
Quiet naval hero who rescued Enigma machine dies aged 95 - CarolineW
http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news-and-latest-activity/news/2016/january/06/160106-enigma-naval-hero
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SEJeff
FWIW, there is another captured german Uboat at the Museum of Science and
Industry in Chicago, U505, where they also captured an Enigma machine. This
mission was also secret, and this was actually captured by American sailors,
not british ones.

[http://www.msichicago.org/whats-
here/exhibits/u-505/](http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/u-505/)

The tours are absolutely fascinating. Anyone visiting Chicago who is a history
buff should check it out.

~~~
egroat
It is a shame Hollywood has a tendency to portray the successes of the Allies
in general as being conducted purely by American citizens.

Of course it doesn't help that the other nations don't actively promote their
forces in the same manner the Americans do - perhaps good, perhaps bad.

~~~
arethuza
There are some splendid UK films about the Battle of the Atlantic - my
favourite being _The Cruel Sea_.

NB The author of the novel on which the The Cruel Sea is based, Nicholas
Monsarrat, wrote a moving account of his own service - Three Corvettes - which
is one of the few books that has reduced me to tears. Funnily enough I
happened to read the book while flying over the North Atlantic...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat)

~~~
porker
> NB The author of the novel on which the The Cruel Sea is based, Nicholas
> Monsarrat, wrote a moving account of his own service - Three Corvettes -
> which is one of the few books that has reduced me to tears. Funnily enough I
> happened to read the book while flying over the North Atlantic...

Alistair MacLean's HMS Ulysses is another of those. I read it as a teenager
and a couple of scenes are as sharp in my mind as the day I read it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ulysses_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ulysses_\(novel\))

------
Stolpe
"The story of the seizure of the machine by Balme and his shipmates was kept
secret until the mid-1970s". I've always been intrigued by this fact. Does
anyone know why this was kept a secret for so long?

~~~
ptha
Interestingly from:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine#History)

"An estimated 100,000 Enigma machines were constructed. After the end of World
War II, the Allies sold captured Enigma machines, still widely considered
secure, to developing countries".

I'm sure they were quite happy to sell Enigma and also decrypt their
communications for nearly another 30 years.

~~~
anovikov
If the Enigma machines were operated properly, they could never be broken.
Breaking them were a result of German lack of discipline and irresponsibility,
not machine's weakness (maybe a simple inscription on the cover of machine in
the bold letters would help though, machine designers just expected too much
from their enlisted, barely literate operators).

~~~
gshubert17
Not never. One of the "features" of the Enigma was that a plaintext letter
could never be encrypted to itself. An 'A' going in could come out as any
other letter, except 'A'. German information security policies were generally
pretty good. There were lapses, of course, and some of these were used to form
cribs for a known plaintext attack on encrypted messages. But Enigma was/is
not invulnerable.

People found a couple encrypted Enigma messages after World War II. Here is a
note from a group of people using modern computers and brute force to decrypt
them:

[http://www.enigmaathome.net/forum_thread.php?id=318](http://www.enigmaathome.net/forum_thread.php?id=318)

~~~
anovikov
yes of course, by 'never' i mean 'not in the WWII timeframe'.

------
branchless
Amazing bravery. How many lives did his action save? This is the kind of
person that makes you proud to be British. Selfless.

------
drzaiusapelord
Fun fact, two M4 Enigmas were retrieved from the U-505 in June 1944. This sub
can be toured at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

[http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/u-505/the-
exhi...](http://www.msichicago.org/whats-here/exhibits/u-505/the-
exhibit/artifacts/enigma/)

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moogleii
So did Allen Long get anything?

"Telegraphist Allen Long quickly located the coding device which looked like a
typewriter. Long “pressed the keys and. finding results peculiar, sent it up
the hatch”."

~~~
cmdkeen
Yep - he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal which was the other ranks
version of the Distinguished Service Cross which Lt Cdr Balme was awarded.

The Daily Telegraph usually does good obituaries:
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12078997/Lieutena...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12078997/Lieutenant-
Commander-David-Balme-obituary.html)

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chiph
I avoided watching "U571" because of the fictionalization. Should I go back
and watch it?

~~~
Symbiote
I don't know if you should watch it...

But
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_(film)#Historical_events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_\(film\)#Historical_events)
: "David Balme, the British naval officer who led the boarding party aboard
U-110, called U-571, "a great film"[9] and said that the film would not have
been financially viable without being "Americanised"."

And there's a bit more of his opinion and recollections in a BBC article from
when the film was released:
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/774427.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/774427.stm)

------
richieb
The story of the Enigma is quite complex. But by 1941 the Allies knew how the
machine worked (there were commercial Enigmas sold before the war). The Naval
Enigma was somewhat more secure (more rotors to choose from) and obtaining the
daily setting book would be the most important thing, not the machine itself.

Polish mathematicians broke the early Enigma in the late 1930s
([http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm](http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/virtualbp/poles/poles.htm)),
they passed their information to the British in 1939 and that was used as a
starting point of the work at Blechley Park.

If you are interested in the details, check out the book "The Hut 6 Story" by
Gordon Welchman. He was a peer of Turing who worked on the Army and Air Force
Enigma, while Turing worked on the Naval version.

Of course Turing's biography by Andrew Hodges also has a lot of details how
the Engima was broken.

~~~
yoodenvranx
I was always wondering if Neal Stephensons "Cryptonomicon" is historically
accurate when he writes about the enigma and its background.

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vic-traill
In an interview in the BBC Special about Bletchley Park 'The Goose That Laid
the Golden Eggs' David Balme is interviewed and the focus is on the bigram
tables that he captured intact. There is no mention of actually capturing an
Enigma machine. This is not to say that one wasn't included in the capture of
U110.

Rather, I get the sense that the capture of the bigram tables was a Big Thing,
possibly more important than the acquisition of a physical Enigma in the
breaking of the Naval Enigma code, as Turing had engineered much of the
machine conceptually.

N.B. Would post the link to the BBC special - it's part 2 of 4, and quite
interesting - but I don't have a strong enough sense of what is netiquette in
the posting of links yet.

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OliverJones
Thanks, Lt. Balme.

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epalmer
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Codebreakers-Comprehensive-
Communi...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Codebreakers-Comprehensive-
Communication-Internet/dp/0684831309)

A good read about the crypto behind the Enigmia and other encryption
approaches. A fun read.

~~~
gshubert17
"The Codebreakers" cited above, is a massive history of cryptography. The same
author, David Kahn, has written a book focusing on the Enigma called "Seizing
the Enigma".

[http://www.amazon.com/Seizing-Enigma-German-U-
Boats-1939-194...](http://www.amazon.com/Seizing-Enigma-German-U-
Boats-1939-1943/dp/0395427398/)

~~~
epalmer
Thanks, I'll have to read that one.

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rurounijones
A sad loss, so many people made so many silent sacrifices for Engima.

Worth mentioning the other pretty unsung sacrifices made by crew members of
HMS Petard; which can be read in the book "Fighting Destroyer".

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bliaxiong
They should at least posthumously bump his DSC to something higher.

