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WW2 Hero Who Captured Enigma For Allies Has Died (express.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: Breaking the Enigma code is rightfully assessed to have significantly shortened World War Two by as much as two years. The genius of Alan Turing played a large role in building on the early successes of Polish mathematicians in continuing to pry messages out from Enigmas encryption. But Turing's genius might very well have counted for naught had it not been for the actions of Lieutenant-Commander David Balme, Royal Navy. On May 9, 1941, Lt-Cmdr Balme led a boarding party from the destroyer HMS Bulldog across freezing waters to storm Nazi U-boat U-110 where they seized the submarine's Enigma encryption device, along with the documents containing the top secret settings and procedures for sending messages. Under the greatest secrecy the Enigma and the accompanying documents were taken to Bletchley Park where they paved the way for breakthroughs in the efforts to defeat Enigma. Lt-Cmdr Balme was presented with a Bletchley badge and a certificate signed by British Prime Minister David Cameron in March. Local MP Dr. Julian Lewis said of him, "He played a crucial role in the winning of the Battle of the Atlantic at a very young age and I am proud to have counted him as a friend."
given his age and the fact he is white.
U just know you're a coward, based on your name and the time of your post.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Truly an enigmatic hero.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
It's just how they be.
given his age and the fact he is white.
U just know you're a coward, based on your name and the time of your post.
Don't you mean, "...based on ur name and the time of ur post?"
And old white men have ruined the earth!
I would bet money that the parent poster would not DARE to even think about picking up a weapon and Serving His Country.
This guy actually did something harder He Fought Without a Gun (okay so he was with folks with guns but..)
You're welcome, it is pretty neat. I got the early notice for TFS and I worked on that for the last three hours.
Itz how dey b
And never change their minds. Never change their minds.
Winner makes history.
The last members of the non-whining generation are slowly dying away
Ageist bastard! Just because he was old doesn't make him a bigot like you! You are guilty of the same discrimination you ascribe to him!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
But ...... Hollywood told me it was Americans who captured the Enigma machine. Surely the filmmakers would never lie about something so important as this?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Everybody knows that it was the USA that captured the Enigma machine. I saw the movie.
No I don't but I do know contrary to what Hollywood claimed he wasn't American,
There is a good article that discusses the capture and the wider circumstances here (note the author's name).
OPERATION PRIMROSE - The Story of the Capture of the Enigma Cypher Machine from U11O by David Balme
An excerpt:
The capture of U110 and the Enigma machine was the greatest kept secret of the war. It was expunged from the official Naval records and only a few persons in the Allied war effort were informed that the German Navy cyphers were being broken. The information obtained was, of course, given to all necessary commands, but the source was kept camouflaged. In fact, even after the war when Captain Roskill, the official Naval war historian, came to write the history of the war at sea, he found no mention of it in the records. . . .
That evening, of the 9th May 1941 the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, signalled Baker-Cresswell: "Hearty congratulations. The petals of your flower are of rare beauty". When David Balme, who led the boarding-party from HMS Bulldog, went to Buckingham Palace to receive the Distinguished Service Cross he had earned in the action, His Majesty King George VI remarked, according to Roskill, that the operation was the most important single event in the whole war at sea.
It had been intended that the capture of the Enigma was never going to be divulged, but when the Blunt/Philby spy ring was broken in the 1950s, it was found that information of the Enigma had been given to the Russians as the spies had been working in British Intelligence and another spy, Cairncross, had worked at Bletchley.
As Britain's allies, the Russians had been given information relative to their theatre of war, but the source had remained camouflaged, as it was to other recipients. It is interesting to note that the information which Blunt/Philby gave to the Russians on the enigma did not leak out to the Germans. Subsequently, the records were released under the normal thirty-year rule and are now available from the Government Archives at Kew to anyone of any nationality.
In 1981 the German Sunday paper, Bild am Sonntag, ran a serial on the Battle of the Atlantic. The editor interviewed David Balme, the Boarding Officer, and Dönitz. When Dönitz was told how the British captured the Enigma from U110 and had used it, he would not believe it, forty years after the event. Dönitz died still not believing it.
Historians writing today state that the enigma probably shortened the war by two years. As things turned out, that is probably a fair assessment, but in May 1941, Britain was losing the war in the Atlantic and North Africa. The enigma from U110 saved her from defeat in that crucial time before the USA joined her.
There was also a NOVA program with some interesting detail:
"Decoding Nazi Secrets"
NARRATOR: The only document on the U-110 that did not end up in British hands was the book of love poems to Edith. The papers that were captured, including the bigram tables, were priceless. When the documents reached Bletchley Park, the codebreakers rejoiced. The tables and charts would lead to a drastic improvement in fixing U-boat positions, so convoys could be routed evasively around the wolf packs.
VALERIE EMERY: The prize were the bigram tables and they were magnificent, although some of them had got a bit wet and we had to dry them. Geoffrey Tandy, having been at the Natural History Museum, had access to proper drying paper which he brought down by a load, and we had to dry those and clean them up and distribute them as necessary.
NARRATOR: Almost immediately the results were evident. On June 23rd, 1941, Bletchley Park decoded a U-boat message that would save a convoy. It was heading for England laden with supplies, and the codebreakers discovered that a wolf pack of 10 U-boats was lying in wait. Armed with this knowledge, the Ad
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It is the work of the entire operation at Bletchley Park that is credited with shortening the war by up to 2 years. That includes breaking of Enigma, but also the more complex Lorenz cypher. The codebreakers didn't even see a Lorenz machine until after the war was over.
These three didn't die in 2016 but in 1942. These three men entered a sinking German U-Boat to recover the code books on board. They recovered materials, entered the U-boat again, recovered more materials, entered the U-Boat again, and it sank. They fully knew that once the U-Boat was going down, there was no way to escape.
Two of them received the second highest award possible - not the highest award, because they were not under enemy fire.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Interestingly, he has no Wikipedia article; I'm off out to dinner with friends, but if some kind soul could kick things off, let me know and I'll contribute tomorrow.
Deserves a link to/from the "Enigma" page at least.
Bletchley Park listened to all radio traffic they could capture. Today we sneer and jeer at the NSA for doing (or attempting to do) that. Yep, today's all is much bigger than it was then, but still...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
But Turing's genius might very well have counted for naught had it not been for the actions of Lieutenant-Commander David Balme, Royal Navy.
Jebus Christ, really?!
Chapter 33 MORPHIUM
Shaftoe still sees the word every time he closes his eyes. It would be a lot better if he were paying attention to the work at hand: packing demolition charges around the gussets that join the safe to the U-boat.
MORPHIUM. It is printed thus on a yellowed paper label. The label is glued to a small glass bottle. The color of the glass is the same deep purple that you see when your eyes have been dazzled by a powerful light.
Harvey, the sailor who has volunteered to help him, keeps shining his flashlight into Shaftoe's eyes. It is unavoidable; Shaftoe is wedged into a surpassingly awkward position beneath the safe, working with the charges, trying to set the primers with slimy fingers drained of warmth and strength. This would not even be possible if the boat hadn't been torpedoed; before, this cabin was half full of sewage and the safe was immersed in it. Now it has been conveniently drained.
Harvey is not wedged into anything; he is being flung around by the paroxysms of the U-boat, which like a beached shark, is trying stupidly but violently to thrash its way loose from the reef. The beam of his flashlight keeps sweeping across Shaftoe's eyes. Shaftoe blinks, and sees a cosmos of purple: tiny purple bottles labeled MORPHIUM.
"God damn it!" he hollers.
"Is everything all right, Sergeant?" Harvey says.
Harvey doesn't get it. Harvey thinks that Shaftoe is cursing at some problem with the explosives.
The explosives are just fucking great.There's no problem with the explosives.The problem is with Bobby Shaftoe's brain.
He was right there.Waterhouse sent him to find a stethoscope, and Shaftoe went chambering through the U-boat until he found a wooden box. He opened it up and saw right away it was full of medic stuff. He pawed through it, looking for what Waterhouse wanted, and there was the bottle, plain as day, right in front of his face. His hand brushed against it, for god's sake. He saw the label as the beam of his flashlight swept across it:
MORPHIUM.
But he didn't grab it. If it had said MORPHINE he would have grabbed it in a second. But it said MORPHIUM. And it wasn't until about thirty seconds later that he realized that this was a fucking German boat and of course the words would all be different and there was about a 99 percent chance that MORPHIUM was, in fact, exactly the same stuff as MORPHINE. When he realized that he planted his feet in the passageway of the darkened U-boat and let out a deep long scream from way down in his gut. With the noise of the waves, no one heard him. Then he continued onwards and carried out his duty, handing over the stethoscope to Waterhouse. He carried out his duty because he is a Marine.
Blowing this fucking safe off the wall is not his duty. It's just an idea that popped into his head. They've been training him how to use these explosives; why not put it into practice? He's blowing this safe up, not because he is a Marine, but because he is Bobby Shaftoe. And also because it's a great excuse to go back for that morphium.
The U-boat bucks and sends Harvey sprawling to the deck. Shaftoe waits for the motion to subside, then flails for handholds and pulls himself out from under the safe. His weight is mostly on his feet now, but it wouldn't be correct to say he's standing up. In this place, the best you can hope for is to scramble for balance somewhat faster than you are falling on your Keister. Harvey has just lost that race and Shaftoe is winning it for the moment.
"Fire in the hole!" Shaftoe hollers. Harvey finds his feet! Shaftoe gives him a helpful shove out into the passageway. Harvey turns left and heads uphill for the conning tower and the exit. Shaftoe turns right. He heads downhill. Towards the bow. Towards Davy Jones's Locker. Towards the box with the MORPHIUM.
Where the fuck is that box? When he found it before, it was bobbing in the soup. Maybe--horrible thought--maybe it just drained out of the hole made by the torpedo. He passes through
RIP bro
A member of the boarding party was radio operator William Stewart Pollock. He thought that the Enigma machine looked out of place in the radio room of U-110, and brought it back. An oral history recording of his recollections is here: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80011688
Even if he was, he still saved your stupid ass. If it weren't for him and other men like him, you wouldn't even exist.
I'm pretty sure it was he who captured the Engima when he worked on the U-571.
They have a good evolutionary reason for this.
Shachar
U-571 was so painfully bad to watch that half way through I thought of walking out. I kept thinking It has to get better, sure there is no historic accuracy at all, but there has to be some redeeming story. I was wrong and wish I had walked out when I thought of it. It really felt like American war propaganda from WWII.
Less jabber about who posted what. We all have seen the Hollywood representations of what happened in the war. Let's be greatful our history lessons in humanity. I know if I was boarding a Nazi submarine on such a gnarly mission... I'd need diapers. Sailors back then had to rougher then now. By a lot. My father is 22 years retired and I've heard plenty of stories. On a side note, a lot of my coworkers were in the Navy and their stories are less glamorous as they talked more about the girls they slept with than anything else.