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Today in military history: Allies capture German Enigma machine, Wizard of the Saddle surrenders
Unto the Breach ^ | May 9, 2018 | Chris Carter

Posted on 05/09/2018 6:49:58 AM PDT by fugazi

1865: After learning that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered the previous month, Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest surrenders his men at Gainesville, Ala.. Forrest orders his men to “submit to the powers to be, and to aid in restoring peace and establishing law and order throughout the land.”

The infamous cavalry officer, whom Union general William Tecumseh Sherman would refer to as “that devil Forrest,” is considered one of the most brilliant tacticians of the Civil War; a remarkable feat considering he enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private with no prior military experience.

1926: Naval aviators Lt. Commander Richard E. Byrd and Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett take off from Spitsbergen, Norway and head north. In about eight hours, they will report that they have reached the North Pole, becoming the first men to do so by air.

Congress will award both men the Medal of Honor for their flight, which remains surrounded by controversy as Byrd is reported to have said that an oil leak in their Fokker Trimotor aircraft during the nearly 16-hour flight may have caused the explorers to turn around prematurely. However in three years, Commander Byrd will – without a doubt – fly over the South Pole.

1941: 40 Allied ships steam west across the Atlantic, right into the jaws of a waiting wolfpack of German U-boats. U-110 and U-201 make a coordinated attack on the convoy, sinking three freighters. British escort vessels score hits on both subs, sending U-201 back to German pens for repair. U-110 is forced to surface, and the captain orders his crew to abandon ship as it appears the destroyer HMS Bulldog is preparing to ram the sub.

British sailors quickly seize the opportunity to board the fatally...

(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...


TOPICS: History; Military/Veterans
KEYWORDS: alanturing; enigma; enigmacode; hutsix; militaryhistory

Future top ace and Medal of Honor recipient David McCampbell trades caps with a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot after landing his Spitfire on USS WASP on this date in 1942. McCampbell was still a landing signal officer at this point of the war.

1 posted on 05/09/2018 6:49:58 AM PDT by fugazi
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To: fugazi

2 posted on 05/09/2018 6:51:16 AM PDT by fugazi
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To: fugazi
Nathan Bedford Forrest

Fustest with the mostest.

3 posted on 05/09/2018 6:52:20 AM PDT by MUDDOG
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To: fugazi

“Infamous”
WTH


4 posted on 05/09/2018 6:52:26 AM PDT by hardspunned
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To: fugazi

In many ways, Forrest was a better cavalry commander than his better-known counterpart, JEB Stuart.


5 posted on 05/09/2018 7:04:04 AM PDT by IronJack (A)
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To: fugazi

The Civil War produced some pretty capable amateur Generals.
Forrest was probably the most successful. John B. Gordon was a lawyer before the war, elected a militia company commander because he could read, he finished the war as a Corp Commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. In the Union Army John A. Logan, a Democrat political appointee commanded The Army of the Tennessee for a while after McPhersons death. He finished the war commanding a Corp in Sherman’s Army in the Carolina Campaign.


6 posted on 05/09/2018 7:08:07 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
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To: fugazi
As Per Title:

1941: 40 Allied ships steam west across the Atlantic, right into the jaws of a waiting wolfpack of German U-boats. U-110 and U-201 make a coordinated attack on the convoy, sinking three freighters. British escort vessels score hits on both subs, sending U-201 back to German pens for repair. U-110 is forced to surface, and the captain orders his crew to abandon ship as it appears the destroyer HMS Bulldog is preparing to ram the sub.

--------------------------------------------------

Further details on the capture

Capture of U110 and the Enigma Machine, Seventy Years Ago Today

Posted on by

On May 9, 1941, seventy years ago today, the German submarines U110 and U201 were attacking a British convoy in the Atlantic south of Iceland.   U110 was forced to surface after being depth changed and was abandoned by her crew who thought that the submarine was sinking.  A boarding party from HMS Bulldog boarded the submarine and carried off its code books, ciphers and a Naval Enigma machine.   The Enigma machine and the documents allowed Alan Turing and his codebreakers at Bletchley Park to break the German Naval Enigma code, an  intelligence breakthrough which changed the course of the war in the Atlantic.

An exhibit commemorating the 70th anniversary of the capture of an Enigma machine and codebooks from a German wartime submarine has opened in Bletchley Park.

Bletchley Park opens U-110 Enigma exhibit

The exhibition contains photographs of the capture of the secret coding device of the U-boat 110 on 9 May 1941, as well as the first-hand account of the 20-year-old sub lieutenant who climbed into the U-boat to seize the documents and the factual material, providing a background to the story. Mercifully the much-derided Hollywood version of the story, U-571 – which featured Americans and not Brits capturing the device – doesn’t get a look-in.

The exhibit also covers the story from the German side, with testimony from some of the U-boat survivors. Historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore has added background material to provide context to the display.

The capture of the U-110 was crucial in breaking the naval Enigma code. Alan Turing and his Bletchley Park codebreakers were not at first able to break the naval Enigma code used by Germany’s U-boats, but the capture of codebooks from U-110 provided vital clues that helped crack the code.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the news along.

British sailors quickly seize the opportunity to board the fatally wounded submarine instead, grabbing the Enigma cipher machine and German code book. The British can now read the German Navy’s traffic – a secret so closely guarded that the United States isn’t informed until 1943.

7 posted on 05/09/2018 7:39:14 AM PDT by Texas Fossil ((Texas is not where you were born, but a Free State of Heart, Mind & Attitude!))
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To: fugazi
"The infamous cavalry officer,"

To the left wing idiot who wrote that,

GO TO HELL

8 posted on 05/09/2018 7:57:58 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: MarvinStinson

Forrest was an incredible tactician and renowned cavalryman, no doubt. But I would argue that the massacre at Fort Pillow and his leadership of the Ku Klux Klan following the war would qualify put a very dark stain on his legacy.

Yours truly,
The left wing idiot


9 posted on 05/09/2018 8:39:39 AM PDT by fugazi
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To: fugazi

The Allies already possessed one Enigma machine, passed on by Polish Intelligence before the war started. What was needed were the internal rotors in the machines that were currently being used. A number of schemes had been devised to capture these but the boarding of U-110 came as an unexpected bonus.


10 posted on 05/09/2018 3:16:48 PM PDT by mfish13 (Elections have Consequences.)
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