Yup, the story of the breaking of the Enigma codes is definitely one of the most interesting of WW2. I recently read the book 'Enigma', by Robert Harris. Surprisingly, it is a pretty factual account of the trials and tribulations of breaking the 'Shark' cipher used to control the Atlantic U-Boats.
You ever heard of Fasson and Glazier? Nope? Well they were two British seamen who drowned after forcing the U-559 to the surface, boarding her, and capturing the boat's short weather code book.
Now, the short weather code book was used to transmit weather reports from the U-Boats to the Naval weather stations on a daily basis.
The significance of capturing the code book was that the weather stations only used 3 rotor enigma machines, whilst the U-Boats and their HQ transmitted using 4 rotor enigma settings. To transmit to the weather stations, the U boats simply left their 4th wheel in a neutral position.
Since the allies now had a short weather code book, they could read the weather traffic from the U boats to the weather stations. More importantly, this gave them 3 out of the 4 rotor settings used in transmitting HQ orders to the U-Boat wolfpacks.
The rest, as they say, is history
BTW nexx, was the lecture by Tony Sale? If so, you really should check out his web page at
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lectures/index.htm ------------------
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Chapter 13, verse 11
[This message has been edited by Jekyll (edited 02-24-2001).]
