The second of four German navy messages still
unencrypted after 60 years has been cracked, thanks to computer users worldwide
contributing run cycles to the
project.
The message was sent from
U-Boat 623 which
was stationed in the North Atlantic during the
Second
World War.
The U-Boat, captained by Oberleutnant Hermann Schrüder, served less than
three months in the North Atlantic before being sunk with all hands by depth
charges from a British Liberator aircraft.
"Found nothing on convoy's course 55°, [I am] moving to the ordered [naval]
square. Position naval square AJ 3995," the message reads.
"[Wind] south-east [force] four, sea [state] three, 10/10 cloudy, [barometer]
[10]28 mb [and] rising, fog, visibility one nautical mile."
There are still two remaining messages to be decoded. The four messages
proved too tough for the code breakers at
Bletchley Park
as they were among the first sent on a new kind of
Enigma
encryption device.
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