Riyame wroteWell as suggested by another person on another forum, it could have been the key to access an enigma machine. I am sure that they would have wanted the best lock money could buy to protect them from anybody and everybody.
I doubt that the Bode-Panzer Tangential lock was used to secure enigma machines.
The wooden box or suitcase that typically held the machine usually had only a basic keyless catch, or sometimes a simple warded lock with a flat steel key.
The machines themselves were typically carried by mobile forces. In the case of Army Enigma, the machine was usually kept in a communications wagon. This wagon was ( in theory) always manned & there were strict orders to destroy the enigma machine should it be likely to fall into enemy hands.
A lot of the cypher security of the machine relies upon the fact that there are so many states/settings (choice of rotors, start positions, ring settings & plugboard links) to which the machine can be set to before encoding a message. This is the encryption key.
There are an immense number of these settings & this was assumed to provide great security . Without these settings, mere posession of an enigma machine was considered almost useless in terms of code breaking, although research in Poland, Bletchley Park & elsewhere refuted this.
The rotors to be used on a given day, their settings & the plugboard links were usually held in codebooks & they had to be very closely guarded. I would not be surprised if these codebooks were often kept in a safe equipped with the Bodepanzer tangential lock, or other high security lock. Protection of the codebooks was considered far more important than protection of the machine itself.
…mercury
[unknown]
