Wanted: Enigma machine for Nazi code found under the floorboards
A BLETCHLEY PARK codebreaker has called for an Enigma machine to crack a mystery message given to a German soldier that was discovered under her neighbour’s floorboards.
Marj Dodsworth had worked on the “bombe” machine developed by Alan Turing with the Women’s Royal Naval Service during the Second World War.
Now 95, Ms Dodsworth says that the device is needed to decipher messages found at the property in former Nazioccupied Guernsey.
John and Val Campbell were approached by Ms Dodsworth years after they discovered the notes alongside wartime items in 1985, 15 years after moving into their home.
Mr Campbell, a retired structural engineer, learnt the messages had been sent to a soldier, believed to be Ernst Buchtela, who was billeted in the house during the Nazi occupation of Guernsey between 1940 and 1945.
It was not until the third lockdown that Mr Campbell sought to solve the mystery of the sheets, sections of which have been chewed or are missing. He appealed in a newspaper in the hope of gathering more information before Guernsey Liberation Day on Sunday.
Ms Dodsworth, who never told her parents about her role as a codebreaker, contacted them. Having seen the sheets, she believes they cannot be deciphered without an Enigma.
“When I first saw it I thought, ‘There’s no way without a machine. There’s not a cat’s chance I’d be able to do it’,” she said. “The machines were big, noisy, oily, dirty and so large I could barely touch the top.”
Mr Campbell “feels guilty” for not investigating the sheet sooner. He hopes an Enigma can be sourced so that Ms Dodsworth can decode it.
“I knew it was a coded sheet, and I must have known it was important enough to protect because I wrapped it in a piece of newspaper,” he said. “But I suppose I didn’t hold out any hope of it being unravelled at that time, because things weren’t anything like so advanced as they are in 2021. If somebody can translate it, that’s valuable information and it will solve the riddle of whether it has any significance.”
An estimated 318 Enigma machines are still in existence today, 284 of which were in use during or before the Second World War, according to the Carnegie Mellon University.
One, manufactured in Berlin in 1935 for German use, was sold at a New Hampshire auction house yesterday by a private collector for £180,000.