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Old 2nd Dec 2018, 7:08 am   #27
Craig Sawyers
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Oxford, UK.
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Default Re: ENIGMA machine being auctioned.

The Germans destroyed most of their cipher equipment. The standing order was that if you though you were going to be captured, destroy the equipment. That there are so many Enigma machines still around is because there were a huge number to start with.

The Lorenz SZ42 however was only used for communication between field commanders and Hitler's bunker. So there were not many made. Each link had two, because they were so unreliable that when one was down being fixed they could use the other. I have a paper written by a German telegraph operator who had responsibility for the SZ42's on one of the Russian fronts. Before capture he describes throwing the cipher boxes into the sea (Black, I think) and putting the rest of it in a shell hole with a bunch of dynamite - and then trying to stop his comrades from hiding in that particular shell hole!

There are only three known examples. The one at Bletchley, which is complete, which was used on the Western front by Kesselring. There is one at the National Cryptologic Museum at Fort Meade, Maryland and is also complete (original use unknown). And there is a partial unit missing the motor and some of the power supply parts at the Military Museum in Norway (that is currently on loan in the UK at the National Museum of Computing).

There could still be the odd one still out there, lurking in the private collection of a Russian Oligarch or similar - but that is only speculation.

Because of the extreme rarity of this particular machine, they are essentially priceless.

Craig
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