Great - thanks. So next question, does anyone know where I can either get original slidex material, or good copies for display purposes. Also looking for the Oil and Ink cans for the M-209-B. Cheers Tim
Great - thanks. So next question, does anyone know where I can either get original slidex material, or good copies for display purposes. Also looking for the Oil and Ink cans for the M-209-B. Cheers Tim Have you tried the Cryptocollectors Yahoo group? John Alexander, who used to lurk around BP seems to buy/sell various items from time to time.
USA had the M-209-B encoder... what did the British Army use? Cheers Tim Each country had several encryption systems for each level of command ( HQ, Army group, division, frontline units etc). For example the US forces used the M-209 at division level and sigaba , sigcum for high level messages. As far as i know the British Army used hand ciphers of the slidex type plus enciphered codebooks (WOC- War Office Cypher) at Division level. For high level messages WOC and Typex.
http://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/hagelin/m209/files/m209_tm11-380_19420427.pdf Converter M- 209 --- 1942
DF-114 'Cryptanalytic Device' TICOM report DF-114 ‘German Cryptanalytic device for solution of M-209 traffic’.
From an October 1942 Army Council order: There will be three grades of cipher: (i) High Grade which includes Typex ‘X’ Machine, and Book Ciphers with a 4 figure vocabulary reciphered (i.e. War Office Cipher ‘W’). (ii) Medium Grade which includes Cysquare and Book Ciphers with a 3 figure vocabulary reciphered. (iii) Low Grade such as Syllabic. …It must be realised that Syllabic Cipher gives only temporary security; that is to say it should be used for tactical messages dealing with prospective operations, movements and administrative plans to be operative in the near future. Those concerned with the immediate future will normally be sent in clear in battle in the forward areas, while those dealing with the more distant future must not be sent at all by wireless, unless some more secure cipher is available. The low grade ciphers included Slidex, later replacement with Linex (March 1945), double transpoistion and map reference code. The latter used to code map positions for messages sent in clear.
They started out with a good cypher that was improved with typical British aristocratic meddling, http://s13.zetaboards.com/Crypto/topic/6892113/1/
