The Enigma machine was a cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor machines, comprising a variety of different models.

The Enigma was used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by the military and governmental services of a number of nations—most famously by Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

The German military model, the Wehrmacht Enigma, is the version most commonly discussed. The machine has gained notoriety because Allied cryptologists were able to decrypt a large number of messages that had been enciphered on the machine. Decryption was made in 1932 by Polish cryptographers Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski from Cipher Bureau. In mid-1939 reconstruction and decryption methods were delivered from Poland to Britain and France. The intelligence gained through this source, codenamed ULTRA, was a significant aid to the Allied war effort. The exact influence of ULTRA is debated, but a typical assessment is that the end of the European war was hastened by two years because of the decryption of German ciphers.

Although the Enigma cipher has cryptographic weaknesses, in practice it was only in combination with other significant factors (mistakes by operators, procedural flaws, an occasional captured machine or codebook) that Allied codebreakers were able to decipher messages

Acctually   the British captured 2 SS  U110  by H.M.S.BULLDOG and  another U 570 by an Lockheed Hudson aircraft. The  former  sank  but  not  before  the papers and I believe the  enigma machine had been taken off  and placed  abord DD H.M.S. BULLDOG . U 570  was  taken first to Iceland and   all the enigma  related   material taken off   . She  then went to sea as H.M.S. Graph  and  survived the war .

   Another  poster is also right . The Poles  did  give British inteligence   the enigma  machine  at the start of the war .Just as the Russians had passed on cypher books they captured in WW I. Though for the record  the enigma  system kept evolving

to the point that  some   were strictly naval, or army or  Luftwaffe orientated.

The thing which made the Milchkuhen so vulnerable was the vast amount of radio traffic required to make 2 subs RV in the vastness of the ocean.

Favourite was the destruction of the big Jap subs meeting up with the Germans to transfer strategic goods. I'll be posting on that topic shortly

another idiot with his head in the sand

One of the spin off's of the Egnigma was the design and building of the first working computer the collossos. The following article you will see mention the destruction of the machine after the. However one went to the US and was further developed out there.

 

Arnie

 

Max Newman, the famous mathematician devised an automated way to find the Lorenz machines settings. This involved having two loops of paper tape. The first contained the message to be decoded and the second contained the repeating pseudo random sequence. The idea was that each time the loop of tape containing the message was fed through the machine, the second tape was moved on by one position. In this way each possible setting was tested and a score recorded for each. The setting with the highest score was hopefully the one required for the 'Tunny' machine to decode the message.

TRE at Malvern were approached to develop a machine to implement the idea. This machine was based on mechanical relays and known as 'Robinson' (as in Heath Robinson). Although Robinson worked, it was unreliable. In particular the mechanical tape reader had problems keeping the two tapes in synchronisation at the operating speed of 1000 characters per second.

Newman, looking to solve the problems with Robinson was put in touch with Tommy Flowers, a talented electronics engineer working for the Post Office at Dollis Hill.

Tommy Flowers design solved the problems of Robinson in an innovative way. Rather than using paper tape to store the pseudo random sequence, Flowers replicated it electronically using a huge array of valves. This saved using two tapes and the synchronisation problems. The use of valves for digital switching was also a groundbreaking step which offered a huge increase in operating speed over mechanical relays (valves at the time were regarded by most as unreliable components used for amplifying analog signals.)

Design of Colossus started in March 1943 and the first unit was operational at Bletchley Park in Jan 1944. Colossus was immediately successful, the Colossus - Tunny combination allowed 'high grade' German codes to be decoded in hours. This proved immensely useful during the D-Day landings. The parallel design of Colossus made it incredibly fast even by today’s standards, a modern Pentium PC programmed to do the same decoding task took twice as long to break the code.

A total of 10 Colossi were built, the design being improved and upgraded throughout the rest of the war. These machines were used to decode tens of thousands of intercepted messages and made a huge contribution to the allied victory.

At the end of the war, to keep their existence secret the 10 Colossi were dismantled and all the technical drawings and diagrams were burned. Their existence was to remain a secret for nearly 30 years.

Arnie and Funk

 

A bit of light but true relief.

 

[edit] The Ian Fleming connection

The plan was developed by Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) which was a leading user of Ultra decrypts. Commander Ian Fleming, personal assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence (Admiral Godfrey) at the OIC, showed his talent for fantastical plots when he suggested the plan.

[edit] The plan

This was a plan to obtain a German codebook by crashing a captured German aeroplane into the English Channel, where the British crew could be rescued by a German minesweeper. The 'survivors' would then kill the German crew, and hijack the ship thus obtaining the Enigma equipment.

[edit] Outcome

It never actually happened, as on the day it was planned, there were no German ships in the Channel. Other sources say it developed glitches and so was never implemented.

 

Peter

Flash

 

The Royal Navy captured an enigma code book from a German weather station in the Artic. Below is thedescription of the operation by a matelot who was involved. Note the bit about the weather ships camouflage and the bit about not know the true object of the job.

 

arnie

 

THE ICEBURG

"The Navy were trying to locate a German Station providing weather and movement of shipping news to their own ships and submarines. I was on HMS Nigeria (a colony cruiser), and before getting under weigh we had a good idea of the general area in which the Weather Ship would be found but, immediately before the incident, it is most likely we simply 'came across' her. We were not at Action Stations, always triggered off by radar contact and often the result of locating floating debris, empty lifeboats and even whales! I was on deck as HMS Nigeria sailed into proximity to a large iceberg when I first saw an orange glow in the 'iceberg', followed by splashes of water in the sea near the stern of Nigeria. Almost with disbelief, I realised the iceberg had opened fire on us with enormously heavy guns, the spashes so clearly disturbing a perfectly calm sea - like a sheet of glass. At this point I could not see a ship. It was covered from stem to stern in white canvas. Together with our two destroyer escort we had located the German Weather Ship Lauenberg and it was June 1941. (Alfred only recently discovered that on the day a copy of the Enigma Code was taken from the Lauenberg by the boarding party from the destroyers. It was not the job of Nigeria to stop or to take prisoners.) Scuttling-charges sent the Lauenberg to the bottom. I well recall seeing two lifeboats packed with her crew being rowed away from their ship to the destroyer HMS Bedouin and internment."

Normal

 

Yes Montgomery di leave France via Dunkirk, but I think General Alexander was the last General to leave he left off the beach on the last day.

 

Later at Anzio which was wilting under German attacks the US General Clarke and Alexander were visiting. The Americans were suggesting that the landing fotrce should perhaps withdraw. Clarke told Alexander that if they didn't pull out their could be another Dunkirk. Alex replied rather sharply. 'I was at Dunkirk and this is nothing like that'.

 

The rest is history as they say.

 

Arnie

 

Arnie