000 tons, about 30 per cent more -- the oil plan was an American idea in the first place, but Harris carried out most of it. Khamba Tendal (talk) 13:32, 15 July 2017 (UTC)


 * In some well-publicised cases of the USAAF bombing an oil target Harris' crews then bombed that same target the following night.


 * That same Ultra information that Harris was not privy to was informing the UKG what was, and what wasn't hurting the Nazi war effort, and if area bombing had been as ineffective as has since been claimed, Ultra would have revealed this, and the area bombing offensive would have been halted. It wasn't. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.50.176 (talk) 09:33, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Another Turing
https://dailygalaxy.com/2018/09/x-y-z-polish-codebreakers-paved-way-for-alan-turing-to-decrypt-enigma-todays-planet-earth-report/ Xx236 (talk) 14:21, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

MkUltra
The name MKUltra comes from Ultra, in reference, specifically, to it's extreme secretiveness. I therefore object to Trekphiler's revision, /especially their off-hand dismissive comment in so performing.Slarty1 (talk) 20:06, 11 June 2019 (UTC)
 * You've missed the point of the page, which you evidently didn't read. MKUltra is a psywar project having nothing to do with crypto. As such, it has no relevance here. Coincidence doesn't get it (& I shouldn't even waste time answering this, actually, it's so clear).  TREKphiler  any time you're ready, Uhura  09:28, 12 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Wow dude! I don't see it.  The argument might not b as strong as I'd like, but I think the argument could b made that the fact that MKUltra litterally got the ultra part of it's name from Ultra, is a notable link.  We might have to take this arg to the next level.Slarty1 (talk) 21:44, 13 June 2019 (UTC)
 * If it were in a section on 'influence' that gave the context of 'this is how the project's name has been used since,' it might belong on this page. But I think listing it among articles that have much more substantial ties is not warranted. The interest is more the other direction, Ultra appears to be more important to MkUltra than the other way around. --John (User:Jwy/talk) 15:35, 14 June 2019 (UTC)
 * If there were more than coincidence in naming, I might agree. What's the history of the selection of the naming of the MKUltra program? Was it chosen as an "ultra secret" project? (Which is peripherally related, but no more.) Or was it a product of the name-selection process, like Igloo White? (That makes it obviously unrelated.) If you can't tell the difference between sigint & psywar, you really have no business adding the link in the first place.  TREKphiler  any time you're ready, Uhura  04:06, 15 June 2019 (UTC)

1962 public reference
In "Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision" (Stanford University Press, 1962, page 173) Roberta Wohlstetter wrote:

"In 1941 there were only four of them [US Army reproductions of the Japanese PURPLE machine] in existence. The Army and Navy each had one machine in Washington; one had been sent to Cavite in the Philippines and was manned by Fleet Intelligence officers from the 16th Naval District, and a fourth had been sent to Great Britain in return for the keys and machines necessary to decode German codes and ciphers."

This is clearly an early reference to Ultra, but I'm not sure whether it counts as a public disclosure of any secrets; it does not mention Enigma or Ultra by name, and by 1962 it could not have been a secret that all of the WWII combatants were trying to read the others' communications. 24.170.225.153 (talk) 17:00, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 18 November 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Moved per consensus that there is no primary topic. (closed by non-admin page mover) BegbertBiggs (talk) 23:27, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

– Long overdue non-primary topic. Past discussions include (2006),  (2011 RM), and  (2011). Pageviews (PT1) won out in the 2011 RM, with some handwaving about significance (PT2). But pageviews are not so conclusive these days: when compared to just the single topic of Ultra (Depeche Mode album), |Ultra_(Depeche_Mode_album) the results are increasingly mixed, and when including other topics often referred to as simply "Ultra", there's |Ultra_Music_Festival|Ultras|Ultra_(Depeche_Mode_album)|Ultra_Series definitely no winner. There was no previous attempt to demonstrate long-term significance; in fact the intelligence project may have it as a proper noun (searches like "Ultra began", "Ultra became" mostly show this subject in Scholar), though tech uses are popular in more recent news results, and the prefix just has so many other uses. (But again, pageviews are the thrust of the request—and they show this is not more likely [sought] than all the other topics combined.) Hameltion (talk &#124; contribs) 21:11, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Ultra → Ultra (cryptography)
 * Ultra (disambiguation) → Ultra


 * Pinging active users from past discussions: Hameltion (talk &#124; contribs) 21:13, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Support. Page views, incoming links and search results all suggest that there is no primary topic for this term. Certes (talk) 23:01, 18 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Support, page views and the only "Ultra (... band)" under the disambiguation.  dxneo  (talk) 23:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. Cryptography topic may narrowly have long-term significance, but page views are too mixed. Not conclusive enough for a primary topic. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 23:37, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. --TedColes (talk) 08:58, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. Excellent and compelling analysis by nom. Andrewa (talk) 09:17, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * WikiNav for Ultra indicates that about ~10k of incoming views here last month, and a scattering to 71 outgoing destinations, which is quite a lot of apparent organic interest in this topic. The hatnote is still pretty high at #4, with 207 identified clickstreams (~2%). Mass views for disambiguation indicates a vague picture like the links above. Since the plural is already split off, and we disambiguate other common words like mega or extreme, we could give disambiguation a try here. Later we should check if the navigation outcomes have improved, after a few months time when the traffic patterns settle. --Joy (talk) 11:12, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't think pageviews tell the whole story here, since "ultra" is a common prefix for which we (rightly) don't have an article. I suspect there's a decent chance that people looking it up are actually looking for a definition rather than any one encyclopedic topic. I think the principle of least surprise points toward the dab page in this case.  Powers T 14:43, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Although Wikipedia is not a dictionary, giving the title to the dab has the advantage of presenting a handy Wiktionary box at the top of the page. Certes (talk) 16:55, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Support, clearly not the primary topic. J I P  &#124; Talk 16:18, 19 November 2023 (UTC)