U110

Sub-Lieutenant David Edward Balme, R.N.V.R (Left) who was aged 20 was put in charge of the armed boarding party, which included Able Seaman Arnold Hargreaves and six others. They boarded the whaler from Bulldogs port side at about 12:20Hrs and were lowered towards the sea, the photo above shows the 8 man boarding party rowing over. It was David Balme who went down the conning tower first, followed by the rest of his crew. Inside the darkness was broken by the blue emergency lighting. The boarding party now began a search of the deserted submarine. The bookshelves still contained books of every description - navigation manuals, seamanship manuals, code books and signal books. The Bulldog's telegraphist Allen Osborne Long pointed to an interesting piece of equipment that looked like a typewriter but had no place to put paper. This, along with all the books from the shelves, were put to one side to be transferred with utmost care to HMS Bulldog. It was important that everything was kept dry as the code books and signal books were printed in ink that disappeared if they were dropped in seawater.

PICTURE OF THE U-110 AND BOARDING PARTY

The U-110 was now even low in the water at it's stern, with the bow sticking out. Inside the abandoned U-110 every bang of the whaler that had been moored on the seaward side sounded as if the sub was about to sink or explode, but in fact the reverse was true the whaler smashed against the side of the submarine one too many times, the U-110 was to claim its last victim as the whaler sunk to the bottom. A second stronger motor boat was sent over with William Stewart Pollock, a former radio operator in the Royal Navy and on loan to Bulldog, to give advice and help load what had been found. The young sub-lieutenant was to find more important information in Lemp's roll top desk, this would give this country a breathing pace to re-stock with food that was in very short supply along with materials for the ever growing war machine. In total the boarding party spent some six hours on board the U.110 and returned to Bulldog at 18:35 Hrs

This was not the first Enigma machine captured, but it was the first fully working Enigma machine with the next six months of codes plus they also found many other code and cypher books in the U110. There were also some vital charts hitherto unknown to the British. The most important of these were the special grid charts used for positioning U-boats throughout the Atlantic and charts showing all the German minefields and swept channels which Britain would use to great effect for various raids, especially the St Nazaire operation.

A 2 inch steel cable from the U-110 was attached to HMS Bulldog, towing the yawing U-110 Baker Cresswell steamed back to Iceland at 6 Knots which was some 400 nautical miles to the north of their position, he received the following signal about the operation which had been code-named "Primrose" from Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord: "Hearty congratulations. The petals of your flower are of rare beauty." The U-110 was kept afloat being towed for 3 days and the sea was getting rougher and the sub was getting lower in the water they let the towline slip as U-110 started to upended as it took on more water, in the end sinking vertically with her bow high in the air. Two days later, HMS Bulldog docked in Scapa Flow, the British naval base in the Orkneys. Baker Cresswell was greeted by Alan Bacon, an intelligence officer who took charge of the documents removed from the U-110 Alan Bacon arrived in London on the 13th May by 18:00 Hrs. Some three hours later, he was driven through the gates of 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. With this information they had a near crystal ball which was used to sink about fifteen German supply ships stationed around the North and South Atlantic used for refuelling U-boats and armed raiders such as the Prinz Eugen which had sailed from Norway with the Bismarck in mid-May 1941.

The boarding party of the U-110 were presented to King George VI, who stated that the operation was "perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea." The information was kept secret under the 50 year rule so not many people got to hear about the boarding party. the Enigma code during WW.II. Which as we know from history gave us the edge in the Atlantic war until about February of 1942 This had been the turning point in history as England had been starved of food and ammunition for the war machine. One member of the crew the Telegraphist Allen Osborne Long was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and all the others were ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for ‘good work in saving documents under conditions of danger and difficulty.’

The Enigma machine and all supporting data was turned over to Bletchley Park where top mathematician Alan Turing had been working with Polish intelligence who had built a decoding machine called a ‘Bomba'. They believed that they could improve upon the Polish design using electro-mechanics with an important refinement contributed by Gordon Welchmann. Bletchley Park contacted the British Tabulating Machine Company of Letchworth Garden City to create a new machine which would be known as the Bombe. In BTM 1 factory the project was known to the few people in the know as CANTAB or the 6/6502 project.

Four prototype machines had been built at BTM by the Summer of 1940. The first Bombe was called Victory and was installed in hut 1 some more adjustments were needed as it did not work as planned, a second version came into use about six months later. A year later there were around 6 Bombes in operation at Bletchley Park in Hut 11. The Bombes were shipped around the country by a single army driver in ordinary lorries covered with tarpaulin so as not to arouse suspicion. The Bombes were large, about 1 metre high, 2 metres long and 1 metre wide and weighed around one ton each. One machine, designed to interpret the Naval Enigma, was made by linking four Bombes together. Known as the ‘Giant' it was too heavy to move and so was operated at the Letchworth factory basement next to where the Bombes were put together . When it achieved a result, a special number to Bletchley Park was telephoned with the message ‘the giant has caught a whale'. To see what a bombe looked like and a link to a story as told by Stephen Hare who was a young apprentice who worked on the Bombe CLICK HERE

Production increased of the Bombe that in the spring of 1942 BTM took over the basement of the Ascot Training Centre in Pixmore Ave No 5 Factory where the drums and other parts were made, then a month later BTM took up further space at the Spirella Factory Letchworth where teams of several hundred staff, predominantly women who had made ladies garments before the war, worked day and night assembling unique wired rotors. By 1942 BTM were producing at least one Bombe per week, in total 210 Bombes were put together at the Letchworth Factory.

The enigma cipher decoder shown left was the M3 that was captured on 9th May 1941 which an operator could input Morse Code then scramble a code in over 150,000,000,000 000,000,000 ways! if this was not bad enough the Germans added a fourth wheel in about February 1942 when they realised the code may have been cracked. This had been given the code name of "shark" by Bletchley Park who were unable to crack this code for some nine months. On top of this problem the British Navy code had been broken by the Germans. The midnight oil was burning to try and stay on top of the new cipher.

Then In the Eastern Mediterranean on 30^th Oct 1942 a contact was made with a German U boat, HMS Petard laid down a heavy depth charge attack on the U Boat which was U-559 and was badly damaged in the attack. After some 12 hours the U Boat was forced to the surface and its crew abandoned ship after opening its sea cocks. HMS Petard, which was nearest, they attempted to board the U-559 led by First Lieutenant Anthony Fasson and Able-Seaman Grazier and Tommy Brown a young lad from the canteen.

Fasson made his way down to the Captain's cabin, found some secret looking documents and passed them up to Tommy Brown in the conning tower. Fasson and Grazier then went back down to try to recover some electronic equipment and while they were down the U Boat suddenly started to sink. Tommy Brown jumped clear but Fasson and Grazier were reported to have gone down with the U-559.

The documents retrieved arrived in Bletchley Park on 24th November 1942. The documents were the German Weather Short Code Book and the Short Signal Book and were vital in "getting back into Shark" after the blackout caused by the introduction of the 4 wheel Enigma.

In 1943 the war in the Atlantic had near been won when a man called Tommy Flowers was told by the top brass, the war would be finished before he could build his machine. Tommy funded and built it himself what we know today as Colossus, the first digital, programmable, electronic computer. This was also fast enough to decipher the Lorenz code used by Hitler to transmit commands to his Generals. The Colossus computer was massive in size 5 metres long, 3 metres deep and 2.5 metres high - and weighed over a ton. The MKI was made up using standard telephone exchange components and had about 1,500 valves, and the MKII had 2,500 valves, and was able to work five time faster than the original MKI Colossus it contained about 100,000,000 electrical switches. The computer you are using today has the power of 50,000 Colossus, that being just the central part of your CPU.

At wars end we were the leaders in the computer field. Winston Churchill did not want anyone to know of it's existence due to a mistake he made at wars end of the great war, so all information regarding the bombe and Colossus was burnt along with all the drawings. The machine parts of Colossus were returned to Dollis Hill. It was reported that two Colossus computers found their way to CHQ and helped with the cold war that was about to start, they were working till the late 60s. All information regarding the bombe and Colossus remained on the official secrets list for over 50 years and today The algorithms used in 1943 are still I understand on the Official Secrets list.

The crew: Allen Osborne Long, Telegraphist, Sidney George Pearce, Able Seaman, Cyril Arthur George Dolley, Able Seaman, Richard Roe, Able Seaman, Claude Arthur Wileman, Able Seaman, Arnold Hargreaves, Able Seaman, John Trotter, Able Seaman, Cyril George Lee, Stoker 1st class and David Balme Sub-Lieutenant.

Allen Osborne Long was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal and all the others were ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ for ‘good work in saving documents under conditions of danger and difficulty.’ Sub-Lieutenant David Edward Balme was personally awarded the Distinguished Service Cross by King George V1

What happened to?

Lt-Cdr David Balme (Retired) now deceased 3rd Jan 2016: King George V1 described the action as "perhaps the most important single event in the whole war at sea, the capture of the Enigma machine from the U-110 which was seven months before America entered the war. On the 3 March 1999 this was brought up in the Houses of Parliament Prime Minister's Question Time. Brian Jenkins MP asked the then Prime Minister "did he agree that the film was "an affront" to British sailors." The then PM Tony Blair agreed with questioner.

Those brown envelopes found by David Balme from Lemps roll top desk, These were something almost as valuable as all the books and logs from the U-110. In these envelopes were 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 Bletchley Park.

In 1981 the German Sunday paper, Bild am Sonntag, ran a serial on the Battle of the Atlantic. The editor interviewed David Balme, and Dönitz. When Dönitz was told how the British captured the Enigma from U110 and had used it, he would not believe it, forty years after the event. Dönitz died still not believing it.

Able Seaman Arnold Hargreaves now deceased 15th Oct 2017 aged 90: After this event Arnold was transferred to a special unit in which he would wear brown Army uniform, but that's another story. He was also awarded ten shillings as his Timex watch had taken on some water from the north Atlantic swell. Apart from the war years Arnold worked in the printing trade in Bedford where Arnold had been living. When I contacted him he was 80 years young on 8th October 2007. I have a photo of Arnold holding a lamp from U.110 he had also obtained a tin opener from the U.110 that he still uses today. Arnold had an article posted in the Bedford Museum about his start in life and his Navy days.

Alan Turing MBE now deceased 4 September 1996 aged 79: held many posts which were top secret until he was tricked into admitting he was a practicing homosexual and was then charged on 31 March 1952, offering no defence other than that he saw nothing wrong in his actions. Turing was found guilty and was given the alternatives of prison or oestrogen injections for a year intended to neutralise his libido. He accepted the latter and returned to a wide range of academic pursuits.

After his conviction, his security clearance was withdrawn. Worse than that, security officers were now extremely worried that someone with complete knowledge of the work going on at GCHQ was now labelled a security risk. Alan Turing died of potassium cyanide poisoning on the evening of 7th June 1954 while conducting electrolysis experiments. The cyanide was found on a half eaten apple beside him, he had been found by his cleaner on the morning of 8th June 1954 16 days before his 42nd Birthday. An inquest concluded that it was self-administered, the coroner ruled that Turing took his own life "while the balance of his mind was disturbed." it had also been noted that the known evidence is also consistent with accidental poisoning. his mother always maintained that it was an accident. In fact they were both right; the half eaten apple, the symbol of lost innocence?

Thomas Harold Flowers, BSc, DSc, MBE now deceased 28 October 1998 aged 92: After the war, Tommy Flowers received some recognition being repaid part of his expense of £1,000 and the award of an MBE. He then returned to the Post Office Research Station where he was Head of the Switching Division. He and his group pioneered work on all-electronic telephone exchanges, completing a basic design by about 1950. In 1964 he became Head of the Advanced Development Group at Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd., retiring in 1970 He received an honorary doctorate from Newcastle University in 1977, and another from De Montfort University in Leicester. This was after the 50 year rule. It became known that he was being considered for a knighthood, possibly in the New Years Honours List. Sadly, Tommy Flowers died from heart failure at home in London on the 28th October, 1998. He was 92 years of age. While the Americans have got away with the myth that the ENIAC (which was short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first large-scale electronic computer in the world. We know the truth as it being Tommy Flowers who had gone one stage further with inventing the the first programmable, electronic computer that was working as the MkI Colossus on 8th December 1943 by February of 1944 it was up and running.

The American Government was given the details of Colossus by the British Government as part-payment for all the food and armaments America had supplied throughout the war that we still had to pay for with hard cash and only finished in 2006.

HMS Bulldog

A little while after the event recorded above HMS Bulldog went in for a weapons re-fit. She had her old depth charge launchers removed and was fitted with the new deadly Hedgehog launchers, these launched many mortar type bombes spread in a much wider pattern which sunk many U Boats. On the 9th May, 1945 The surrender of the Channel Islands was signed on board HMS Bulldog.

Type: Destroyer

Class: B

Penant: H 91

6th RN Vessel to bear the name HMS Bulldog

Built by: Swan Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd. (Wallsend-on-Tyne, U.K.): Wallsend

Laid down: 10 Aug, 1929

Launched: 6 Dec, 1930

Commissioned: 8 Apr, 1931

Armament: 4 x 4.7 in (119 mm) single guns,

2 x 2 pdr (37 mm/40 mm) AA guns,

2 x 21 in (533 mm)

quadruple Torpedo Tubes.

Decommissioned: 1945

HMS Bulldog survived the war and was broken up in for scrap in 1946.

Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp was killed in action or did he just drown? It was said he was shot while trying to swim back to his submarine U-110. He was just 27 and the holder of the Knights Cross (14.08.40). This version is recorded in some books. It is even recorded he was shot by the boarding party! They say the truth is out there. In 1988, through the Submarine Museum in Gosport and the German U-boat Association, Herr Georg Hogel, who had been a Petty Officer Telegraphist in both U30 and the U110, said that Lemp was in the water with him and then just disappeared and was certainly not shot.

In the official report from Sub-Lieutenant David Balme he wrote: No account of the boarding of U110 would be complete without refuting the perennial accusation that the boarding-party shot Kapitan Lemp when he tried to swim back and board the U-boat. Lemp was never seen and no shot was fired by any member of the boarding-party. This misinformation was probably picked up from a book on the Battle of the Atlantic by an author who never interviewed either Baker-Cresswell or myself.

Kptlt. Fritz-Julius Lemp while in command of another submarine U-30 was responsible for sinking the passenger liner S.S Athenia bound for Montreal; carrying some 1,103 civilians, including more than 300 Americans hurrying home ahead of the clouds of war. 112 civilians died in the sinking on September 3rd, 1939 just hours after the declaration of hostilities between Britain and Germany. Lemp had attacked and sank what he took to be an armoured cruiser. Germany denied they had anything to do with the sinking and the true facts were not known until the Nuremberg Trials.

This story may have never been told apart from a few books but on 21st April 2000, Universal Pictures released a mega-budget war-time movie "U-571" that we all got to hear about. A thrilling story about an American crew on a top-secret mission to capture an Enigma decoder from a German U-Boat. I watched the film which was good entertainment but it bore no resemblance to fact apart from one fact was totally true, the action took place on the water, for the rest to be fact we would have to re-write history as we know America entered the war some seven months later on Monday 8th December 1941.

Some of the data above has been gleaned from three other web sites, please check this site out if you want any further information Uboat.net (sorry no longer active) I would like to thank Gupmundur Helgason for permission in copying some data from his web site for this page. Also The First Garden City Museum for information and photographs for this web site on the Bombe and the story written by Stephen Hare along with the permission from Mrs. Hare to reproduce her late husbands memories as an apprentice at No 1 factory. In 2008 I had a chance meeting with Eric Fitton who had worked at No 5 factory, the old Ascot factory, now a housing estate. He had spent his war years in the basement operating the new automatic lathe sent over from America. He didn't know but he was making parts for the bombe. He admitted he did not have a clue what he had been making till many years later. He recalls one strange thing, at wars end all the parts he and others had made were all smashed-up. Had they made the parts wrong? Many years later about 1970 he found out he was the one who made the thing that turned cog that read the code. if you would like to view his web site Link. Awaiting permission.

Collated and written by: Frank Cooke with information from Arnold Hargreaves and information that was available 2003

Nothing to do with with this information but had this never happened on the U 110 the war could have turned out very different. England was short of everything for the war machine with our backs against the wall with most of the shipping being sunk by the Wolf packs. It doesn't take much to realise the only option that was left open to Churchill?