SMS Magdeburg

"Seiner Majestät Schiff Magdeburg" was a light cruiser ("Kleiner Kreuzer") of the German Imperial Navy. The first of her class, she was built as part of the 1908 German naval program. Her class was notable for being the first to introduce a new hull form and replace the bow ram with a cruiser bow shape. She was also one of the first light cruisers to be fitted with an armored waterline.

ervice history

On commissioning (10 December 1912), she was first used as a torpoedo ship, and at the outbreak of World War I was assigned to the Baltic Sea. It was her sinking a few weeks after this, and the recovery by the Russians of one of the ship's codebooks, that provided British cryptologists with the means of breaking secret German military communications.

The "Magdeburg", under the command of "Korvettenkapitän" Richard Habenicht, had set out from Memel at the eastern tip of Prussia to join other German warships attacking Russian ships at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. In the early hours of 26 August 1914, while trying to evade approaching Russian vessels, the ship entered fog near the island of Odensholm and ran aground. While efforts were being made to free the ship, as a precaution most of the codebooks and cipher keys were destroyed; some were retained, however, for communication with rescuers.

While the escorting destroyer "V-26" and the the light cruiser "SMS Amazone" were unsuccessfully trying to free the "Magdeburg" and had rescued most of the crew, Habenicht decided to destroy the ship because of the approach of Russian warships. However, there was considerable confusion as the Russian cruisers "Bogatyr" and "Pallada" [ [http://www.naval-history.net/WW1CampaignsBaltic.htm Baltic Navy Campaigns 1914-1918] . The 7800-ton "Pallada", a Bayan class cruiser and launched in 1911, exploded when it was hit by a single torpedo from the submarine U-26 on 11 October 1914, killing her entire 600-man crew.] came within range and began firing. The German escort ships were driven off, and the scuttling charges in the fore magazine were lit before the order had been given, and remaining crew hastily abandoned ship. In the commotion, as the charges exploded, some codebooks were lost. Fifteen men died in the evacuation; fifty-six crewmen, as well as Captain Habenicht, were captured by the Russians.

The Russians quickly took possession of the wrecked cruiser, and the subsequent search yielded a codebook forgotten at the bottom of a locker in the ship's aft section. Later, Russian divers found another codebook, along with the pertinent cipher key, that had been weighted with lead and thrown overboard, as well as a third one lost in abandoning ship. Other documents seized by the Russians included the war signal book, the war diary, and charts of the Baltic. The "Magdeburg" was afterwards completely destroyed.

Realizing the value of their find, the Russians immediately offered the undamaged codebook to their British allies. The codebook was carried to the United Kingdom by a Royal Navy warship, via Arkhangelsk, arriving 13 October at the British Admiralty. The book was handed personally to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. He in turn passed it on to Rear Admiral Henry Oliver, Director of Naval Intelligence, who had just that August established the cryptologic section called "Room 40 ."

Despite this windfall, however, the British were unable to break into the German Navy's messages until another codebook had been seized from a German merchant ship off Melbourne, Australia and delivered to the Admiralty. It held the second key needed to break into German naval communications, giving the superencipherments. [The Imperial German Navy, in a subsequent series of reviews of its communications security during the war, found that it was uncertain whether the encipherment key to the codebook had been destroyed with the loss of the "Magdeburg". Although the Germans captured the Russian naval officer who had recovered the codebooks and received confirmation of the book's capture and delivery to the British, the Germans refused to believe in any serious consequences having resulted from this loss.]

There was afterward a persistent myth, repeated in Churchill's writings, that the Russians had found the codebook clutched in the rigid arms of a drowned German sailor who had been washed ashore.

ee also

* Room 40
* History of cryptology

Notes

Further reading

Mäkelä, Matti E. "Das Geheimnis der "Magdeburg" : die Geschichte des Kleinen Kreuzers und die Bedeutung seiner Signalbücher im Ersten Weltkrieg". Koblenz: Bernhard & Graefe Verlag, 1984.

External links

* [http://www.worldwar1.co.uk/cruisers/sms-magdeberg.html General information on the "Magdeburg"-class light cruisers]
* [http://www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/sms_magdeburg.htm SMS "Magdeburg" (1) Kleiner Kreuzer der kaiserlichen Marine (in German)]
* [http://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/magdeburg_class.htm Some more information on the "Magdeburg"-class cruisers, with images]