# The "Enigma" Coding Machine and russia-Did the Soviets Crack It? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 13, 2015, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736 "2015-08-13T13:19:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736/21 "2015-08-13T20:16:42Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The US Navy captured one from a submarine, did they not? Sigh. That was a _movie_. In real life, the **British** captured Enigma machines, codes, etc. from [several](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-559) [submarines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-110_(1940)). ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736/22 "2015-08-13T20:29:16Z")
In real life, the U.S. Navy did capture U-505 and recovered an enigma. > **[German submarine U-505](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-505)** > > U-505 is a German Type IXC submarine built for Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. She was captured by the U.S. Navy on 4 June 1944. > In her uniquely unlucky career with the Kriegsmarine, she had the distinction of being the "most heavily damaged U-boat to successfully return to port" in World War II on her fourth patrol, and the only submarine in which a commanding officer killed himself in combat conditions on her tenth patrol, following six botched patrols. She was captured on 4 Jun... As was mentioned back in post 4 though, the British had already recovered a bunch of them and were already breaking the enigma codes on a daily basis. The way the movie portrayed it ended up pissing off a bunch of folks in the UK and President Bill Clinton even ended up apologizing to Tony Blair for it, saying that it was only a work of fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736/23 "2015-08-13T20:53:23Z")
> [@The\_Angry\_Badger](#): > > That’s sort of correct, but what the Bletchley Park team looked for was what they called ‘cribs’ - commonly used phrases or sentence fragments, such as “Keine besonderen Ereignisse” (“Nothing to report”) or “An die Gruppe” (“To the group”). That, along with some weaknesses with the Enigma machine itself (for example, a letter couldn’t be encrypted as itself), allowed the team to make some guesses as to what the coding was for the day. They also used to do some clever tricks to force some known data to be encrypted - such as getting the Navy to lay some mines in a specific area and then use those coordinates as a crib for when the German forces inevitably reported these locations back to high command. “Cribs” were an important element in a very complex effort to attack Enigma. Too complex for me to finger-type on this phone! But I do recall reading that one guess that did indeed work was assuming that bored, lonely young men far from home might use the names of their girlfriends as part of the nonsense “padding” characters. Decryption attempts using common female names and nicknames yielded results more often than random chance. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736/24 "2015-08-13T21:57:11Z")
The Soviets certainly had spies high up in British intelligence, but it is one thing to steal a decrypted message and quite a different thing to understand the methods they used. AFAIK, it is still forbidden to talk about the details. At least I knew a mathematician who spent the war at Bletchly Park and he would never talk about it and died with his secrets intact. Generalities are of course well known the details are supremely important in this game. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2015, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736/25 "2015-08-13T22:59:03Z")
When did he die? As far as I’m aware, Ultra as declassified in the mid 1970s, although it’s possible that the individual cryptographers involved were still bound to secrecy after that point. There is a lot of detailed information available about how it was done, for example [this Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma). –Mark ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2015, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736/26 "2015-08-14T12:30:48Z")
I also wonder if Stalin shared his intelligence with the US and UK-given his paranoia, I doubt it. Stalin maintained a deep distrust of his allies, and it would not surprise me to learn that he would withold such information. Regarding Kursk, it must have been obvious to the german generals, that the Russians knew too much about their strategy-the Russians let loose an artillery barrage one hour before the Germans launched their attack-it must have been obvious. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-enigma-coding-machine-and-russia-did-the-soviets-crack-it/727736.md?page=1)