On April 21, 2000, Universal Pictures released a mega-budget war-time movie "U-571". A thrilling story about an American crew on a top-secret mission to capture an Enigma Cipher Machine from the German U-Boat, it promised to be an exciting movie. At the first glance, all the standard required elements are there: the danger of the war, the dark submarine, brave American mariners, Nazis as cruel as they are dumb, and an enigmatic, famous German encryption machine.
However there are glaring mistakes in the movie, which, in light of the new movie Enigma showing at cinemas at present, need to be brought to light. Enigma itself has some glaring historical errors, but I shall get to that over the next couple of weeks. This, coupled with an upcoming interview with a real code breaker from the English war effort, it will be a really interesting series of articles, leading up to Anzac Day.
I'm not going to discuss here the technicality of the sorts of mistakes the movie is full of, only the historical accuracy, and send tribute to all the heroes who worked tirelessly to break the Enigma code.
Even though the movie director says: "U-571" is a work of fiction,"
the movie will be considered "the real story" by many viewers (like Pearl Harbour) and that really gets on my wick. Especially when the movie is touted as ‘based on a real event.’
Many cannot even point out when and where the War took place, and information coming from "historical" movies like "U-571" provide nothing but distortion and confusion; finally become a newly accepted fact.
Well I can’t go around standing for that sort of thing. So get the film out on video knowing this: the only historically accurate part of the film is the last five seconds of the movie, where the viewer learns that the real events of the capturing Enigma Machine and its codebooks took place onboard of U-110, U-559, and U-505.
Of course, there's no mention of the true heroes of this war: the Polish team of the Mathematicians, lead by Marian Rejewski, who already in 1932 broke an Enigma Machine and later, an excellent British group working in Bletchley Park.
Hollywood can be today's American Propaganda Ministry, working hard to rewrite history with different heroes.
So to the facts. Below is the story of events from the UK Guardian.
Who found the Enigma?
The film shows the Americans, rather than the British, capturing an Enigma cipher machine, a factor which, not surprisingly, makes the film much more likely to do well in the US. However, the real-life story of the British capturing an Enigma from the U-110, on which the film is based, is, if anything, even more dramatic and moving than the action shown in the movie.
The British hunt for the German submarine U-110 began shortly after midday on May 9 1941. That was when Joe Baker Cresswell, the commander of the British destroyer HMS Bulldog, one of the group of warships protecting a convoy heading from Britain to America, looked on with horror as the U-boat drew blood for the first time.
He could not see the submarine itself. All he saw were two tall towers of water shooting up into the air on the right side of two merchant ships. That was enough to tell Baker Cresswell that the ships had been torpedoed by a U-boat lurking on the convoy's right flank.
But even as the two ships sank he knew that a trap he had set was about to snap shut on the unsuspecting enemy. He had placed the British corvette HMS Aubretia on the convoy's right flank to provide for precisely this eventuality. It now charged towards the spot from where the torpedoes appeared to have been fired, and, having identified the U-boat on its asdic sonar equipment, dropped the first pattern of depth charges.
The U-boat was the U-110. It might have sunk a third ship had it not been for an accident. The final torpedo fired had remained stuck inside the tube. This was to have fatal consequences for many of the crew. Normally, after a torpedo was fired from the U-boat's bow, water was pumped into the tanks in the bow to compensate for the departure of the missile. However, given that the torpedo on this occasion never left the U-boat, the pumped-in water merely unbalanced it for just long enough to stop it diving out of harm's way. By the time its 28-year-old commander Fritz-Julius Lemp was able to give the order to dive, it was too late.
Lemp's crew winced as HMS Aubretia's depth charges exploded and the whole U-boat vibrated. There was a scraping, creaking sound, as the metal deck plates rubbed together and bent, until it seemed inevitable that the deck itself would be torn in half under their feet.
When the extinguished lights came on again, all eyes in the control room were fixed on Lemp. Leaning nonchalantly against the periscope, with his cap pushed on to the back of his head, he murmured soothing words of reassurance to those around him. "It's OK. We're all going to be fine," he said, followed by the grim joke: "You don't think I'm going to let them catch me and shoot me, do you?" This encouraged one of the veteran submariners to advise Helmut Ecke, the 23-year-old journalist who was supposed to be covering the action on the U-boat for the German armed forces propaganda unit, to mention the men's terrified faces in one of his propaganda articles. Ecke, who is still living in Germany today, will never forget the terror he experienced as the depth charges went off.
But after the men in the U-110's control room had heard the damage reports coming in, even Lemp's jokes wore a little thin. The damaged batteries were giving off a whiff of chlorine gas, none of the depth meters were working, so it was impossible to tell whether they were sinking or rising. A loud hissing sound suggested that the pressurised air, which was supposed to be held back in reserve so that it could be used to blast the U-boat to the surface in an emergency, was escaping.
Lemp was eventually forced to announce to his men that he could not control the U-boat, and there was nothing more he could do. "We must wait and see what happens," he muttered, and to anyone still listening, he added: "I want you all to think of home, or of something beautiful."
Herbert Langsch, one of three Enigma operators still alive in Germany, resigned himself to death. As he pictured the U-boat tumbling into the abyss where it would soon be crushed by the growing pressure, he thought of his childhood sweetheart, and tried to imagine how she would feel when she knew he had died.
But then the men felt the submarine rocking from side to side and the word came down the line that they had managed to make it to the surface after all. They were saved. Or so they thought. For the scene which greeted the German crew, as they climbed onto the deck outside, was like something out of Dante's inferno. Two large warships were steaming towards the crippled U-boat, as if intent on ramming it. At the same time, guns were firing on them from all sides. They were surrounded.
Some of the crew jumped into the water immediately. Others hung around on deck, hypnotised by the sight of the destroyers bearing down on them. Radio operator Heinz Wilde, who still lives in Germany, climbed up the conning tower ladder to ask Lemp whether he should destroy the Enigma machine and code-books. Lemp merely shouted back at him to get out, so Wilde followed the other crew members into the sea.
The engineers opened up the vents so that the diving tanks would be flooded. They then jumped overboard with Lemp, mistakenly believing the U-boat would sink in a matter of minutes. It was only when it failed to sink that Lemp called out to another officer that they should try to climb back on board to see what could be done. But, at that moment, the U-boat was swept beyond their reach. That was the last time anyone saw Lemp.
Lieutenant David Balme, who was in charge of the Bulldog's boarding party, sent over to the U-110 in a whaler decided that he should be the first to climb down the conning tower. It takes a particular kind of courage to venture inside a captured submarine. For all he knew, scuttling charges set by the Germans might explode at any minute. As he stepped into its control room, he suddenly felt very lonely and isolated. The interior was tinged with blue by the emergency lighting. Apart from the sound of his own breathing, all Balme could hear was a faint hissing, and the sound of the Atlantic waves lapping against the hull. To his relief, he soon discovered he was alone, and he shouted to the rest of the boarding party to follow him down.
While Balme was arranging his men into a human chain so that they could pass all the code-books and charts up the conning tower and into the whaler waiting for them outside, his telegraphist tapped him on the shoulder and said: "Come and look in the radio room. There's something rather interesting I want to show you." On the table in the radio room was a machine like a typewriter. The telegraphist proceeded to show Balme how, when he pressed one letter key on the keyboard, another letter was highlighted on the display panel. Balme instructed the telegraphist to use the screwdriver in his toolbag to undo the four screws securing the machine to the table. Then it, too, was passed up to the deck outside.
It took the men about an hour and a half to clear all the books, papers and machinery out of the U-boat. Then Baker Cresswell sent over some sandwiches. Balme settled down to eat his while sitting at Lemp's roll-top desk. Inside the desk, he found an Iron Cross, some pictures of Lemp's family, and a sealed envelope. Balme, who now lives in the south of England, carefully put all three items into his pocket before returning to the Bulldog. The next morning the U-boat sank.
Two days later, HMS Bulldog docked in Scapa Flow, the British naval base in the Orkneys. Baker Cresswell was greeted by Allon Bacon, an intelligence officer who was supposed to take the documents down to Bletchley Park, the code-breaking centre. "Never mind about losing the U-110," Bacon said. "From our point of view, it was a good thing, as we can now keep all this quiet. For God's sake never breathe a word about this to anyone." Baker Cresswell replied that he would have to tell the commander-in-chief of the home fleet. "Yes, of course," said Bacon, "but no one else."
Bacon was down in London by 6pm on May 13. Three hours later, he was driven through the gates into Bletchley Park. As he walked into the naval intelligence section, he triumphantly held his briefcase containing the most important captured papers over his head, like an athlete who had just won a gold medal.
Later that night, as Baker Cresswell sailed back to Iceland, he received the following signal about the operation which had been code-named "Primrose" from Sir Dudley Pound, the first sea lord: "Following from first sea lord. Hearty congratulations. The petals of your flower are of rare beauty." He and the rest of the crew were to receive further congratulations from King George VI, who stated that the operation was "perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea."
What happened to the documents?
The documents and Enigma machine seized from the U-110 did not, in spite of what is stated in the U-571 film, help the British code-breakers to break the main naval Enigma code for the first time. That was achieved thanks to the capture of Enigma code-books from a series of German trawlers. Even the capture of the Enigma machine was no help. Other Enigma cipher machines and apparatus had already been captured by the British. But in the envelope seized by David Balme there was something almost as valuable: the settings and procedure to be used for "Offizier" Enigma messages, the especially important doubly enciphered messages sent to officers in U-boats while they were at sea. These crucial messages might never have been read by the British had it not been for the capture of the U-110.
Last updated: 30/04/2008
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On April 21, 2000, Universal Pictures released a mega-budget war-time movie "U-571". A thrilling story about an American crew on a top-secret mission to capture an Enigma Cipher Machine from the German U-Boat, it promised to be an exciting movie. At the first glance, all the standard required elements are there: the danger of the war, the dark submarine, brave American mariners, Nazis as cruel as they are dumb, and an enigmatic, famous German encryption machine.