On May 24, 1941, Britain and Germany fought a naval battle in the Danish Strait.
In this naval battle, the German battleship "Bismarck" relied on its superiority in firepower to sink the British battlecruiser "Hood" in only 6 minutes. At the same time, the British battleship Prince of Wales was severely damaged.
The news shook the British Admiralty. Churchill gave a stern order: at all costs, the "Bismarck" should be destroyed.
Within six hours of the sinking of the Hood, the Navy brought in 2 battleships, 1 aircraft carrier, 4 cruisers and 9 destroyers from the entire vast Atlantic Ocean to join the pursuit.
Unfortunately, in the vast sea, the "Bismarck" was lost.
The fighters were fleeting, and people were in a hurry.
Knox, the chief password cracker at The Sixth Division of the British Military Intelligence Agency, was diagnosed with cancer a year ago. Now he was very weak and in excruciating pain. Leaning back on his bed, he attacked with paper and pencil against the special code of the Bismarck.
After uninterrupted deciphering of bismarck's radio communications, an order from the German naval command was finally cracked: bismarck was instructed to advance at full speed to the naval base refuge in western France.
This vital information was immediately sent to the British Admiralty's Intelligence Operations Centre, which gave an approximate idea of the route the battleship would take to reach french ports.
On 26 May 1941, a reconnaissance plane spotted bismarck off the Bay of Biscay. The Ark Royal aircraft carrier immediately sent a torpedo aircraft to launch a fierce attack on the Bismarck.
The rudder on the Bismarck was hit by a torpedo. The battleship lost control and could only drive forward in a crooked manner.
The next morning, British warships swarmed around the Bismarck.
The battleships Rodney and King George V opened fire on it with a 406 mm main gun. Several shells weighing more than a ton landed on the Bismarck.
The top deck of the Bismarck became a purgatory. The explosion tore off people's clothes. The horribly wounded crew was screaming, and dead bodies were everywhere.
The heavy cruiser Dorset then rushed forward and fired three torpedoes in a row.
With a few loud noises, the giant ship, bismarck, which had been in service for less than a year, became a pile of smokey ruins and sank into the waves. Nearly 2,000 crew members, including the captain, were killed.
No one knows Knox's contribution to the naval battle better than Churchill. It was his efforts that enabled the Navy to find and eventually sink the giant ship.
For his great contribution to Britain in the development of the Supercode and the sinking of the Bismarck, Knox was awarded the Order of St. Michael and St. George by George VI.
A few months later, Alfred Knox died.