[CW] ENIGMA

[n7dc at comcast.net]

In WWII, many hams were approached to volunteer as intercept operators, or mainly as instructors and made up much of the radio Security services.  I had a few of them as my original code and antenna instructors.  I took a separate course in "devices" which introduced us to the early coding machines, from all sides.   It was an army manual, but do not remember the exact nomenclature of the book, or the course.  I have seen a few article mentioning it, online, and think it is available even today to those who do the research and figure out what they want.  Believe it was declassified in the 70s. 


Most everything from back then, had weaknesses, mostly by operators taking short cuts, using the key twice, which also happened when a classified message was encoded, and then an unclassified book/article was partly repeated.  With the automatic loading machines, most of that went by the sideline, because the key could only be used once.  In the case of some machines, they used an IBM type card,with holes punched in them, usually by another agency, and when a card was used , the machine cut it in half as its door was closed.  That stopped its being used as the initial setup.  Much better than using something with wires set up in advance, which could be used over and over again.  But, much slower at the ZULU time/date changes. (Or whenever that circuits crypto was set up for a new period.)   All of those early machines were blown by a navy guy and his father, back in the 80s.  Big to do about it, and all were exchange for new equipment.  Silly thing though is that you needed those key cards, or keying set-up lists to use those machines, so frankly, I thought they were useless to the other side.  It is pretty much the same way with the old one-time-pad.  If you had two books, exactly the same, and knew on what page/word to start, to could break out a message encoded with the same location.  They were used long ago, but the methodology probably still exists as a low cost, low speed system.  Look it up in GOOGLE   "one time pad methods".  We memorized three different letters in the alphabet.  You then placed the encrypted message up against one line of the alphabet, and wrote down the third letter.  Usually took a week or so to be able to do it, and weeks or months to do it quickly.  I still used that in Special Forces, in 1964-66, with what is called a PRC-9 packable tranceiver.  Id bet some military forces still use it.   

N7DC at ARRL.NET
Ex WN5QMX,WA5UKR,ET2US,ET3USA,SV0WPP,VS6DD,N7DC/YV5/G5CTB
QSL Bureau, DIRECT, LOTW Preferred, eQSL used but upload at a courtesy only, as do not use the system for awards.

> On May 6, 2019 at 2:25 PM ken.d.brown at hawaiiantel.net wrote:
> 
> 
>     Do you know the titles and/or authors of any of these books? I would like to read some.
> 
>     DE N6KB
> 
>     On 2019-05-06 00:50, Dr Jim Kennedy via CW wrote:
> 
>         > > 
> >         There are several books about these "listeners" and how they along with the work done by those working on Enigma decodes helped to turn the war in favor of the allies. 
> >          
> >          
> > 
> >     > 


 

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