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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 17:20:27 GMT
my first thought would be that the obvious solution for not being able to encode spaces would be to eliminate them. sure it would give you the block of unspaced text that annoys us so much here, but it makes it impossible to recognize words by length. and I can't help thinking that encoded communications are not the place for rigid formatting requirements. Very true but nobody cared. Why should they add a big layer of inconvenience if they were confident that there was no way to break the code?
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Post by the light works on Jan 15, 2013 17:25:51 GMT
We have avoided that with our big nukes by giving them orders to go out and get lost for months at a time. periodically, they will check in, but official orders are as long as they are within range of their potential targets, nobody but the sub knows where they are. as I understand, the check in consists mostly of "we're fine, here, how are you?"
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Post by the light works on Jan 15, 2013 17:27:17 GMT
my first thought would be that the obvious solution for not being able to encode spaces would be to eliminate them. sure it would give you the block of unspaced text that annoys us so much here, but it makes it impossible to recognize words by length. and I can't help thinking that encoded communications are not the place for rigid formatting requirements. Very true but nobody cared. Why should they add a big layer of inconvenience if they were confident that there was no way to break the code? true, overconfidence is usually what trips people up.
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 17:31:24 GMT
We have avoided that with our big nukes by giving them orders to go out and get lost for months at a time. periodically, they will check in, but official orders are as long as they are within range of their potential targets, nobody but the sub knows where they are. as I understand, the check in consists mostly of "we're fine, here, how are you?" Correct, but this also requires advanced technology like ELF. This way, you can signal a Sub "EXQ A" (Execute Plan A") any time without the need of the submarine to surface. Also they move a couple of miles and release a buoy, then return to their post. The buoy then transmits the message time delayed from a position where the submarine isn't. They can also launch a special torpedoes for this purposes which drives 30 miles or so surfaces and then transmits the message.
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 17:35:00 GMT
And then there is directional UHF to satellites. If you are not within 20 nautical miles, there is no way to even notice that there is a transmission since all the stray RF energy from the transmitter is far beneath the horizon.
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Post by the light works on Jan 15, 2013 17:35:26 GMT
It also requires a certain level of trust in your captains; and I understand the German command structure gradually lost that as things progressed.
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 17:52:48 GMT
It also requires a certain level of trust in your captains; and I understand the German command structure gradually lost that as things progressed. There are two reasons: 1. There simply were no experienced captains available and not much time for training. 2. The "Rudeltaktik" where many submarines attack a convoy all at the same time requires a central command. Today, submarines can locate each other on close range and even exchange messages by ultra sound. But they don't work together, each one is better in staying "a hole in the water" operating independently. With the crude WW2 technology, this is not effective enough since a WW-2 sub has to surface in order to shoot or travel. WW-2 Submarines are nowhere close to the modern ones. They were surface ships which could hide a short time under water but not really operate under water!
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Post by the light works on Jan 15, 2013 18:16:15 GMT
yes, the fall of the third reich were a combination of Hitler trying to push too far, too fast; and the Japanese stirring us up before Hitler was ready for us to be stirred up.
to get us back on topic, the japanese attack was an example of our overconfidence. we had intercepted and either were able, or would have been able to decode messages that would have let us anticipate the pearl harbor attack, if we had taken them seriously.
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 19:26:07 GMT
yes, the fall of the third reich were a combination of Hitler trying to push too far, too fast; and the Japanese stirring us up before Hitler was ready for us to be stirred up. to get us back on topic, the japanese attack was an example of our overconfidence. we had intercepted and either were able, or would have been able to decode messages that would have let us anticipate the pearl harbor attack, if we had taken them seriously. Especially since the declaration of war by the Japanese was decoded and translated a lot faster than by the Japanese embassy which delivered the document way too late. But all it had generated was a "possible attack" warning delivered AFTER the attack. And don't forget incompetence and insufficient gear for the result of WW2.
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Post by Antigone68104 on Jan 15, 2013 19:32:33 GMT
By the way, what makes breaking Enigma codes easier is the fact that a "space" is always a space - the machine has no space key. So you can tell the length of words all the time. Every book on codebreaking that I have that includes photos of Enigma messages, the ciphertext is broken into uniform five-character blocks. Now, the fact that an Enigma could not encipher a letter as itself turned into a security flaw. If you know from direction finding that a message came from a weather ship, you can check the word "WETTERBERICHT" against the ciphertext. Any position in which a letter of the expected plaintext matches a letter of ciphertext is invalid.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 15, 2013 20:24:48 GMT
It also requires a certain level of trust in your captains; and I understand the German command structure gradually lost that as things progressed. There are two reasons: 1. There simply were no experienced captains available and not much time for training. 2. The "Rudeltaktik" where many submarines attack a convoy all at the same time requires a central command. Today, submarines can locate each other on close range and even exchange messages by ultra sound. But they don't work together, each one is better in staying "a hole in the water" operating independently. With the crude WW2 technology, this is not effective enough since a WW-2 sub has to surface in order to shoot or travel. WW-2 Submarines are nowhere close to the modern ones. They were surface ships which could hide a short time under water but not really operate under water! 1; Not exactly true. By the last year or so of the war the Kriegsmarine had serious problems with finding experienced Captains, as the experienced ones had been killed following advances in U-Boat detection methods - the principal ones being long range aircraft and radar, which could detect surfaced U-Boats. The major problem with Submarine warfare is that unlike all other branches of the military if you screw up (or just have a turn of bad luck) you are almost assured to die in the process. This is unlike, say, aircraft where ejecting/bailing out is usually an option - a heck of a lot of WW2 fighter aces got shot up at least once or twice. 2; I assume you mean the 'wolf-pack' tactic, as this is what it is better known as in the English speaking world. 3; WW2 Submarines were quite capable of shooting and moving submerged, and certainly by late 1943 it was very unusual for U-Boats to attack while surfaced. Submarines of this period had retained a deck gun, and if faced with a merchant ship on its own Captains would sometimes opt to surface and sink ships using this gun rather than their torpedoes - probably because they could carry more shells than torpedoes. This practice was ended due to fewer ships sailing alone, and the use of heavily armed 'Q-ships' (Merchant ships fitted with heavy guns). Prior to radar being fitted to escort ships in large numbers U-Boats might also opt to conduct a surface attack at night. But this was because it was a lot easier to target ships from the conning tower than through a periscope, rather than because they couldn't engage targets while submerged. Such surface attacks were the hallmark of the 'wolf-pack' tactics. As soon as Radar started to be fitted to escort ships such surface attacks became suicide. U-Boats used diesel engines (although there were some experimental designs that used other fuels) as their primary means of propulsion and power. These engines charged batteries that ran electric motors for underwater travel. Until mid to late 1944 U-Boats could only run the diesel engines when surfaced, and since the batteries could only supply around 12 hours of power this meant that they had to surface to recharge the batteries. Coupled with a much lower speed while submerged* this meant that U-Boats would travel on the surface as much as possible as it gave them a much greater range. Of course this also made them easy to spot by aircraft and/or radar, especially in areas they had to travel through - such as the Bay of Biscay. By mid to late 1944 the snorkel had been developed, which allowed the diesel engines to be run while the U-Boat was submerged - if at a very shallow depth. However even the snorkel wasn't perfect, as it was quite possible not only to detect it on radar but also see the smoke from the engine from quite some distance. (*WW2 subs were for the most part considerably faster on the surface than submerged - off the top of my head 'average' figures were 5-7 knots submerged and 10-12 on the surface. This is the reverse of modern submarines, which are considerably faster submerged than surfaced.)
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Post by the light works on Jan 15, 2013 20:31:38 GMT
to recycle an old logging carnival joke: "they experimented with an alcohol fueled submarine, but the crew drank all the fuel before they got out of the harbor" ;D
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 20:49:17 GMT
By the way, what makes breaking Enigma codes easier is the fact that a "space" is always a space - the machine has no space key. So you can tell the length of words all the time. Every book on codebreaking that I have that includes photos of Enigma messages, the ciphertext is broken into uniform five-character blocks. That's what the manual says - Do you know anybody who actually reads a manual and always follows the instructions? The majority of message traffic was done pretty lazy, at first they even exchanged the keys using the same transfer methods!
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 21:14:53 GMT
1; Not exactly true. By the last year or so of the war the Kriegsmarine had serious problems with finding experienced Captains, as the experienced ones had been killed following advances in U-Boat detection methods - the principal ones being long range aircraft and radar, which could detect surfaced U-Boats. The major problem with Submarine warfare is that unlike all other branches of the military if you screw up (or just have a turn of bad luck) you are almost assured to die in the process. This is unlike, say, aircraft where ejecting/bailing out is usually an option - a heck of a lot of WW2 fighter aces got shot up at least once or twice. 2; I assume you mean the 'wolf-pack' tactic, as this is what it is better known as in the English speaking world. 3; WW2 Submarines were quite capable of shooting and moving submerged, and certainly by late 1943 it was very unusual for U-Boats to attack while surfaced. Submarines of this period had retained a deck gun, and if faced with a merchant ship on its own Captains would sometimes opt to surface and sink ships using this gun rather than their torpedoes - probably because they could carry more shells than torpedoes. This practice was ended due to fewer ships sailing alone, and the use of heavily armed 'Q-ships' (Merchant ships fitted with heavy guns). Prior to radar being fitted to escort ships in large numbers U-Boats might also opt to conduct a surface attack at night. But this was because it was a lot easier to target ships from the conning tower than through a periscope, rather than because they couldn't engage targets while submerged. Such surface attacks were the hallmark of the 'wolf-pack' tactics. As soon as Radar started to be fitted to escort ships such surface attacks became suicide. U-Boats used diesel engines (although there were some experimental designs that used other fuels) as their primary means of propulsion and power. These engines charged batteries that ran electric motors for underwater travel. Until mid to late 1944 U-Boats could only run the diesel engines when surfaced, and since the batteries could only supply around 12 hours of power this meant that they had to surface to recharge the batteries. Coupled with a much lower speed while submerged* this meant that U-Boats would travel on the surface as much as possible as it gave them a much greater range. Of course this also made them easy to spot by aircraft and/or radar, especially in areas they had to travel through - such as the Bay of Biscay. By mid to late 1944 the snorkel had been developed, which allowed the diesel engines to be run while the U-Boat was submerged - if at a very shallow depth. However even the snorkel wasn't perfect, as it was quite possible not only to detect it on radar but also see the smoke from the engine from quite some distance. (*WW2 subs were for the most part considerably faster on the surface than submerged - off the top of my head 'average' figures were 5-7 knots submerged and 10-12 on the surface. This is the reverse of modern submarines, which are considerably faster submerged than surfaced.) 1. They had built hundreds of boats they didn't had before. The only really experienced submariners were leftovers from WW1, after WW1, Germany wasn't allowed to have submarines so the only experience of submariners at the beginning of WW2 as from WW1! Of course they trained new captains as good as they could and took surface vessel captains but submarine warfare is a lot different so it was easier and more reliable to dictate all strategies and actions they do. This is totally wrong to do but thinking the Enigma is unbreakable and everything is secure, they didn't knew any better. Also the submarines had a very low priority until the Bismark was sank. Until then, basically everything involving the submarines was decided by just a single man - Dönitz. And that didn't change during the whole war. 2. Correct 3. Not at all. you had to have eye contact to the targets in order to aim the torpedoes. Homing torpedoes were available but the Allies knew that Germany was developing them (spies, message intercepts) and the acoustic torpedo was defeated by towing floating engines which made a lot of noise (I heard that they were just $200 each). Also they had to aim with the submarine which takes time and requires some speed for steering The wake of the periscope could be spotted relative easily. There was even RADAR available which could spot a periscope on close range in a calm sea and then there were the Catalina anti submarine air-planes looking for periscopes. Moving under water wasn't that good. The battery power was insufficient, 12 hours "Schleichfahrt" (sneaking) or less than 1 hour with a good speed. The longer the submarine was submerged and the more battery power was used, the more hydrogen was released by the batteries. So using the batteries wasn't a very good idea except they really had to. They couldn't recycle the air at all. This was done by the diesel engine consuming the interior air which was replaced by opening a hatch on the surface. The snorkel was available in 1943 but Dönitz didn't think that it was very important so only a few submarines became retrofitted and only the new versions always had them. And the snorkel didn't work out all too well either since the shape of the boats didn't allow a good speed except on the surface and you could spot the huge wake of the snorkel from dozens of miles from a Catalina.
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 21:23:32 GMT
Modern diesel submarines have a lot more battery power and when endangered, they stop to snorkel to remain invisible. WW2 submarines couldn't do that since the distance they could move electrically was very small. Also those ancient generators couldn't charge the batteries within a reasonable time. Modern alternators and semiconductors had fixed that issue.
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Post by Cybermortis on Jan 15, 2013 22:19:43 GMT
1. They had built hundreds of boats they didn't had before. The only really experienced submariners were leftovers from WW1, after WW1, Germany wasn't allowed to have submarines so the only experience of submariners at the beginning of WW2 as from WW1! Of course they trained new captains as good as they could and took surface vessel captains but submarine warfare is a lot different so it was easier and more reliable to dictate all strategies and actions they do. The most common Uboat type was the VII, of which some 600 were produced over the course of the war. The restrictions on the German Navy didn't prevent them from designing or developing submarines. Nor did it prevent them from training commanders for U-Boats. In any case the amount of experience U-Boat Captains had would have been exactly the same as anyone else, since no one else had been using submarines in war since 1918 (therefore relying on the experiences of captains from the first world war) and they had been deploying U-Boats for over three years at the start of WW2. Errm, not really. The German's were very wary of unrestricted U-Boat warfare, since this had been one of the factors that lead the United States entering WW1. This was one reason U-Boats were not 'unleashed' in large numbers at the start of the war...that and Germany only had 50 long range U-Boats available in 1939. It is slightly misleading to think of the U-Boats as being placed on the back-burner until 1941. The fact is that Hitlers original intention wasn't to start a war in the West until 1945/6 - at which point the German Navy would have been built up to a size where it *might* have been a serious threat to the British Royal Navy. But even then the U-Boat fleet would have been built up into a major force, as it was well understood that Britain's biggest weakness was its need to import goods and material from overseas. If the shipping lanes could be closed down Germany could have starved Britain into submission - which even with a fleet that was a fraction of its intended size they almost managed to do anyway. Even the 'dumb' torpedoes could be programmed to follow a set course prior to launching. So U-Boats could and did fire on targets that were within some 30 degrees of the bow or stern. Btw, I believe that one trick to fool acoustic torpedoes was to run the ships engines/propellers at slightly different speeds. {I'll lift some of the posts in this thread and move them to their own thread in the Historical section of the Oracle when I get the chance - CM}
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Post by c64 on Jan 15, 2013 22:55:57 GMT
1. They had built hundreds of boats they didn't had before. The only really experienced submariners were leftovers from WW1, after WW1, Germany wasn't allowed to have submarines so the only experience of submariners at the beginning of WW2 as from WW1! Of course they trained new captains as good as they could and took surface vessel captains but submarine warfare is a lot different so it was easier and more reliable to dictate all strategies and actions they do. The most common Uboat type was the VII, of which some 600 were produced over the course of the war. The restrictions on the German Navy didn't prevent them from designing or developing submarines. Nor did it prevent them from training commanders for U-Boats. In any case the amount of experience U-Boat Captains had would have been exactly the same as anyone else, since no one else had been using submarines in war since 1918 (therefore relying on the experiences of captains from the first world war) and they had been deploying U-Boats for over three years at the start of WW2. Errm, not really. The German's were very wary of unrestricted U-Boat warfare, since this had been one of the factors that lead the United States entering WW1. This was one reason U-Boats were not 'unleashed' in large numbers at the start of the war...that and Germany only had 50 long range U-Boats available in 1939. It is slightly misleading to think of the U-Boats as being placed on the back-burner until 1941. The fact is that Hitlers original intention wasn't to start a war in the West until 1945/6 - at which point the German Navy would have been built up to a size where it *might* have been a serious threat to the British Royal Navy. But even then the U-Boat fleet would have been built up into a major force, as it was well understood that Britain's biggest weakness was its need to import goods and material from overseas. If the shipping lanes could be closed down Germany could have starved Britain into submission - which even with a fleet that was a fraction of its intended size they almost managed to do anyway. Even the 'dumb' torpedoes could be programmed to follow a set course prior to launching. So U-Boats could and did fire on targets that were within some 30 degrees of the bow or stern. Btw, I believe that one trick to fool acoustic torpedoes was to run the ships engines/propellers at slightly different speeds. {I'll lift some of the posts in this thread and move them to their own thread in the Historical section of the Oracle when I get the chance - CM} That's my point. They simply didn't had much captains who have experience. Textbooks and school classes don't count as experience! And actually, the submarines were put on a relative low priority since the resources were planned for other things, especially the Bismark! Hitler didn't think that such small things like submarines could really make a difference, he preferred vast surface vessels like the Bismark - big guns, a floating fortress. After the Bismark was defeated, 300 U-boats were commissioned. So back-burner no, R&D was good but they didn't make many due to the lack of resources. While the torpedoes were in fact "programmable", this was far from reliable, the technology was literally clockwork mechanics. The submariners used the term "Aus der Hüfte schießen" (shooting from the hip) when launching a torpedo without aligning the boat first. This was in fact often used to scare the target up and making it move right in front of the U-boat or scaring it into the direction of another one for a proper "snap shot". But just like for a soldier in the field, shooting from the hip is more "sound effects" than trying to hit a target. Either used to make the enemy keep his head down or to scare something up. In order to hit your target, you need to aim properly. The speed of the propeller didn't matter, DSP systems which could tell the difference were not invented They just homed into the direction of any noise. Also there was no way to tune the torpedoes to a special frequency since you can't know how the target would sound like before you can encounter it and then you would need to carefully adjust the torpedo tuning it in which would take a lot of time and access to the circuits of the torpedo. The trick is to hit anything noisy and that isn't your own or another U-boat which are relative quite.
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Post by silverdragon on Jan 18, 2013 9:31:08 GMT
128bit encryption CAN be broken.... easily..... Security packages depend on seeing repeated attempts to "Guess" the password being entered, and alert the owner of such action. Certain security will lock the system if you guess wrongly [X] number of times... This can be seen on Blackberry phones, get the password wrong, 10 times, and you reset the whole thing, thus safeguarding any personal information... My own computer security is a USB "key"... no key, no entry. Of course, with the right knowledge, you can put in a Linux CD and circumvent that.... But the Kids dont know that, so I am safe.... they cant use this PC at all. (And they dont know where the Linux discs are...) That is the only security I need, as there are other computers in the house they CAN use... I prevent this one being used as its the "Master" one that holds all the info on how to recover things when they sod it all up on another computer.
Security CAN be broken, it just depends on how much time you have and how urgent it is?...
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Post by the light works on Jan 18, 2013 15:36:03 GMT
I am reminded of the security system my high school band teacher used for his Volkswagen Beetle: it was a 15 year old Volkswagen Beetle.
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Post by c64 on Jan 18, 2013 19:48:47 GMT
128bit encryption CAN be broken.... easily..... Security packages depend on seeing repeated attempts to "Guess" the password being entered, and alert the owner of such action. Certain security will lock the system if you guess wrongly [X] number of times... This can be seen on Blackberry phones, get the password wrong, 10 times, and you reset the whole thing, thus safeguarding any personal information... My own computer security is a USB "key"... no key, no entry. Of course, with the right knowledge, you can put in a Linux CD and circumvent that.... But the Kids dont know that, so I am safe.... they cant use this PC at all. (And they dont know where the Linux discs are...) That is the only security I need, as there are other computers in the house they CAN use... I prevent this one being used as its the "Master" one that holds all the info on how to recover things when they sod it all up on another computer. Security CAN be broken, it just depends on how much time you have and how urgent it is?... The thing is any encryption can be broken (except OTPs = One Time Pads and even those if the randomness isn't random enough). The point is to make the encryption process more expensive than the value of the data. For example, if the secret is worth a million dollars, you make the encryption so hard, that you need to spend at least 5 million dollars for a 50:50 chance to break it. That makes it more likely to earn more money by playing lotto or betting on horses. I used to have a company laptop with a CF card plugged into a PCMCIA adaptor. It held the key and its 64MB Memory was almost full! We had to unplug the CF card whenever we "didn't touch the laptop"! So even when stolen, a state of the art number cruncher would spend a couple of million years brute forcing to reach a 50:50 chance decrypting the data. And after 10 years, the data is almost worthless since public knowledge all you need to get access to the secrets is a library card. The beauty of the system was when the card or the slot was worn from constant plugging, you could pop in a new adaptor with a fresh personalized CF card from the vault. Edit: To motivate us to unplug, the CF was tied to the key we had to used to move inside the building. So to reach the coffee maker, you had to unplug
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