Seizing the Enigma tells the thrilling story of the Royal Navy's battle to crack the Germans' supposedly unbreakable U-boat Enigma code, which would allow the vital Allied convoys in the North Atlantic to be routed away from Dönitz's wolfpacks. This battle was fought both on shore and at sea: by an assortment of scientists, chess champions and linguists, including Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, who struggled to crack Enigma at Bletchley Park, and in the Atlantic by sailors and intelligence officers, such as Ian Fleming, the future creator of James Bond, who undertook dangerous and often fatal missions to seize the essential encryption keys and Enigma machine components from Kriegsmarine surface ships and U-boats. Kahn expertly brings this unparalleled intelligence operation to life in this revised paperback edition of his classic book. “[Kahn’s] 1997 history of cryptology The Codebreakers is regarded as the seminal work on the subject. One senses that in the future Seizing the Enigma will be regarded in the same vein. Kahn tells a long and technically demanding story with all the skills of a professional journalist. He deftly mixes intricate accounts of the workings of the Enigma machines themselves and their accompanying codes with useful pen portraits of the principal characters involved…an absorbing and thoroughly well documented account.” ― Naval Books of the Year column in Warship, 2013 “The book remains a highly recommended account with a wealth of materials.” ― Naval History Book Reviews, Naval Historical Foundation David Kahn holds a PhD in history from Oxford University. He worked for thirty years as a journalist in New York and Paris, and taught intelligence courses at Yale and Columbia. In 2002, he was scholar-in-residence at the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C. His massive history of cryptology, The Codebreakers , is still considered the standard work on the subject. Seizing the Enigma The Race to Break the German U-Boat Codes, 1939–1943 By David Kahn Pen and Sword Books Ltd Copyright © 1998 David Kahn All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59114-807-4 Contents List of Maps, Preface, Preface to the 2012 edition, 1. A Staff School Memory, 2. The Wreck of the Magdeburg, 3. The Man, the Machine, the Choice, 4. The Codebreaker and the Spy, 5. Racing German Changes, 6. Failure at Broadway Buildings, 7. Phantoms, 8. The Rotors, 9. Royal Flags Wave Kings Above, 10. In the Locked Drawer of the Krebs, 11. Kisses, 12. A Trawler Surprised, 13. The Staff School Memory, 14. "All This Rubbish?", 15. The Great Man Himself, 16. When Sailors Look for Leaks, 17. Blackout '2, 18. The George Cross, 19. Enter the Americans, 20. SC 127, 21. The Cavity Magnetron Clue, 22. The U-Tankers, 23. The Reckoning, Appendix: Enciphering with Naval Enigma, Notes, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 A Staff School Memory * * * From under the ruffled waters of the spring time North Atlantic, the captain of the German submarine U-110 peered his periscope at the oncoming convoy. He chose four ships in the second column as his targets, took aim, and, at 30-second intervals, fired three torpedoes from his bow tubes. His intended victims were members of Convoy OB 318, lumbering west toward America to be refilled with supplies for wartime Britain. An the center of the front line of the warships that surrounded the convoy steamed Escort Group 3's flagship, the Royal Navy destroyer Bulldog. She was skippered by Commander A. J. (Joe) Baker-Cresswell, a fresh-faced, boyish-looking career officer, just turned forty. Baker-Cresswell had fixed his midday position by shooting the sun with his sextant through the thickening clouds when, to his astonishment, he saw a column of water rise near the merchantman Esmond, which was leading the starboard column. For a moment he was incredulous. The convoy, southwest of Iceland, was only 300 miles from the Greenland coast; no submarine had ever attacked that far west. But his surprise did not stop him from swinging at once to starboard, in the direction from which he sensed the torpedo had come. The local time was noon, the date, Friday, May 9, 1941. Great Britain and Nazi Germany had been at war for a year and a half. The United States was not yet involved, though that very day President Franklin D. Roosevelt's son James had said that the country was at war in all but name. Adolf Hitler's forces had overrun Poland, Denmark and Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France. But England, buoyed by Winston Churchill's trumpet-tongued defiance, had withstood the German threat. In the fall of 1940, Hitler abandoned his plan to invade Shakespeare's "sceptered isle ... set in the silver sea." He had decided to force Britain to surrender instead. His bombs would destroy her war industry and the people's will to resist. His submarines would cut her lifelines and starve her. And indeed, in the sea lanes between the British Isles a