Divers just found a World War II Enigma machine dumped on the seabed. Here's how it got there
Underwater archeologists sponsored by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have found an Enigma machine at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, likely from a submarine that Germany scuttled at the end of World War II.
The divers made the discovery while searching the sea bed using a sonar device for abandoned fishing nets that can be harmful for sea life.
Developer
Enigma machines, created in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, were used to encode military messages; these codes were finally broken by the experts assembled by the British at Bletchley Park, work which fueled the creation of modern computers.
SEE: 10 ways to prevent developer burnout (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
Earlier this year, a four-rotor M4 Enigma cipher machine sold at an auction for £347,250 ($437,955). It, however, was in pristine condition while the rusty, barnacle-covered one found in the Baltic Sea has been deformed by decades spent in salt water. Nonetheless, several keys remain intact and visible.
After Germany conceded WWII, the country ordered the navy to destroy remaining Enigmas so that Allied forces couldn't access them.
In 1945, a large-scale self-scuttling operation by the German navy took place in the Geltinger Bay. They sank around 50 submarines there so that they would not have to be handed over to the Allies. "We suspect that our Enigma went overboard in the course of this event," says Florian Huber, underwater archaeologist and diver in the Submaris team, which found the encryption machine.
After the war, Winston Churchill also ordered Enigmas to be destroyed to conceal lessons learned behind its programmable computer at Bletchley Park.
The M4 Enigmas were made for the German U-boat fleet after officials grew concerned over repeated Allied successes against the submarines. They were deployed to Germany's U-boat fleet in 1941 and prevented the Allies from knowing where German's U-boats were positioned for almost a year until English mathematician Alan Turing and, separately, Joe Desch in Dayton, Ohio developed the computer that broke M4 encryption to decipher German messages. It helped the Allies to gain control of the Atlantic sea.
The WWF-sponsored diving crew who found this Enigma machine were exploring because abandoned fishing nets kill marine mammals, fish and sea birds.
Also: Rare and hardest to crack Enigma code machine sells for $437,000
The dive team found the Enigma machine this November at the bottom of Gelting Bay in the Baltic Sea.
"The WWF has been working for many years to rid the Baltic Sea of dangerous ghost nets. We regularly find larger objects on which the nets get tangled underwater. Such so-called "hook points" are often tree trunks or stones. The Enigma is by far the most exciting find historically, we've ever had," said Gabriele Dederer, ghost network consultant at WWF Germany.
WWF Germany launched the ghost net project in 2016 to remove abandoned fishing gear from the Baltic Sea. It estimated there were 800 tonnes of old nets, which keep on catching fish after they're abandoned. Other things they haul up have included old anchor chains, a fire hose, cables, and ammunition shells.
The WWF has donated the the Enigma to the Museum of Archeology in Schleswig, where it is being restored.
Underwater archaeologist Florian Huber told Reuters he thought they had discovered a typewriter entangled in a net
SEE: Programming languages: Microsoft TypeScript leaps ahead of C#, PHP and C++ on GitHub
"I've made many exciting and strange discoveries in the past 20 years. But I never dreamt that we would one day find one of the legendary Enigma machines," said Huber.
The rusty, barnacle-covered one found in the Baltic Sea has been deformed by decades spent in salt water.
More Enigma: