Enigma Machine Questions??

[Bombardier]

1/ The Enigma code machine was initially developed to allow banks and railways to encode secret messages (although the name "Enigma" came later). Who invented this machine?

2/ At the start of World War II, what country gave the British a head start in its effort to read messages encoded on Enigma machines?

3/ Bletchley Park was one of the strangest military establishment in the world. The team included crossword puzzle fanatics, chess champions, mathematicians, anthropologists, Egyptologists, paleontologists, and even an occasional lawyer. What was the code name used to refer to the code-breaking unit at Bletchley Park?

4/ The codebreakers at Bletchley Park gave the Allies a vital edge in the U-boat war, the tank battles against Rommel, and the D-Day invasion. What was the name given to the intelligence gained from the deciphered Enigma messages?

5/ An innovative electronic computer using 1,500 vacuum tubes and an optical paper tape reader operating at a read speed of 5,000 characters a second was developed to help decode Enigma messages. What was the name of this computer?

6/ What branch of the German armed forces added a fourth rotor to the Enigma machine, greatly increasing the number of potential combinations of encoded messages?

7/ An Enigma machine was captured from a German submarine just two days before the D-Day invasion (giving rise to fears the Germans might change the code just before the invasion). The captured sub is on public display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois, USA. What is the name of this sub? (Hint: this was not the first Enigma captured.)

8/ The German high command sent their encoded messages on a machine using twelve rotors that produced an even more complicated code. What was its name?

9/ What was the code name given to these high-command coded messages?

10/ After World War II was over, how many of the Colossus computers that helped decipher intercepted messages were ordered destroyed?

Good luck some of the questions are easy and I think have been mentioned on these forums before. :D

[Polar]

1. The basic Enigma was invented in 1918 by Arthur Scherbius in Berlin.
2. Poland
3. official designation was "Station Y",
4. Ultra?
5. Colossus
6. 15,000,000,000,000,000,000.
7. U-505
8. Lorenz
9. Tunny messages
10. ????????????

[Bombardier]

1/ correct
The Enigma code machine was first patented as a commercial encryption device in 1918 by a German inventor named Arthur Scherbius, but wasn't sold commercially until 1923. German banks and railways were among its first customers, but the German military was quick to see its potential and modified it for military use. They added a plugboard (similar to an old-fashioned telephone switchboard) which allowed an operator to plug pairs of letters together in an absolutely astronomical number of combinations.

2/correct
Just prior to the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Polish mathematicians worked on breaking the Enigma code. Helped by some documents stolen by a German clerk, the mathematicians were able to partially break the code. Realizing the looming danger of impending war with Hitler, the Polish High Command decided to share the closely-guarded secret with her allies--Britain and France. This happened during a meeting of Polish, British and French military cryptology experts which took place July 24-26, 1939 in a secret meeting in a forest near Warsaw.

3/incorrect

4/correct
The codebreakers at Bletchley Park were able to quickly decode tens of thousands of intercepted messages and made a huge contribution to the Allied victory. This intelligence, code named Ultra, was kept secret until the mid-1970s, when the 30-year rule allowed its release.

5/correct
A brilliant young telephone engineer at the Post Office Research Station in London named Tommy Flowers designed an electronic computer named Colossus to aid in the decoding effort. Colossus used 1,500 valves (vacuum tubes) and an optical paper tape reader operating at a read speed of 5,000 characters a second (which was about 30 miles an hour) and began operating five months before D-Day. A total of 10 Colossus computers were built, the design being improved and upgraded throughout the rest of the war. The Ultra project was kept secret until the mid-1970s, when the 30-year rule allowed its release. This secrecy is why many people think the American Eniac was the first programmable, electronic computer.

6/incorrect

7/correct
On June 4, 1944, the USS Guadalcanal task group captured the German submarine U-505, retrieving her codebooks and an Enigma machine. Unlike some previous captures, the U-boat crew was aware of the failure to destroy Enigma material and its capture, and as a result, they were denied access to the International Red Cross or any contact with their families. Kept in isolation in the U.S., they were not released until 1947. British sailors on HMS Bulldog captured the first Enigma machine captured at sea from U-110 in May 1941.

8/correct
Hitler had demanded a cipher machine for the German high command that was faster and even more secure than the Enigma. His experts devised a coding system based on the teleprinter machine. They connected the teleprinter to a machine that cunningly exploited the teleprinter language itself to produce a very complex code. The Lorenz machine transmits a string of letters, each one of which is actually a mix of the real letter of the real message and a piece of machine-crafted gobbledygook. What comes out and is transmitted is a single string of total gobbledygook. At the other end of the link another Lorenz machine set to exactly the same configuration regenerates exactly the same obscuring characters, adds them back to the cipher text, and by the magic of modulo two arithmetic (in boolean terms, that's exclusive NOR) they cancel out and leave you with the plain text.

9/incorrect

10/well you didnt have any answer.
great effort polar, but what are the missing answers ?

[Drone_pilot]

3. Station X
6. krigesmarine ?
9. ??
10 all but one

[Bombardier]

3/ correct
6/ correct
9/incorrect
10/incorrect

nice one buddy :roll:

Just question 9/ and 10/ left to answer ?? :shock:

[Drone_pilot]

10. all of them. :)

Eight of the ten Colossi were dismantled in Bletchley Park. Two went to Eastcote in North London and then to GCHQ at Cheltenham. These last two were dismantled in about 1960 and in 1960 all the drawings of Colossus were burnt. Of course its very existence was kept secret.


website about Colossus http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/index.htm

[Bombardier]

10/ correct Drone_pilot
Although all 10 Colossus computers and all the technical drawings and diagrams for them were ordered (by Winston Churchill) to be destroyed at the end of the war to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Russians during the Cold War, only eight of the 10 Colossus machines were destroyed immediately at the end of the war. The remaining two were moved to British secret service headquarters, where they may have played a significant part in the codebreaking operations during the Cold War. In 1960, the order finally came to destroy the last two Colossus machines. One has been rebuilt from photographs, memories of the former staff, and scraps of schematics (kept illegally!) and is currently located at Bletchley Park. To learn more about this rebuild, search for 'Tony Sale' Colossus.

[Bill Farnie]

Fascinating stuff guys.


Bill

[Bombardier]

would you like the answer to number 9 ? :shock:

[Polar]

Yes

[Bombardier]

the answer is 'FISH'

The codebreakers worked out that FISH was based on the teleprinter language, but at first couldn't figure out how to strip off the obscuring code. But on August 30, 1941, a lazy German operator gave the whole game away. When he got to the end of keying in a nearly 4,000 character message, the operator at the receiving end sent back in German the equivalent of, 'Didn't get that, send it again.' And then they both put their Lorenz cipher machines back to the same start position, and the sending operator began to key this long message again. When the operator began to encode the same message a second time, he grew impatient and abbreviated parts of it. The resulting slight changes enabled the codebreakers to strip off the random letters that were cloaking the message