Transcript WWII - U
WWII - U-Boats Preface A British convoy made it’s way from England to Nova Scotia because, it needed to protect supply ships from the ever present threat of German U-boats. David Balme had no clue he was heroism would give British intelligence what they needed to decipher the secret code of the third Reich-Hitler’s “enigma” encryption machine. The Unbreakable Code Onboard Lemp’s ship was a small, portable encryption device. It was used by U-boats so they could communicate with the high command of the Germans. U-Boats were on the prowl looking for another ship to sink and they ended up finding British supply ships and destroyed them, killing a lot of men and supplies. All of this caused a huge strain on Britain's war efforts. An encryption device was invented by Arthur Scherbius in 1923 to help businesses conduct secure overseas communication. His company was called Chiffriermaschinen Aktiengesellschaft. U-Boats One of Hitler’s best weapons which lead him to success was the U-Boat. The Unterseebooten were German submarines that attacked at will. U-Boats are different from the submarines from today because they can stay underwater for months. WWII submarines were more like regular boats with diving capability. The people on the subs lived in cramped spaces and they could only take a shower once a week. U-110 in Trouble • Sometimes the U-Boats would launch their torpedoes but remain undetected. • But the battle on May 9, 1941 ultimately belonged to the Royal Navy, despite the loss of three convoy ships. • After a lookout on HMS Aubretia saw U-110's periscope, she raced toward the spot where her crew dropped depth charges (large bombs). • They thought that when they first fired the depth charges they missed so they fired another. U-110 Captured The U-110 was about to make history and so was David Balme. What happened was David Balme and his boarding crew went aboard the U-110 and found what no one had found before: a working Enigma machine and a sealed envelope with the code of June. From there he would send it to Bletchley Park where a mathematical genius and his team were already working on a method to crack Hitler’s “unbreakable” code. U-110 Sinks Thinking their ship sank, none of the U-110’s survivors knew about Balme’s boarding party. Four hundred men from the British Royal Navy knew, but not one said a word about U-110’s treasure until after the war was over. Initially towing U-110 back to Iceland, the Royal Navy crews knew their find would be useless if Germany learned U-110 had been captured, not sunk. U-Boat Codes are broken Even when Bletchley Park began to decipher encrypted Nazi messages, the U-Boat version of Enigma proved to be much more difficult. But not until 1943, after British sailors drowned trying to recover an enigma machine were UBoat codes broken on a regular basis. Enigma Today • There are Enigma encryption machines that exist today. • Brits’ were annoyed that the capture of the Enigma machine was turned solely into a American story. • And many people like Jonathan Mostow made movies about the Enigma encryption devices.