Encryption
Rasterschlüssel 44
In March 1944, the Germans introduced a new hand cipher known as Rasterschlüssel 44 (RS44). This was intended for the Army, Luftwaffe and Police. This new cipher was based on a columnar transposition and was very difficult to break without a crib (which changed daily). It was overly complex and this lead to soldiers making mistakes and blatantly ignoring instructions, which meant in some cases the message was meaningless had to be re-enciphered and sent again.
We now have a complete set of instructions for how this cipher worked, and one member has started producing the necessary grids and cribs. We will be able to demonstrate how this cipher worked at events in 2008.
Schlüsselmaschine Enigma
Unfortunately we were several thousand pounds short of owning a real enigma so Ivan made this reproduction. Externally it is a perfect copy of an original machine (internally it is hard wired so A is Z, B is Y and so on, for demonstration purposes). The original message was entered on the keyboard. A contact for each letter established the passage of the current towards the pre-selected plug and socket (on the front of the machine). The current then circulated in the mobile rotors, previously set according to the encoding parameters. A lamp then lit up to give the encoded letter. The message was then sent by radio and received by the decoder. The same procedure was then followed to decypher the code.
Click here to get more detailed information about how this machine works.