Quote:
Originally Posted by bf109 emil
I think the first ship to succomb to losing the enigma was a weather ship used in the Atlantic, to give advanced notice to the Luftwaffe as to weather conditions, as winds blow from west to east, so to enlighten bomber crews as to expectations on the days weather early in the summer of '40...I think this was taken by a force of British commando's, and the crew abandoned ship, believing it was going to be sunk, and instead boarded...but i could be wrong...
bf109 Emil
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Correct for the sea going version. A couple of weather ships were captured with the Enigma machines intact. So was at least one submarine. Some Wehrmacht & Luftwafe versions were captured as well along the way. One such may have been when Rommels signals Intel battalion was overrun and destroyed during the Alamein battle. The Germans suspected some machines had been captured, but thought that irrelevant as the key was changed daily and it would required sifiting thorough billions of combinations to find the key for a particular day and message.
The Poles were able to intercept a Enigma machine in transit from the factory, examine, and photograph it in the mid 1930s. This examination was a critical step in creating the earliest decryption machines (the Bombe models). Obtaining a operators manual from French sources was another imprtant event. Equally important was the accumulation of thousands of intercepted messages during the 1920s & 30s. This gave them a huge data base for testing & refining their decryption methods.
In 1943 a USAAF Brigadier General (Varnum) with direct knowledge of the ULTRA system disobeyed a standing order not to fly over enemy territory. His aircraft was shot down & he spent the next two years as a German POW. Fortunatly the Germans never thought to interrogate him on the subject of signals intel....