Read Seizing the Enigma for Free Online Page A

120 shots at the lighthouse, chipping it, and at the signal station, setting it ablaze. By then the radio shack was reporting many signals from Russian ships; apparently they were on their way. Since all attempts to free the
Magdeburg
had failed, Habenicht regretfully concluded that he had to blow her up instead of letting her fall undamaged into enemy hands.
    Charges were set fore and aft. The crew was to get off the ship and onto the V-26, which was to come alongside. Suddenly a shout rang through the ship. “The fuses are lit!” Habenicht had not ordered this; it had been done by mistake. The vessel would blow up in only four and a half minutes! In the tumult that ensued, Bender, the first radio officer, directed the second radio officer, Lieutenant Olff, to have the codebook and the cipher key from the radio shack brought to the V-26. On Olff’s instructions, Radioman Second Class Neuhaus grabbed the codebook, and Radioman Third Class Kiehnert the cipher key papers. The bridge’s codebook was in the hands of Radioman Second Class Szillat. The first officer, unable to find Habenicht as the seconds ticked away, ordered the crew members to the afterdeck, where the V-26 was to pick them up. He called for three cheers for the kaiser, had the two ship’s boats lowered, and commanded, “All hands abandon ship!”
    Upon hearing this, Szillat flung the codebook he was carrying over the side, toward the stern. It splashed into what he said was a “dark” place about 15 feet from the ship and immediately sank. Then he leaped overboard. Kiehnert, too, jumped into the water, holding the radio shack’s cipher key. He was struck by men following him, and when he came to the surface, he noticed that he had lost the key. Then, at 9:10, the forward charge detonated. It split the vessel in half, tore open the fore part from near the bow to the second smokestack, and hurled huge pieces of steel into the air. They rained down upon the scores of men who were trying to swim to the V-26. Neuhaus, who had the radio shack’s codebook, was seen in the water before the explosion but was missing later; no one knew what happened to the codebook he was carrying.
    The V-26 picked up many of the swimming men, including Szillat and Kiehnert. For fear of being destroyed in the explosion of the
Magdeburg
’s after charge, the V-26 stayed away from the cruiser and did not rescue the men still aboard. The Russian ships, appeared and began to fire at the torpedo boat. One shell swept eight men overboard; another smashed into her starboard side, destroying theofficers’ wardroom and killing all who were in it, mainly wounded men from the
Magdeburg.
But the V-26 got away.
    Habenicht appeared briefly on the
Magdeburg
’s bridge when he heard the cheers for the kaiser, then vanished again into the bowels of his cruiser. Along with a few others, he awaited his fate on the ship. Bender, his little dog, and a few dozen sailors, among them Neuhaus, swam to Odensholm, where they were taken prisoner. One of the Russian ships, the torpedo boat
Lejtenant Burakov
, sent a boat with armed men, led by its first officer, Lieutenant Galibin, to the
Magdeburg.
The crew members still on board offered no resistance and were taken prisoner. Habenicht, whom Galibin thought was “a true gentleman,” offered the Russian his dagger, which Galibin courteously declined. The Germans on both the ship and the island were rowed to one of the Russian cruisers and were later sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Siberia; on the way, the little dog Schuhmchen was taken from Bender. He was never seen again.
    Galibin lowered the black, white, and red German naval war flag and raised the white czarist flag with its diagonal light blue cross. Then, revolver in hand, he searched the wreck of the
Magdeburg.
He found a locker in Habenicht’s cabin and broke it open. Hidden deep within it was a German codebook, forgotten by all in the excitement of the catastrophe. Galibin removed it and,