Magic was Americas twin to Ultra, it was the USA version of Britain’s wartime code breaking machines Colossus and the Bombe.

The first code breaking  success happened in August of 1940, that was quickly followed the complete text of a message on the 25th September 1940, the U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Service had broken the Japanese diplomatic code. This paved the way for American intelligence to fight a secret war from their own land.

This reputedly occurred after the deciphering of Japanese intentions about Pear Harbour. There has been a conspiracy theory leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbour that claimed President Franklin Roosevelt knew about the attack because of intercepts by MAGIC, but withheld it until after it was all over, ensuring America’s reluctant entrance into the War.

Messages sent from the Japanese Embassy in Berlin by Oshima Hiroshi, Japan's ambassador to Berlin during World War II, had been fully decoded by the Americans and sent off to Washington, providing a source of information for the Allies on German activities.

By late 1940 US Government cryptonaligists had decoded some of the Japanese foreign offices highest-grade messages.

The fact that there was a memorandum from "C" (Admiral Sinclair) makes it clear that in 1940 the US was told of the existence of both Colossus and the Bombe. In January of 1941 a team of American intelligence officers paid a visit to Bletchley Park to see this mysterious machine called The Bombe and a computer called Colossus.

Prescott Currier from the USA was one of the team members as he said at the time, “that the trip was a great success. Even though we did not in fact bring back an Enigma, we brought back all the information we really wanted and there was never any question that anyone was holding anything from us."

This exchange of information continued all through the War, even to the extent that the construction and working of the Bombe was made available to the US military intelligence to enable them to construct their own.

Alan Turing paid a visit to the USA in December 1942 to the National Cash Register company in Dayton, where the U.S. Navy's Bombe project was underway ,.  He went to inspect the construction of some 10 Bombe machines that the US were making from British designs.

It was this exchange of information that kept British and American ahead of the Axis powers in intelligence gathering