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SPANISH ENIGMA WELCOMED TO BLETCHLEY PARK
Released : 5 Jul 2012
A rare Enigma machine used in the Spanish Civil War has been handed over to the Bletchley Park Trust. It is one of two machines given to the British communications intelligence agency, GCHQ, in March 2012, by its Spanish counterpart.
Now the machine has taken its place in the Bletchley Park Museum adding another, pre-WW2, chapter to the story of the British codebreaking effort. It has joined one of the largest collections of Enigma machines on public display anywhere in the world.
It adds a new, pre-war chapter to the story of the British codebreaking effort. It was one of a pair found in a store cupboard in a military museum in Madrid in 2008. GCHQ Historian, Tony, said “People forget that Enigma pre-dates the war, but the eminent Codebreaker Dilly Knox’s work goes back to the 1920s. The Deputy Director of the Code and Cipher School went to the Enigma factory in Berlin and bought a machine for 300 marks.
“At the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, General Franco got in touch with Germany to ask for help with secure communications, and the first ten Enigma machines were sent to Spain. They were used by nationalist forces and German and Italian forces supporting Franco. In London in 1937, Dilly Knox first broke into operational traffic encoded using Enigma.”
Tony went on to tell the story of how the two Spanish Enigma machines were rediscovered, some 60 years after they were carefully mothballed, in the late 1940s. He said “Thirty or forty remained in a storeroom, where they were eventually forgotten about. After they were found and an article about them appeared in the Spanish press, GCHQ started negotiations to bring them to Britain.
Veteran codebreaker Mavis Batey said “This machine is here at Bletchley Park because the Spanish Army Museum was happy to allow it to come and be part of the story of Enigma.”
She recalled how Dilly Knox developed a way of reproducing the action of the machine in a convenient way, by making lettered strips of cardboard, one for each wheel, which he called rods.
Mavis added “As soon as it was realised that Franco and Mussolini were using the same machines and key settings, a new Spanish section was set up under Wilfred Bosworth, which monitored both Republican and Nationalist traffic for the rest of the Civil War and beyond.
“There was a practical result from this work during the Second World War: the Spanish Civil War rods were brought out of the cupboard when Italy declared war, as they were still using the same machine. They were put to their greatest use in March 1941, when the Italian Navy was still using the same wheels and Admiral Cunningham was warned of the time and place of a major assault on the convoy, which resulted in the victory at the Battle of Matapan.”
For further information, please contact Katherine Lynch, Media Manager, Bletchley Park Trust, 01908 272665 or klynch@bletchleypark.org.uk 
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