Quiet naval hero who rescued Enigma machine dies aged 95

Royal Navy (United Kingdom) ^ | 6th January 2016

[Osage Orange]

While the Germans jumped into the Atlantic, a 20-year-old David Balme and small team of sailors climbed into a rowing boat with simple instructions: Get what you can out of her.

Balme, who'd been in the Navy for seven years, could not believe the Germans "would have just abandoned this submarine" and was convinced U110 was either booby-trapped, or armed crewman were still on board, lying in wait.

What?????

[naturalman1975]

What is your what about?

[Larry Lucido]

Fascinating. RIP.

[Alas Babylon!]

A truly momentous occasion, and really, the dawn of the Age of Computing.

[MrEdd]

Men were men back then.

[Osage Orange]

Poorly written.....

Read it yourself.....

[naturalman1975]

Is it the fact that he was 20 and had been in the Navy seven years?

Not that uncommon for Royal Navy officers in those days. They typically joined as ‘Boy Midshipman’ at the age of 13.

I myself joined the Royal Australian Navy at fifteen under a similar scheme (the age had been raised somewhat by then).

You basically went to what was a combination boarding school/naval training facility but you were in the Navy.

Non-officers could also be taken in for training as junior recruits in their mid teens.

[Jeff Chandler]

U571; the fictionalised account has American submariners, not British destroyermen, rescuing Enigma from a crippled German boat.

Stupid. It would not have been any less dramatic or popular a story keeping the history intact.

I've learned over the years not to put much faith in the phrase based upon a true story. For example, if a movie based upon a true story is about a murder in Kansas, I know the true story could be as little as "there is actually a state called 'Kansas'."

[Osage Orange]

Agreed.

[AppyPappy]

Trigger warning!

[Tijeras_Slim]

Thank you Sub Lt David Balme for providing the means of shortening the War and saving God knows how many lives.

[naturalman1975]

I’ve read it a number of times. Except for an unnecessary ‘a’ in “a 20-year-old” it looks all right to me - and I’m a school teacher who is a pretty strict marker. Maybe we’re running up against differences between how Brits and Americans write.

[Gay State Conservative]

As we say in the States about men like this:

The Greatest Generation

This label having been coined by Tom Brokaw,a very famous US new anchor (or news reader) of yesteryear.

[naturalman1975]

Stupid. It would not have been any less dramatic or popular a story keeping the history intact.

It also upset quite a lot of British and Commonwealth servicemen who saw it as a rewriting of history to suggest America did everything of value in the war. It really was stupid. Plenty of great Americans stories to tell - no need to steal other peoples.

[Osage Orange]

I stand corrected..........

David Edward Balme was born in Kensington, west London, on October 1, 1920.

He joined Dartmouth Naval College in 1934 and served as a midshipman in the Mediterranean in the Spanish Civil War before being reassigned to the destroyer Ivanhoe in 1939.

Balme was appointed to the destroyer HMS Bulldog, which he described as a 'happy little ship', as her navigator in the early 1940s. It was while he was serving on this ship that he came across the German submarine.

[Preachin']

I was in crypto maintenance in the USAF, so I knew of this story since 1984. Pretty cool part of history. The thing that really did the Germans in was that they were so sure that their code could not be broken that they got lazy about changing it at the scheduled times. If they had known that the allies had the device they would have been more careful.

[Sasparilla]

God bless these men and all the other brave men who saved the world without thought for themselves.

[fieldmarshaldj]

RIP.

[Fiddlstix]

Rest In Peace