Enigma?

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by infernos

A ideea struck me, you know that the americans when they captured the Enigma, they studied it , and started to send false messages to ships and subs.

I don't remember this coming up in any of my readings. I believe that the British (the Americans did not do all that much with the Enigma) would be in receive mode only. I don't know of any operations where the British sent any encoded false messages.

I think the risk would be too great to tip off the Germans that the British were able to crack the Enigma. The Germans thought that even if an Enigma machine were to fall into enemy hands (British) that the British would still not be able to read the messages.... And if the Germans would have used the Enigma correctly it might have been true.

The risks of sending out false encoded messages would outweigh any potential benefit IMHO.

Imagine how long it would take the Germans to find out when radio operators at BDU receive a message "from" BDU to a submarine when they never sent. One slip up could adversely affect the entire British code breaking operations from then on.