General Discussions
This is the place to discuss general issues related to the U-boat war or the war at sea in WWII.
RE: Bletchley Park or just lucky???
Posted by:
Marc Haldimann
()
Date: May 15, 2001 01:47PM
<HTML>William,
I just read Jak Mallmann Showell\'s book intitled Enigam U-boats; I bought it after having read Tonya Allen\'s very postive and thorough critic on this site.
Besides the splendid collection of hitherto unpublished pictures from the the U-Boot Archiv in Altenbruch, this book contains a very precise and clear narration of the chain of events which allowed Bletchley Park to crack progressively in Enigma.
If you read this book, you\'ll find out that a first access was given by Polish officers who fled in England with the polish version of the german Enigma machine. Then you\'ll follow the major help Beltchley Park had from Enigma rotors found on a crewmember of U-33, sunk on 12 February 1940. The next step was the boarding of german weather ships which yielded again some important pieces of information. All those events happened before U-110\'s boarding and allowed from March 1941 onwards some reading of Enigma, though with huge delays between the interception of the coded messages and their reading, making them useless for any tactical opportunity. The capture on 9 May 1941 of U-110 gave the Britsh a complete Enigma set, the value of this prize material being high only as long as the settings were unchanged, the Kriegsmarine switching settings at regular intevals. The lasting value from this boarding were several Code books which provided massive inside in Kriegsmarine ops. Next on the line was the capture of U-570 in August 1941, the boarding of U-559 in October 1942, the exploration of the wrecks of U-617 and U-852, the first stranded on the Spanish Morroccan coast and the second on the Somali coast. Last but not least the capture of U-505 also yielded vital documents.
Those sketched elements, fully developped in Mallmann Showell\'s fascinating book, do tell that the reading of german naval communications was not the fruit of one prize, but depended essentially on the more or less constant supply of fresh intelligence material. It was a very dynamic process for the researchers in Bletchley Park as they coud give excellent intelligence for a while, then suddenly unable to read any message for a given period until some new prize material, associated with their own Enigma machines enabled them again to read german radio trafic. An intricate and fascinating story, brilliantly told by Jak Mallmann Showell.
Title:
Mallman-Showell, J. (2000), Enigma U-baots. Breaking the Code, the true story, Ian Allan.
Regards
Marc
</HTML>
I just read Jak Mallmann Showell\'s book intitled Enigam U-boats; I bought it after having read Tonya Allen\'s very postive and thorough critic on this site.
Besides the splendid collection of hitherto unpublished pictures from the the U-Boot Archiv in Altenbruch, this book contains a very precise and clear narration of the chain of events which allowed Bletchley Park to crack progressively in Enigma.
If you read this book, you\'ll find out that a first access was given by Polish officers who fled in England with the polish version of the german Enigma machine. Then you\'ll follow the major help Beltchley Park had from Enigma rotors found on a crewmember of U-33, sunk on 12 February 1940. The next step was the boarding of german weather ships which yielded again some important pieces of information. All those events happened before U-110\'s boarding and allowed from March 1941 onwards some reading of Enigma, though with huge delays between the interception of the coded messages and their reading, making them useless for any tactical opportunity. The capture on 9 May 1941 of U-110 gave the Britsh a complete Enigma set, the value of this prize material being high only as long as the settings were unchanged, the Kriegsmarine switching settings at regular intevals. The lasting value from this boarding were several Code books which provided massive inside in Kriegsmarine ops. Next on the line was the capture of U-570 in August 1941, the boarding of U-559 in October 1942, the exploration of the wrecks of U-617 and U-852, the first stranded on the Spanish Morroccan coast and the second on the Somali coast. Last but not least the capture of U-505 also yielded vital documents.
Those sketched elements, fully developped in Mallmann Showell\'s fascinating book, do tell that the reading of german naval communications was not the fruit of one prize, but depended essentially on the more or less constant supply of fresh intelligence material. It was a very dynamic process for the researchers in Bletchley Park as they coud give excellent intelligence for a while, then suddenly unable to read any message for a given period until some new prize material, associated with their own Enigma machines enabled them again to read german radio trafic. An intricate and fascinating story, brilliantly told by Jak Mallmann Showell.
Title:
Mallman-Showell, J. (2000), Enigma U-baots. Breaking the Code, the true story, Ian Allan.
Regards
Marc
</HTML>
| Subject | Written By | Posted |
|---|---|---|
Bletchley Park or just lucky???
|
William Engel | 05/15/2001 12:46PM |
|
RE: Bletchley Park or just lucky???
|
Marc Haldimann | 05/15/2001 01:47PM |
|
RE: Bletchley Park or just lucky???
|
MPC | 05/15/2001 07:06PM |
|
RE: Bletchley Park or just lucky???
|
William Engel | 05/16/2001 05:21AM |
|
Enigma
|
SuperKraut | 05/16/2001 08:44AM |
|
RE: Enigma
|
William Engel | 05/16/2001 09:27AM |
|
Alternative explanation
|
SuperKraut | 05/16/2001 03:06PM |
|
Alternative explanation
|
SuperKraut | 05/16/2001 03:07PM |
|
RE: Alternative explanation
|
William Engel | 05/17/2001 05:46AM |
|
Poor coordination
|
SuperKraut | 05/17/2001 08:07AM |
|
Enigma and faith
|
kurt | 05/17/2001 04:21PM |
|
Cipher penetrations
|
SuperKraut | 05/19/2001 07:28AM |
|
Congratulations to you both...
|
MPC | 05/16/2001 03:49PM |
|
RE: Bletchley Park or just lucky???
|
Rainer Bruns | 05/16/2001 06:25PM |
|
RE: Bletchley Park or just lucky???
|
Kris | 05/16/2001 05:14PM |