The Most Secret Device Aboard a US Submarine in WWII: The Code Machine
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- Опубліковано 20 сер 2023
- American military commanders have long enjoyed a robust cryptological advantage over our adversaries and it was a tremendous advantage to US submarines in WW II. Check out USS Cod's most secret device, its Electric Cipher Machine, Mark II locked away in the crypto cabinet in the radio shack. And don't ask if it is as good as the German Enigma Machine or you'll be forced to walk the plank!
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My grandfather was in the navy a little after this era. He figured out that when the ship goes into port, the first one off was an officer carrying the old code books onto the base, escorted by two MPs. As soon as that was done, he was off duty, so by volunteering to carry the code book off the ship, he ensured he always got to start shore leave before anyone else on the ship.
The first time anyone showed a crypto machine from a sub on U-tube ... cool
When you deployed that crypto machine, I immediately wondered how a crewman was supposed to use it that low to the floor. Sits on a bucket, I guessed. Then you went into the entire history about discovering the customized chair and putting two & two together about it's purpose. Awesome!
This is great stuff and why this channel does such a good job giving the viewer a glimpse of what it was like to serve on one of these subs.
Thanks for the shout out regarding the SF Maritime Museum Association. I remember Richard telling me how they also repaired the fire control computer and when they ran it, it gave them the solution from the last problem it was given decades ago.
I never imagined I’d be so fascinated with a prop from a forgotten movie and a busted chair. The same goes for the #10 can light shades in the forward torpedo room. Please keep these stories coming!
That was a fantastic episode.
Hopefully you let licensed amateur radio operators participate in the QSO between military retired ships, it's a good way of getting publicity for your boat.
Beyond just the increased number of permutations from the increased number of rotors, if they changed it to not be a reflector system and instead use two independent paths out and back (or just the much longer single path) they could have eliminated one of the major flaws in Enigma that didn't allow letters to encipher to themselves.
(More rotors also lets longer messages be sent without the cipher rolling over back to the beginning.)
Agreed, however that would complicate the circuitry by requiring the light bulbs and keys to be on opposite ends of the rotors. And a mechanism to trade them for decoding. Additionally, the variable position for advancing the next rotor will make it much more than a 17K+ possible psuedorandom sequences.
Thank you,
Another brilliant video from the USS Cod. Our version of the German Enigma machine. Thanks for sharing.
Not our version 😢 ours was a whole different level!😂
It was our Version of the Enigma, which was impossible to decode without a Gigantic Computer and a couple actual Enigma Machines that were Captured, the Germans were careless with the Security of their Machines, also the Enigma could be Carried in a Brief Case.@@paulfarace9595 What we did that was outstanding was developing a Machine to Decipher Japanese Diplomat Codes, and then their always changing Military (Naval) Codes done by Mind Numbing Analysis ,
Thank you for this video.
Those who served with me in the military know why it makes me smile. For everyone else, sorry but that's all you are getting out of me.
Good advice. Don't keep your best secrets in a cigar box. Some of those German machines look pretty small. Bolt it to the floor and make it 100lbs!
Maybe the guy that made them small was actually an agent for the British and was planning on stealing one later 😂
These videos are priceless. The in depth details about a fleet boat one gets here are unique as far as I know. Keep it up please.
Paul, you do a great job explaining your boat.
Thank you for your kind words.
Thank you for this glimpse into the secrets of Cod.
Can you do a video on the whole radio room?
Me and my family toured this sub at the end of July when we were driving through Cleveland. Since we'd toured almost all the other Gatos (except Croaker), he gave us an exclusive tour of its sail.
Nice! Did you make it to the Razorback in Little Rock? That one's fun
"Sail"; Is that the Conning Tower where no access is allowed? If so, I have seen the Cod twice, first and last time. I was thinking of visiting again this Summer. All I got to do was pop my head up into the Conning Tower 😡
Great video! I remember standing on that spot and making the right turn at the back to the radio operators position while filming Operation Seawolf. As I recall, as tight as the crypto officers position was the radio operators position was seemingly tighter. Thanks!
I noticed the way the chair/stool sat in the video and thought it might fit a little better if it was turned around so the straight front legs were up against the wall opposite the code safe. Being a big person when I owned an Austin-Healy I had to remove the driver's seat back to fit in the car. For leg room the one to two inches gained by reversing the chair would make a difference in the comfort and getting into position to use the machine. 😊
I hope you will do a video on the REST of the radio equipment. I'm 75, first licensed in 65 in high school, and back then, lots of surplus equipment was floating around. I've owned some used some. Went to Navy ET-A school at Treasure Island, and was a member of K6NCG, the station amateur radio club. We had some surplus gear there, including 19 and 28 TTY gear, some of the 28's of which I helped bring from the mothball fleet to the club station. Was up that tower several times. We had an old RB series receiver, back end to a VHF (2 meters) converter for the AM stuff on 2
Been a couple museum ship comm spaces. Never seen yet any single piece of complete gear. (Did find a skid full of KW7 boards at the Dayton Hamvention many years back. Back after the Chinese & Russians had already built their own, thanks to the Walker family ;-) ) Most I’ve ever seen is a picture on an empty shelf. KG-14s & KW37s and that’s about it. Thanks for showing us how it used to be. 73 de W8IJN
COD, keep up the good work! Your videos have definitely been able to grab my attention, a difficult thing to do, and I keep enjoying your work!
Codes and code equipment have a short shelf life.
The USA system was in operation from 1940 to 1959.
Great and informative video. Bravo Zulu to you Sir!
It's remarkable how much like a IBM selectric typewriter, which was 30 years later. Great job Thanx👍👍🇺🇸🇺🇸
Found! I love it. The swivel chair with 4 casters is an ancient pattern seen all over industry at the time. I've had one in my shop for almost 30 years now, used most of the day. Picked it off a bin. Built like a tank..
Another awsome example of “underway adaptability “
I dealt with more modern cryptographic stuff in the service. I think that replica is most interesting since the art of coding and decoding has always fascinated me.
I had never bothered researching us crypto devices had always wondered what our cipher system was like.
Considering how much love the enigma machine gets in the movies and propaganda you’d have thought that our own wildly superior technology would get mentioned.
Thank you very much for showing this!
Probably doesn't get mentioned because it worked. "What does the message say?" "I don't know" doesn't make for interesting story telling.
Enigma was broken in a pretty spectacular fashion. SIGABA and Type X (British equivalent) were not. The latter makes for an interesting chapter or two in David Kahn's The Codebreakers - but not a movie.
Another great video! The flying insect at 2:11 freaked me out fir a second or two lol
Does the Pampanito have a similar "code chair"?
No their radio shack had more room ...
The SIGABA (or ECM MkII) was retired partly because people were afraid that Soviets would successfully copy it and partly because of the requirement for digital communications at higher speeds; the rotors would have literally exploded if you tried to make them move that fast. To this day there is no feasible attack on it. The M209 handheld cipher device (though still much better than the Enigma) was retired in part because by the mid-1950s it was becoming feasible to cryptanalyze.
The Enigma was a huge challenge for 1940 but compared to allied rotor cipher machines it was actually a bit crap.
Absolutely a great video…. Thank you so very much
Great video! Happy I subscribed!
If the ECM Mark 2 is better or worse than the Enigma.
Well, there is a few things that makes the ECM mk 2 a better device.
Firstly, it can encode a letter as itself. The Enigma couldn't do that. Now encrypting a letter as itself might sound bad, but if one never encrypts a letter as itself, then you have just given a fairly decent clue.
Secondly, the ECM incremented rotors in a more complex pattern. Unlike the Enigma that always incremented the first rotor that after a full rotation incremented the next rotor and so forth. Ie, the Enigma doesn't even try to scramble this.
That the ECM had around 5x as many rotors isn't actually that important in the grand scheme of things, it will slow down a brute force attack. As in just manually trying all possible combinations, this is something a computer can do fairly fast. And I somewhat suspect that the ECM mk 2 likely wouldn't take long for a 60's-70's main frame to crack in a few days per message. While a modern smart phone likely cracks it in a couple of minutes if not faster.
However, the ECM mk 2 seems a bit overkill for what it is. At the time they could have likely used something weaker and made it a bit lighter/smaller and get other practical benefits while still being reasonably "impossible" to crack at the time. Do note, encryption has no upper bound to complexity. Like today we mostly use 2048 or 4096 bit RSA encryption for TLS certificates (3rd party verification that you visit the site you think you visit and these needs to be valid for a few months to be practical), but practically there is nothing stopping us from using 16384 bit keys instead, other than it taking fair bit longer to process. There is a trade between practicality and security. One can simply stated be "too secure" when it starts to negatively affect practical aspects of one's operation. (and someone drew that line at 15 rotors for the ECM mk 2.)
Very interesting discovery about the cutoff chair!
Now, my suggestion. Since we, the general public, aren't allowed on the bridge, in the conning tower, or down to the lower deck, (believe me when I say i tried, but no joy!) how about video tours of those areas?
All coming in the near future.
Great information! Thanks for going into detail on the machine!
I don't think a wartime sledge hammer would have a barcode on it. Otherwise unchanged.
When asking how this machine compares with the Enigma machine re security, don't forget that even with their specially designed machines, and getting their hands on a couple of enigmas, the British were able to decode German messages only because of German operating mistakes, such as transmitting a message twice, transmitting a low level code weather report again with Enigma, use of standard forms such as beginning messages in standard format (as in To: General Birkhalter; From: General Schmittwitt, Heil Hitler. Blah Blah Blah) and using the same Enigma rotor settings all day for all manner of messages. And not using padding to obscure message length.
The moral of the story is: It doesn't matter how good, how foolproof your system is, some fool will stuff it up. It won't matter how many rotors and combinations you have. Even if it is an Edward Snowden blabbing the data intentionally.
The biggest thing crippling message security is over confidence in the system - that's what allowed Enigma messages to be decoded, and what caused the Imperial Japanese Navy messages to be read by US and Australian forces.
Regarding withdrawing the machine because of a belief that the Soviets might get one and put it to their own use & preventing eavesdropping, that's ridiculous. Since the end of WW2, the Soviets had been using an encryption system known in the West as Venona. Messages stored by the USA have only recently been partly decoded, made possible by modern computer networks.
You're knowledgeable on crypto issues! But you must remember the one time pad ciphers or book ciphers used by Soviet spies weren't practical for military purposes.
Great story about the "chair".....too bad you can't sell photo-ops for those that can sit AND fit in front of the machine (NO TOUCHIE) 💵💲💰📸🤳🏻
My Grandfather said proximity fuses helped them win in the Pacific Theater. Ace in the hole for surface warfare.
I love WW2 history. I’d say we had about a 1/2 dozen advantages during the war. 1. Distance 2. Mass production 3. Radar 4. A president who led by saying what he wanted done, and the right people to get it done 5. American ingenuity 6. Proximity fuse as you mentioned. 7. Divine intervention 8. Atomic bomb 💣
I’d add a couple more. Code breakers, plenty of raw materials (unlimited steel, oil), millions of Rosie the riveters
How many on board could handle this equipment or knew the code? ie could step in in case something bad happens to Code Officer?
Excellent content and thanks for sharing. Here by way of Battleship New Jersey. Well done.
Say what is your opinion on the movie Das Boot?
The original movie is the best submarine film ever made.
Realistically grim. I am left amazed that anyone would want to serve on one.
@@paulfarace9595that’s one of my favorite movies. I went to Germany, France , Austria and Belgium on vacation. My bro in law was stationed in Germany at the time I’m a huge ww2 history fan we end to the beaches of Normandy, Bastogne ( battle of the bulge), Paris and hitlers eagles nest in Austria. I did not get to a UBoat pen or a concentration camp. Those are both on my bucket list. Was an amazing trip
It sounds a little bit like the German Lorenz cipher. It was a crypto machine which worked with off-the-shelf teletype machines. Type up your comms, punching to paper tape (5-bit Baudot code; standardized world-wide at the time). The Lorenz machine would read the paper type and encrypt on-the-fly, sending it over a radio. On the other end, something was reading the radio transmissions, parsing it into binary 1s and 0s, feeding that to a similar-configured Lorenz machine which decrypted it on-the-fly and printed out the plaintext on paper tape. The paper tape was adhesive backed so you could tear off the printed tape, swipe it against a wet sponge or rag, then stick it to sheets of paper to be delivered to field commanders, usually by dispatch riders on motorcycles.
The Enigma was broken by Turing's bombes. The Colossus computer, which wasn't declassified until the 1970s, was what it took to break the Lorenz cipher.
In the last full month of the war, Germany transmitted about 8 megabytes (?!!) of data with the Lorenz cipher. Whereas Enigma messages tended to be short, because using it was so tedious, Lorenz cipher comms tended to be multiple pages in length, typically including detailed orders-of-battle and reconnaissance information. The Allies could read this traffic ('cuz Colossus) and the secret was so-well-kept that, when German generals were briefed (after the war) about that ability, they were utterly shocked; they had NO idea. And they quickly realized why they'd been defeated.
The Germans cracked the encryption line land that fdr and Churchill used to talk during ww2 across the at Atlantic from London to DC. The Allies didn’t find out until after ww2. Did the axis cracked any of this machine codes during war world 2?
No.
What the Germans cracked was the voice encoder use for trans-Atlantic telephone calls via HF radio. They were aided in that because they captured a similar station in Holland.
@@Inkling777 that makes more sense. I wondered how they tapped that cable.
So, how does it work? Or must this remain an enigma?
There are many great UA-cam videos on the British Bletchley Park decoders. Look at those, especially the Lorenz encryption teletype machines, and you will get a good idea of how they worked.
The tip-top very highest security Enigma machine had 15 (or so) rotors.
I wonder what Pinewood studios used as their source to replicate the cipher machine! I think its pretty cool that you were able to acquire this! The original one on the Sub, any idea when it was taken off?
If not before then the real one def would have been withheld on turning it into a museum ship. Likely the reals were destroyed due to that 'risk of Russia' thing. The point being that they couldn't be found... even if smuggled via someone's garage sale.
There's a real one in the National Cryptologic Museum, just outside the NSA campus.
They had a recently declassified picture and likely a description. They used a British typewriter keyboard core (it has a pound sterling key)!
Ahh interesting
Many thanks! I've heard a lot about the German Enigma. This is the first I have heard about our equivalent. I'd love to hear explanations about its strengths and weaknesses. Also at 105 pounds, it doubt this machine was used in the field. One question. Did it have a patch panel like the Enigma?
Not sure of the website but there is a US cryptologic museum that almost certainly would have information on the device, provided nothing relavant to it us still classified.
It had a static signal scrambler but not made of cords and plugs. On the ECM-II it was a series of six small non-driven rotors that applied a permutation to the output. The ECM II operator would set the positions of the scrambler rotors the same way an Enigma operator would set the position of the plugs in the panel.
I believe that in the US Navy, and probably ALL navies that the Code Books also had lead plates it their covers, just to help them sink quickly!
Concrete weights in scuttling bags and water-dissolving paper took care if that in WWII.
That’s a lot of effort for a movie prop.
Bless the Brits!
did all ships carry this or just subs? My dad was on an APA USS KNOX troop transport. i dont recall him ever mentioning this
What's the range on the radio? How long could it send and receive those encrypted messages? And I assume it has to be a periscope depth? No underwater sending or receiving?
Don't assume periscope depth, assume surfaced.
The code machine was changed in 1969 because the North Koreans hired by the Russian’s attacked and captured the USS Pueblo in Dec. 1968 and got their code machine.
The WWII-era ECM was retired in 1959 for this possibility. The Pueblo had rhe KLH system that wasn't equipment based but software based. Still we changed cipher systems in response. 😢
I understood that the US and allies used a Type-X (or Typex) machine. Is this a Type-X with another name?
Everyone talks about the Germans
We cracked theirs
No one cracked ours
Not true. German Navy decoded a number of Royal Navy and US Navy codes during WW2.
How do you know?
very cool