This “Signalbuch der Kriegsmarine” was a codebook used by the Germans in the second world war. It was used to compose a message which thereafter got further encoded using the famous enigma machines. The very think and heavy cover is made of lead, which makes the book very durable, even in harsh conditions, but also makes it so it can be easily destroyed by just throwing it overboard.

The book is in good condition, and really shows the history of the war. Easily visible because the book contains update letters, which were used by the soldiers to update the book manually to make sure it stays updated during the war. It also shows some interesting doodling of the soldiers.

Our research has let us to believe that this book was used until the end of the war on the  S-212 E-boat (or Schnellboot) that was stationed in Rotterdam. The E-boats were feared by the allies because of their speed and fire power. One of the most famous stories is the succesfull attack of a group of E-boats at Operation Tiger, resulting in the deaths of at least 749 American servicemen.
But since Operation Tiger was a top secret preparation exercice for the landing at Normady, the incident was under the strictest secrecy at the time and was only nominally reported afterwards.

The S-212 survived the war and was surrenderd to the British. It was renamed to P5212, but got broken down later on in 1957. Only one schnellboot survived till now: the S-130.