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Rotor Enigma ← Enigma G
Abwehr Enigma stolen from Bletchley Park
Enigma G312 is an Enigma cipher machine model G31
— also known as a Zählwerksmaschine (counter machine) —
manufactured around 1940 by Heimsoeth und Rinke
in Berlin (Germany) for the German intelligence service — the
Abwehr. The machine reached the headlines when it was stolen from
its present location at the Bletchley Park Museum
on 1 April 2000.
It was recovered later that year, followed by the arrest of
antiques dealer Dennis Yates from Derbishire (UK).
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Shortly after the provisional opening of the
Bletchley Park Museum, the
machine had been given on loan by GCHQ and was on public display as part
of a permanent exhibition [7].
At the time the museum was only open for two
days on alternate weekends, when on Sunday 1 April 2000 the machine was
taken from a display case in The Mansion in broad daylight.
It reached the national news that night and was in the headlines of the
newspapers the following day.
It was reported as a unique machine of which only three were known,
with a value of ~ £110,000.
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The theft was a great embarrassment for the Bletchley Park Trust and exposed
the poor security measures at the museum at the time. Luckily, researcher
David Hamer
had recently written an article about the G312 for Cryptologia
and had made several good quality photographs of it [3].
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The machine was considered lost for several months until the police started
receiving letters from a man claiming to act on behalf of someone who had
recently bought it. In the letters he demanded £25,000 for
a safe return of the machine. Although the museum had agreed to pay the
ransom, the 6 October deadline wasn't met and reportedly no money was payed [1].
Two weeks later the machine was sent to BBC reporter Jeremy Paxman,
who received the parcel in his office at the London Television Centre.
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The machine appreared to be undamaged, but the three cipher wheels were
missing. They were eventually returned safely at a later date.
In November 2000, the British Police arrested 58-year-old Dennis Yates —
an antiques dealer from Derbyshire. He admitted sending the ransom letters to
the police and returning the machine to Jeremy Paxman, but insisted that
he was acting on behalf of someone else. He refused to reveal
the name of the person(s) involved in the theft, claiming that he had received
death threats [1]. Somehow the situation ran out of his control.
Yates was subsequently sentenced to an imprisonment of ten months, but served
less than three.
Christine Large, the (then) director of the Bletchley Park Museum,
later wrote a book based on the case, entitled Hijacking Enigma [5].
The theft of the machine was never solved and will probably remain
a mystery, as Yates has meanwhile passed away. He was found dead in his car
in 2017.
In 2004, Crypto Museum was permitted to take detailed photographs of the G312. 1
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The quality of the photographs of the Enigma G312 is somewhat
sub-standard as they have been scanned from analogue negatives.
At the time we didn't have a digital camera.
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The table below shows the wiring of the G312. Although the machine is
believed to have been used by the German Abwehr, it is the only
one every found with this wiring. Different wirings were used for different
sections of the Abwehr, and also for different radio nets. It is
possible that some machines were rewired a number of times
during their lifetime. Note the rewired UKW.
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Wheel
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ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
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Notch
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Turnover
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#
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ETW
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QWERTZUIOASDFGHJKPYXCVBNML
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I
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DMTWSILRUYQNKFEJCAZBPGXOHV
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ACDEHIJKMNOQSTWXY
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SUVWZABCEFGIKLOPQ
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17
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II
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HQZGPJTMOBLNCIFDYAWVEUSRKX
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ABDGHIKLNOPSUVY
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STVYZACDFGHKMNQ
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15
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III
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UQNTLSZFMREHDPXKIBVYGJCWOA
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CEFIMNPSUVZ
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UWXAEFHKMNR
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11
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UKW
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RULQMZJSYGOCETKWDAHNBXPVIF
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- BBC, 2000: Wartime coding machine stolen
1 April 2005. Retrieved February 2013.
- Crypto Museum, Photographs of Enigma G-312
Bletchley Park, August 2002, November 2004.
- David Hamer, G-312: An Abwehr Enigma
Cryptologia, January 2000, Volume XXIV, Number 1.
- BBC, Photograph of Jeremy Paxman with Enigma G-312
Copyright BBC News, 2000. Retrieved November 2005.
- Christine Large, Hijacking Enigma
31 May 2004. ISBN 978-0470863473.
- David Kenyon and Frode Weierud, Enigma G: The Counter Enigma
Bletchley Park and Crypto Cellar Research, 5 May 2019. Updated 15 June 2019.
- Mark Baldwin, The Stolen Enigma machine
Website DR ENIGMA, 16 October 2017.
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Tuesday 20 September 2022. Last changed: Friday, 07 July 2023 - 07:41 CET.
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![BBC presenter Jeremy Paxman with the returned Enigma G312. Photo courtesy BBC News 2000 [5].](img/paxman.jpg)
