1. WWII - U-Boats A British convoy made it’s way from England to Nova Scotia because, it needed to protect supply ships from the ever present threat of German U-boats. David Balme had no clue he was heroism would give British intelligence what they needed to decipher the secret code of the third Reich-Hitler’s “enigma” encryption machine. Preface

2. The Unbreakable Code Onboard Lemp’s ship was a small, portable encryption device. It was used by U-boats so they could communicate with the high command of the Germans. U-Boats were on the prowl looking for another ship to sink and they ended up finding British supply ships and destroyed them, killing a lot of men and supplies. All of this caused a huge strain on Britain's war efforts. An encryption device was invented by Arthur Scherbius in 1923 to help businesses conduct secure overseas communication. His company was called Chiffriermaschinen Aktiengesellschaft.

3. U-Boats  One of Hitler’s best weapons which lead him to success was the U-Boat.  The Unterseebooten were German submarines that attacked at will.  U-Boats are different from the submarines from today because they can stay underwater for months.  WWII submarines were more like regular boats with diving capability.  The people on the subs lived in cramped spaces and they could only take a shower once a week.

4. U-110 in Trouble Sometimes the U-Boats would launch their torpedoes but remain undetected. But the battle on May 9, 1941 ultimately belonged to the Royal Navy, despite the loss of three convoy ships. After a lookout on HMS Aubretia saw U-110's periscope, she raced toward the spot where her crew dropped depth charges (large bombs). They thought that when they first fired the depth charges they missed so they fired another.

5. U-110 Captured The U-110 was about to make history and so was David Balme. What happened was David Balme and his boarding crew went aboard the U-110 and found what no one had found before: a working Enigma machine and a sealed envelope with the code of June. From there he would send it to Bletchley Park where a mathematical genius and his team were already working on a method to crack Hitler’s “unbreakable” code.

6. U-110 Sinks Thinking their ship sank, none of the U-110’s survivors knew about Balme’s boarding party. Four hundred men from the British Royal Navy knew, but not one said a word about U-110’s treasure until after the war was over. Initially towing U-110 back to Iceland, the Royal Navy crews knew their find would be useless if Germany learned U-110 had been captured, not sunk.

7. U-Boat Codes are broken  Even when Bletchley Park began to decipher encrypted Nazi messages, the U-Boat version of Enigma proved to be much more difficult.  But not until 1943, after British sailors drowned trying to recover an enigma machine were U- Boat codes broken on a regular basis.

8. Enigma Today There are Enigma encryption machines that exist today. Brits’ were annoyed that the capture of the Enigma machine was turned solely into a American story. And many people like Jonathan Mostow made movies about the Enigma encryption devices.