Enigma in the Field

This image shows how a message was dispatched in the field. The photo was either taken during WWII or during a training session shortly before the war. The operator is encrypting a message on an Enigma I. To his left a soldier is using a field telephone, whilst a dispatch rider is taking down the encrypted message at his right. The despatch rider can be recognized by the leather message wallet he is carrying at his waist belt.

Enigma Machine Labelled

The Enigma machine was used commercially from the early 1920s and was adopted by the militaries and governments of various countries—most famously, Nazi Germany.

Westfeldzug 1940

This image was taken in 1940 when the Germans were marching through The Netherlands, Belgium and France. It clearly shows an Enigma machine being used in the field. To the left of the Enigma is a field phone with an operator writing down the message as it is being decoded with the Enigma. The people in the photograph all seem to be very relaxed and are not wearing helmets, suggesting that the picture was taken either very early in the war or far away from the battle field.

General Guderian

This shows General Heinz Guderian standing at the side of the road in the back of a military truck, watching over his radio operator and cipher clerk whilst dictating a message. The photograph was taken by Erich Borchert in May or June 1940, during a campaign in France. Despite the fact that it was strickly forbidden to photograph the wartime Army Enigma machine, it is visible in the foreground. The Steckerbrett (plugboard) however, has been obscured by a white sheet of paper.

Enigma Plug Board

The plugboard (Steckerbrett) was positioned at the front of the machine, below the keys. In this photograph, two pairs of letters have been swapped (A↔J and S↔O). During World War II, ten leads were used, leaving only six letters 'unsteckered'.

Colossus

A Mark 2 Colossus computer. The ten Colossi were the world's first (semi-) programmable electronic computers, the first having been built in 1943.

Omaha Beach

Into the Jaws of Death: Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment, US 1st Infantry Division wading ashore on Omaha Beach on the morning of 6 June 1944 Prior to the Normandy landings on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies knew the locations of all but two of Germany's fifty-eight Western-front divisions because of decrypted messages.

Rebuilt Bombe

A working bombe, rebuilt by a team led by John Harper[100] and switched on by the Duke of Kent, patron of the British Computer Society, on 17 July 2008. This is now located at The National Museum of Computing in Block H on Bletchley Park. After Rejewski's characteristics method became useless, he invented an electro-mechanical device that was dubbed the bomba kryptologiczna or cryptologic bomb.

Marian Rejewski

Marian Rejewski quickly spotted the Germans' major procedural weaknesses of specifying a single indicator setting (Grundstellung) for all messages on a network for a day, and repeating the operator's chosen message key in the enciphered 6-letter indicator. Those procedural mistakes allowed Rejewski to decipher the message keys without knowing any of the machine's wirings.

US Navy Bombe

The US Navy bombes used drums for the Enigma rotors in much the same way as the British bombes, but were very much faster. The first machine was completed and tested on 3 May 1943. Soon these bombes were more available than the British bombes at Bletchley Park and its outstations, and as a consequence they were put to use for Hut 6 as well as Hut 8 work. A total of 121 Navy bombes were produced.

Forgotten Heroes

Polish codebreakers Antoni Palluth (left) and his cousin Sylwester stand in front of a chart of North African military operations in 1942, when they were working with French intelligence officer Gustave Bertrand in southern France. Credit: Anna Zygalska-Cannon.