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Rotor Enigma K UKW-D →
Commercial Enigma (K) with UKW-D
- wanted item
The Enigma KD was a standard commercial Enigma K cipher machine,
but had differently wired wheels
and a rewirable reflector called UKW-D.
Furthermore, the wheels each had nine turnover notches.
It was used by the Militärisches Amt
(Mil Amt) on the Berlin - Madrid - Lisbon link.
It first appeared on 3 December 1944 and remained in use
throughout the rest of the war.
Mil Amt was a department of the German secret intelligence service
and the successor to the Abwehr
[1]
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The Enigma KD was supplied to Mil Amt with six different cipher wheels
that each had nine turnover notches. Three of these wheels would be
placed in the machine at any given time. The wiring of the Enigma KD
used by Mil Amt is currently unknown (see wiring info below).
In 2009 an Enigma KD machine was discovered in the archives of the Swedish
Intelligence Service FRA. It is currently not known whether this machine
was used by the FRA or that it was confiscated after the war,
but it appears to be identical to the Enigma KD used by Mil Amt.
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The machine has three wheels, numbered I, II and III, each with nine
turnover notches. The notches appear in the same position on all three
wheels. The wiring of the wheels is given below.
During the Enigma Reunion 2009
we were able to see the Enigma KD for the very first time, when it
was brought to the event by FRA staff.
The photographs presented on this page were made during that event.
The FRA has also been helpful in recovering the wheel wiring.
The origin of the machine's name (KD) is unknown. It is suggested
in [1] that it might be related to Kommando des Meldegebietes
(KDM), which was the new name of the Abwehrstellen (Ast) after
they were incorporated into the Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(RSHA) on 1 June 1944.
It is also possible that it was the merger of the machine's model
(K)
and the rewirable reflector (D).
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Below is the wiring if the first three wheels (I, II and III) of the Enigma KD
that was found in the archives of the FRA [2]. This wiring might be identical
to the first three wheels of the Enigma KD used by Mil Amt during WWII, but this
is currently uncertain.
The column marked 'Notch' shows the physical position of each notch on the
circumference of the wheel, whilst the next column, marked 'Turnover', shows
the letter that is visible through the window at the time of the turnover.
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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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VEZIOJCXKYDUNTWAPLQGBHSFMR
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ACGIMPTVY
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SUYAEHLNQ
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9
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II
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HGRBSJZETDLVPMQYCXAOKINFUW
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ACGIMPTVY
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SUYAEHLNQ
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9
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III
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NWLHXGRBYOJSAZDVTPKFQMEUIC
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ACGIMPTVY
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SUYAEHLNQ
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9
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UKW 1
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KOTVPNLMJIAGHFBEWYXCZDQSRU
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Note that due to the nature of the (rewirable) UKW it does not have a
fixed wiring. The table above shows the wiring of the UKW when the machine
was (re)discovered at the FRA [2]. The actual wiring was probably changed
frequently.
Furthermore, the wiring as recorded by the FRA followed a different
notation, starting with the contact at the top. For convenience, it
has been converted to the official BP-notation.
During WWII,
Mil Amt changed the order of the wheels and the Ringstellung
daily, whilst the Grundstellung (and probably also the wiring of
UKW-D) was changed every three weeks [1].
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© Crypto Museum. Created: Sunday 13 September 2009. Last changed: Sunday, 09 October 2022 - 13:43 CET.
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![Machine courtesy FRA Sweden [2]](../img/300700/001/full.jpg)
