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Find the Nazi gold Mystery Cache

Hidden : 9/7/2012
Difficulty:
5 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:



Note: This cache is part of the international Master of Mystery Series.


See Master of Mystery #23 - Praha (Czech Republic)




The cache is not at the published coordinates.
To get the real coordinates of the "Nazi gold", you must decipher a message with the Enigma machine.

Attention please!
Only for the geocachers who want to find this cache physically in Abu Dhabi.
Because of extensive constructions in this area, there is a new location of this cache.
In consideration that this mystery cache is part of the Master of Mystery in Prague,
the coordinates can not be changed.
Move 97 meters in the direction 276˚ from your determined coordinates
to find the new location of the final.
Happy hunting.

The German submarine U-533 from the 10th Flotille started a top secret mission from Lorient (France) to the Persian Gulf on 5th July 1943.
Besides the 53 crew members, only the supreme commander of the Navy, Karl Dönitz, knew that this submarine was loaded with stolen gold, the so called "Nazi gold".
But only the commander of this vessel, Helmut Henning, knew that he had to hide the treasure somewhere in Abu Dhabi.
On the 5th of October, the crew arrived with their U-Boat at the Mina Port in Abu Dhabi where only the captain and the intelligence officer left the boat with the nazi gold to find a proper place to hide the precious freight.
After they hid the wooden box and took the coordinates of this spot, they went back on board and deposited the coordinates into a small watertight container to hand it over to the supreme commander personally when they came back to Lorient.
The crew continued their journey through the Strait of Hormuz to the Gulf of Oman.
On Saturday, the 16th of October 1943 they arrived at the position N 25° 28.017' and E 056° 49.983' around 25 nautical miles West of the coast from Khor Fakkan, Fujairah.
At around one o'clock that afternoon, while the sub was surfaced, the guards on the conning tower suddenly noticed a British bomber heading straight to them.
The intelligence officer who recognized the dangerous situation, handed the coordinates to the radio operator with the order to encrypt it with the Enigma machine and send the message to the headquarter in Lorient.
But before the radio operator was able to transmit the message, the captain began to submerge the boat immediately.
But while the submarine was diving, she was hit by several depth charges and was seriously damaged.
While the boat sank to the ground to a depth of 354 feet (108 meters), the officer and the mechanic, Günther Schmidt, were near the hatch of the conning tower and fortunalely were able to exit the sub and reach the surface.
After a while, when the officer realized that he would not survive, he gave the watertight container with the encryted message and a Enigma key sheet to Günther before he drowned.
It took him 28 hours to swim towards the coast and finally got rescued by a British naval ship, the HMIS Hiravati.
He then was brought to the 244 Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in Sharjah, were he was captured as a POW.
Without anyone noticing it, Günther was able to hide the enigmatic documents inside the camp.
18 Months later, when the World War II was over, and Günther was a free man, he returned to his hometown in Germany and started a new life.
After all, he forgot about the hidden container, and since then nobody found this valuable stash.
Then, in 1994 when construction work started at the Al Qasimi street in the Al Qadisiya area in Sharjah (were a logistics company is located today) a project engineer of the construction site found the watertight container after the old RAF camp was demolished.
He had no idea what he had found, but he felt it must be something special, and brought it to the next police station in Sharjah.
They in turn sent it to the police headquarter in Abu Dhabi, who sent it to the Directorate of Military Intelligence and they in turn to the former crypto analysts and Enigma specialists from Blechley Park in England.
For 18 years, nobody was able to decipher the message and to reveal the secret of this story.
Finally the governmental authorities contacted the global geocaching community for helping to solve the last mystery of the last century.
Now it‘s your turn.
Can you unscramble the coordinates of the nazi gold and solve the last open secret of all times?
Maybe you will find the lost amber room or even the holy grail?
Good Luck!

P.S.
This U-Boat was discovered and identified in 2009 by William Leeman and his team of seven other members of the Desert Sports Diving Club of Dubai.
Many Thanks to them for their efforts and success.

Gulf News from December 17, 2009

Some useful translations

German English
Tag Day
UKW (Umkehrwalze) Reflector or reversal rotor
Walzenlage Rotor order
Walze Rotor or wheel
Ringstellung Ring setting
Steckverbindungen Plugboard connectios
Grundstellung Daily key or Starting position

Here are some helpful internet links about the Enigma machine:

Wikipedia

Crypto Museum

Mathematicians from Denmark

In 1943, the German submarines already used the Enigma M4 with 4 of 8 different rotors, but for the sake of convenience this message is encrypted with the predecessor model, the Enigma M3, with 3 of 5 wheels.
If you don‘t have this Enigma model at home, you can find a lot of Enigma online simulators or for download in the internet or even Apps for the smartphone.
Fortunately, you already have the key sheet and the message, so you only have to make the initial settings on the machine (daily key) and figure out the start positions of the rotors.
But it is also possible to get the plain text if you only have the encrypted message, nothing more.
Also, for this situation there is a computer program that will guess all possible settings (brute force attack) of rotor order and setting, plugboard connections, ring settings and reflectors but this can take a lot of time.
If you only use a single home computer for these calculations, this process can take up to several weeks.
Because the number of different code combinations of an Enigma is 150,000,000,000,000,000,000 (150 x 10^18).
Compared to this, the age of the universe is "only" 4 x 10^17 seconds!

You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.

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Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Chmmyr: HNR Pnpur: Juvgr naq erq va n lryybj pbeare

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)