Slashdot Mirror
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."
And frequently, it was Opsec failures by German operators that allowed the British to crack encrypted German communications. For example, there was a German operator in the field who would start every communication by hitting the same key three (or four) times.
There was another spectacular one:
From: Solving the Enigma: History of the Cryptanalytic Bombe, by Jennifer Wilcox
The British took no action based solely on Ultra intelligence without first providing the Germans with a deceptive reason for the actions taken. Most commonly, British aircraft flew a reconnaissance mission over an area that Ultra intelligence had shown to be significant. When the Allies subsequently attacked that area, the Germans believed their forces had been spotted by the aircraft, not given away by Enigma.
Admiral Doenitz, however, was not satisfied. He intended to change the U-boat Enigma machines. He could not radically alter the machine itself as it had to continue to work with the rest of the German Navy. His change added a thin fourth rotor between the leftmost rotor and the reflecting plate.When necessary, the rotor could be set in a straight-through position, enabling it to act as a three-rotor machine.
Bletchley Park learned of the impending change from decrypts and captured material, but until it was actually implemented there was little they could do to prepare. Fortunately, the Germans made an error. In December 1941, before the change had been made official, a U-boat sent a message using the four-rotor machine. To compound the mistake, the same message was retransmitted using only three rotors. From this seemingly innocuous error, the cryptanalysts at BP determined the wiring of the fourth rotor.
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
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.
Bletchley Park listened to all radio traffic they could capture. Today we sneer and jeer at the NSA for doing
We're not currently under a state of total war fighting for survival every single day.
Bit of a difference, really...
SJW n. One who posts facts.