Bletchley Park
Encyclopedia
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire
, England
, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing
. During World War II
, Bletchley Park was the site of the United Kingdom
's main decryption establishment, the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), where ciphers and codes of several Axis
countries were decrypted, most importantly the ciphers generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz
machines. It also housed Station X, a secret radio intercept station.
The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra
, provided crucial assistance to the Allied war effort. Sir Harry Hinsley
, a Bletchley veteran and the official historian of British Intelligence in World War II, said that Ultra shortened the war by two to four years and that the outcome of the war would have been uncertain without it.
A large portion of the site is now controlled by the Bletchley Park Trust. The National Museum of Computing, an independent voluntary organisation, rents space from the Trust to house its collection of historic computers. The museum is run by the Codes and Ciphers Heritage Trust (an independent registered charity) and is open to the public. It receives no Government or regional funding, or any of the Trust’s visitor or facility rental fees. The Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre (BPSIC) refurbished some of the historic structures and occupies part of the former code-breaker buildings. The site also houses the National Codes Centre. The main manor house is available for functions and is licensed for ceremonies. Part of the fees for hiring the facilities go to the Trust to maintain the site. Since 1967, Bletchley has been part of Milton Keynes
.
, included in the Domesday Book
in 1086. Browne Willis
built a mansion in 1711, but this was pulled down by Thomas Harrison, who had acquired the property in 1793. The estate was first known as Bletchley Park during the ownership of Samuel Lipscomb Seckham
, who purchased it in 1877. The estate was sold on 4 June 1883 to Sir Herbert Samuel Leon (1850–1926), a financier and Liberal
MP
. Leon expanded the existing farmhouse into the present mansion.
The architectural style is a mixture of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque and was the subject of much bemused comment from those who worked there, or visited, during World War II. Leon's estate covered 581 acres (235.1 ha), of which Bletchley Park occupied about 55 acres (22.3 ha). Leon's wife, Fanny, died in 1937.
In 1938 the site was sold to a builder, who planned to demolish the mansion and build a housing estate. Before the demolition could take place, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair
(Director of Naval Intelligence and head of MI6) bought the site. To cover their real purpose, the first government visitors to Bletchley Park described themselves as "Captain Ridley's shooting party".
The estate was conveniently located within easy walking distance of Bletchley railway station
, where the "Varsity Line
" between the cities of Oxford
and Cambridge
– whose universities supplied many of the code-breakers – met the (then-LMSR
) main West Coast railway line
between London
and Birmingham
, Manchester
, Glasgow
. Starting in 1938, Post Office Telephones laid dedicated cables, for numerous telephone and telegraph circuits, from the nearby repeater station at Fenny Stratford
(on Watling Street
, the main road linking London to the north-west, later to be designated the A5).
The first wave of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) moved to Bletchley Park on 15 August 1939. The main body of GC&CS, including its Naval, Military and Air Sections, was on the ground floor of the mansion, together with a telephone exchange, a teleprinter room, a kitchen and a dining room. The top floor was allocated to MI6. The prefabricated wooden huts were still being erected, and initially the entire "shooting party" was crowded into the mansion, its stables and cottages. These were too small, so Elmers School, a neighbouring boys' boarding school
, was acquired for the Commercial and Diplomatic Sections.
Both of the two German electro-mechanical rotor machine
s whose signals were decrypted at Bletchley Park, Enigma and the Lorenz Cipher, were virtually unbreakable if properly used. It was poor operational procedures and sloppy operator behaviour that allowed the GC&CS cryptanalysts to find ways to read them.
The intelligence produced from decrypts at Bletchley was code-named "Ultra". It contributed greatly to Allied success in defeating the U-boat
s in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to the British naval victories in the Battle of Cape Matapan
and the Battle of North Cape
. In 1941, Ultra exerted a powerful effect on the North African desert campaign
, against the German army, under General Erwin Rommel
. General Sir Claude Auchinleck
stated that, but for Ultra - "Rommel would have certainly got through to Cairo". Prior to the Normandy landings on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies knew the locations of all but two of the 58 German divisions on the Western front. Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as "The geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled".
When the United States
joined the war, Churchill
and Roosevelt
agreed to pool resources. A number of American cryptographers were posted to Bletchley Park and were inducted and then integrated into the Ultra structure, being stationed in Hut 3. From May 1943 onwards there was very close cooperation between the British and American military intelligence organisations. Conversely, the existence of Bletchley Park, and of the decrypting achievements there, was never officially shared with the Soviet Union
, whose war effort would have greatly benefited from regular decrypting of German messages relating to the Eastern Front. This reflected Churchill's concern with security, and his distrust of and hostility to communism, even during the alliance imposed on him by the Nazi threat.
The only direct enemy action that the site experienced was when three bombs, thought to have been intended for Bletchley railway station
, were dropped on 20–21 November 1940. One exploded next to the despatch riders' entrance, shifting the rear end of Hut 4 (the Naval Intelligence hut) two feet on its base. As the huts stood on brick pillars, workmen just winched it back into position while work continued inside.
Room 40
(NID25) and the War Office's
MI1
b in 1919, until 1942. On the day that Britain declared war on Germany, he wrote to the Foreign Office about recruiting "men of the professor type" . Personal networking was used for the initial recruitment particularly from the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Aberdeen. Reliable and trustworthy women to perform administrative and clerical tasks were similarly recruited by personal contacts. This has been characterised as recruiting "Boffin
s and Debs
".
Cryptanalysts were selected for various intellectual achievements, whether they were linguists, chess champions, crossword experts, polyglots or great mathematicians, hence their referring to GC&CS as "the Golf, Cheese and Chess Society". In one instance, the ability to solve a Daily Telegraph
crossword in under 12 minutes was used as a test. The newspaper was asked to organize a competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked whether they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F H W Hawes of Dagenham
in Essex
who finished in less than eight minutes.
Some 9,000 people from the armed services and civilians were working at Bletchley Park at the height of the codebreaking efforts in January 1945, and over 12,000 (of whom more than 80% were women) worked there at some point during the war. A relatively small number of men were also employed on a part-time basis, typically for one shift each week (e.g. Post Office
employees who were experts in Morse code or the German language). Among the famous mathematician
s and cryptanalysts
working there, the most influential and the best-known in later years was Alan Turing
who is widely credited with being "The Father of Computer Science".
s. This change temporarily stopped the ability to read this network from February to December 1942.
Even a small improvement in operating policies or procedures could have set back the deciphering process by months, or even permanently. Knowing that the slightest suspicion by the Axis powers that their ciphers were being broken, could lead to such a change, the authorities at Bletchley Park were extremely concerned about security. All staff had to sign the Official Secrets Act (1939)
, and were instructed that they should never discuss their work outside their immediate section. A May 1942 personal security form stated:
The strict adherence to these constraints, and to the requirement never to ask about anyone else's work, was well accepted in a country where there were many wartime posters stating Careless Talk Costs Lives. Not until F. W. Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published in 1974 did ex-Bletchley Park staff feel free to reveal something of their wartime work. Deaths before that time meant that many parents, spouses and children were never told more than that it was secret work for the Foreign Office or one of the armed services. Even 70 years later, some people still regard themselves bound to remain silent.
might alert the enemy to the possibility that their codes were being broken. Had this happened, they would undoubtedly have introduced changes in policies and procedures, and even equipment. Such changes could have rendered previous methods of codebreaking insufficient, with serious implications for the conduct of the war.
There was a separation between deciphering the messages, and sending out intelligence derived from them. In the case of non-naval Enigma, deciphering was performed in Hut 6
, and translation indexing and cross-referencing with existing information, in Hut 3. Only then was it sent out to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the intelligence chiefs in the relevant ministries, and later on to high-level commanders in the field.
A similar situation existed for naval Enigma messages. Deciphering was in Hut 8
and translation in Hut 4. Verbatim translations were sent solely to the Naval Intelligence Division
(NID) of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) supplemented by information from indexes as to the meaning of technical terms and abbreviations, and cross-referenced information from a store of knowledge of German naval technology.
Hut 4 also decoded a manual system known as the dockyard cipher. This sometimes carried messages that were also sent on an Enigma network. Feeding these back to Hut 8 provided excellent cribs
for breaking the current naval Enigma key.
room was established at Bletchley Park. It was set up in the mansion's water tower and given the code name "Station X", a term now sometimes applied to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. The "X" denotes the Roman numeral "ten", as this was the tenth such station to be opened by the Secret Intelligence Service. Due to the long radio aerials stretching from the wireless room, the radio station was moved from Bletchley Park to nearby Whaddon Hall to avoid drawing attention to the site.
Subsequently, other listening stations – the Y-stations
, (such as the ones at Chicksands
in Bedfordshire
and Beaumanor Hall
in Leicestershire
where the headquarters of the War Office "Y" Group was located) – gathered raw signals for processing at Bletchley. Coded messages were taken down by hand and sent to Bletchley on paper by motorcycle couriers or, later, by teleprinter. Bletchley Park is mainly remembered for breaking messages enciphered on the German Enigma cypher machine, but its greatest cryptographic achievement may have been the breaking of the German on-line teleprinter Lorenz cipher
(known at GC&CS as Tunny).
cipher machine. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II
, in Warsaw
, Poland
's Biuro Szyfrów
(Cipher Bureau) revealed its achievements in decrypting German Enigma ciphers to astonished French and British intelligence. The British used the Poles's information and techniques, and the Enigma clone sent in August 1939, to greatly increase their, previously very limited, success in decrypting Enigma.
The bombe
was an electromechanical device whose function was to discover some of the daily settings of the Enigma machines on the various German military networks
. The functional design was produced by Alan Turing
with an important contribution from Gordon Welchman
, and the engineering was by Harold 'Doc' Keen
of the British Tabulating Machine Company
at Letchworth
. Each machine was about 7 feet (2.1 m) wide, 6 in 6 in (1.98 m) tall, 2 foot (0.6096 m) deep and weighed about a ton.
At its peak, GC&CS were reading some 4,000 messages per day. Because of the danger of bombes at Bletchley Park being lost if there were to be an aerial bombing raid, five bombe outstations were established, at Adstock
, Gayhurst
, Wavendon
, Stanmore
, and Eastcote
.
Luftwaffe
messages were the first to be read in quantity. The German navy had much tighter procedures, and the capture of code books was needed before they could be broken. When, in February 1942, the German navy introduced a version of Enigma with a fourth rotor for messages to and from Atlantic U-boats, these became unreadable for a period of ten months. Britain produced modified bombes, but it was the success of the US Navy bombe that was the main source of reading messages from this version of Enigma for the rest of the war. Messages were sent to and fro across the Atlantic by enciphered teleprinter links.
The Lorenz on-line teleprinter cipher (SZ40/42)
codenamed Tunny at Bletchley Park, was even more complicated than Enigma. It was introduced in mid-1942 for messages between German High Command and field commanders. With the help of German operator errors, the cryptanalysts in the Testery
(named after Ralph Tester
, its head) worked out the logical structure of the machine despite not knowing its physical form. They devised automatic machinery to help with this, which culminated in Colossus
, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. This was designed and built by Tommy Flowers
and his team at the Post Office Research Station
at Dollis Hill
. The first was delivered to Bletchley Park in December 1943 and commissioned the following February. Enhancements were developed for the Mark 2 Colossus, the first of which was working at Bletchley Park on the morning of D-day in June. Flowers then produced one Colossus a month for the rest of the war, making a total of ten with an eleventh part-built. The machines were operated mainly by members of the Women's Royal Naval Service
(Wrens) in a section named the Newmanry
after its head Max Newman
.
(FECB). The FECB naval staff moved in 1940 to Singapore
, then Colombo
, Ceylon
, then Kilindini
, Mombasa
, Kenya
. They succeeded in deciphering Japanese codes with a mixture of skill and good fortune. The Army and Air Force staff went from Singapore to the Wireless Experimental Centre
at Delhi
, India
.
In early 1942, a six-month crash course in Japanese, for 20 undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge, was started by the Inter-Service Intelligence school in Bedford, in a building across from the main Post Office. This course was repeated every six months until war's end.
Most of those completing these courses worked on decoding Japanese naval messages in Hut 7
, under Col. J. Tiltman. By mid-1945 well over 100 personnel were involved with this operation, which co-operated closely with the FECB and the US Signal intelligence Service at Arlington Hall
, Virginia. Because of these joint efforts, by August 1945 the Japanese merchant navy was suffering 90% losses at sea.
In 1999, Michael Smith wrote that: "Only now are the British codebreakers (like John Tiltman, Hugh Foss
and Eric Nave
) beginning to receive the recognition they deserve for breaking Japanese codes and cyphers".
The huts were designated by numbers; in some cases, the hut numbers became associated as much with the work which went on inside the buildings as with the buildings themselves. Because of this, when a section moved from a hut into a larger building, they were still referred to by their "Hut" code name.
Some of the hut numbers, and the associated work, are:
In addition to the wooden huts there were a number of brick-built blocks.
s were destroyed. Although thousands of people were involved in the deciphering efforts, the participants remained silent
for decades about what they had done during the war, and it was only in the 1970s that the work at Bletchley Park was revealed to the general public. After the war, the site belonged to several owners, including British Telecom, the Civil Aviation Authority
and PACE (Property Advisors to the Civil Estate). GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters
), the post-war successor organisation to GC&CS, ended training courses at Bletchley Park in 1987.
The local headquarters for the GPO was based here and housed all the engineers for the local area together with all the support they needed. The Eastern Region training school was also based in the park and later part of the national BT management college which was relocated here from Horwood House
. There was also a teacher-training college.
By 1991, the site was nearly empty and the buildings were at risk of demolition for redevelopment. On 10 February 1992, Milton Keynes Borough Council declared most of the Park a conservation area. Three days later, on 13 February 1992, the Bletchley Park Trust was formed to maintain the site as a museum devoted to the codebreakers. The site opened to visitors in 1993, with the museum officially inaugurated by HRH the Duke of Kent, as Chief Patron, in July 1994. On 10 June 1999 the Trust concluded an agreement with the landowner, giving control over much of the site to the Trust.
The Trust is volunteer-based and relies on public support to continue its efforts. Christine Large was appointed Director of the Trust in March 1998. On 1 March 2006, the Park Trust announced that Simon Greenish had been appointed Director Designate, and would work alongside Large in 2006, taking over on 1 May 2006.
In October 2005, American billionaire Sidney Frank
donated £500,000 to Bletchley Park Trust to fund a new Science Centre dedicated to Alan Turing
.
A team headed by Tony Sale has undertaken reconstruction of a Colossus computer
at The National Museum of Computing
, which is currently located within the park. Another team, led by John Harper, has undertaken a rebuild of the bombe
. On 6 September 2006, the Trust demonstrated that the Bombe was back in action.
The museum includes a reconstructed Colossus computer
by a team headed by Tony Sale, along with many important examples of computing machinery.
announced that the society was moving its "public headquarters", including its library, radio station, museum and bookshop, to Bletchley Park. Although the RSGB intended to open the "RSGB Pavilion" at the Park in late summer to early autumn 2008, the building allocated to them was beyond economical repair and they re-planned an opening, at a different location, in April 2010. In May 2011 this was postponed until January 2012.
had turned down a request for funds because the foundation only funds Internet-based technology projects. Since Bletchley Park receives no external funding, it is in dire need of financial support. Simon Greenish, the Bletchley Park Trust's director said:
On 24 July 2008 more than a hundred academics signed a letter to The Times
condemning the neglect being suffered by the site. In September 2008, PGP
, IBM
and other technology firms announced a fund-raising campaign to repair the facility.
On 6 November 2008 it was announced that English Heritage
would donate £300,000 to help maintain the buildings at Bletchley Park, and that they were in discussions regarding the donation of a further £600,000.
In July 2009, the British government announced that personnel who had worked at the park during the war would be recognized with a commemorative badge.
In August 2011, it was noted that Google
provided partial funding for the purchase of Alan Turing
's papers and provided other support.
Sue Black
and others have used Twitter
and other social media
to raise the profile and funding for Bletchley Park.
In October 2011, Bletchley Park was awarded a £4.6m Heritage Lottery Fund
grant which will be used "to complete the restoration of the site, and to tell its story to the highest modern standards."
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan home county in South East England. The county town is Aylesbury, the largest town in the ceremonial county is Milton Keynes and largest town in the non-metropolitan county is High Wycombe....
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing
The National Museum of Computing
The National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is based at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England, and opened in 2007...
. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Bletchley Park was the site of the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
's main decryption establishment, the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), where ciphers and codes of several Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
countries were decrypted, most importantly the ciphers generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz
Lorenz cipher
The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42A and SZ42B were German rotor cipher machines used by the German Army during World War II. They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin. They implemented a Vernam stream cipher...
machines. It also housed Station X, a secret radio intercept station.
The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...
, provided crucial assistance to the Allied war effort. Sir Harry Hinsley
Harry Hinsley
Sir Francis Harry Hinsley OBE was an English historian and cryptanalyst. He worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and wrote widely on the history of international relations and British Intelligence during the Second World War...
, a Bletchley veteran and the official historian of British Intelligence in World War II, said that Ultra shortened the war by two to four years and that the outcome of the war would have been uncertain without it.
A large portion of the site is now controlled by the Bletchley Park Trust. The National Museum of Computing, an independent voluntary organisation, rents space from the Trust to house its collection of historic computers. The museum is run by the Codes and Ciphers Heritage Trust (an independent registered charity) and is open to the public. It receives no Government or regional funding, or any of the Trust’s visitor or facility rental fees. The Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre (BPSIC) refurbished some of the historic structures and occupies part of the former code-breaker buildings. The site also houses the National Codes Centre. The main manor house is available for functions and is licensed for ceremonies. Part of the fees for hiring the facilities go to the Trust to maintain the site. Since 1967, Bletchley has been part of Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...
.
Early history
The lands of the Bletchley Park estate were formerly part of the Manor of EatonWater Eaton, Milton Keynes
Water Eaton is an area of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England and in the civil parish of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford. It is to the south of Fenny Stratford, and is one of the ancient villages of Buckinghamshire that became incorporated as part of Milton Keynes in 1967.By the date of...
, included in the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
in 1086. Browne Willis
Browne Willis
Browne Willis was an antiquary, author, numismatist and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1705 to 1708.-Early life:...
built a mansion in 1711, but this was pulled down by Thomas Harrison, who had acquired the property in 1793. The estate was first known as Bletchley Park during the ownership of Samuel Lipscomb Seckham
Samuel Lipscomb Seckham
Samuel Lipscomb Seckham was an English Victorian architect, developer, magistrate and brewer.Samuel Seckham was born in Oxford, England, and became the City Surveyor. He was the original architect employed by St John’s College, Oxford to develop parts of North Oxford. He developed Park Town, an...
, who purchased it in 1877. The estate was sold on 4 June 1883 to Sir Herbert Samuel Leon (1850–1926), a financier and Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
MP
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
. Leon expanded the existing farmhouse into the present mansion.
The architectural style is a mixture of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque and was the subject of much bemused comment from those who worked there, or visited, during World War II. Leon's estate covered 581 acres (235.1 ha), of which Bletchley Park occupied about 55 acres (22.3 ha). Leon's wife, Fanny, died in 1937.
In 1938 the site was sold to a builder, who planned to demolish the mansion and build a housing estate. Before the demolition could take place, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair
Hugh Sinclair
Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget Sinclair KCB , nicknamed "Quex", was a British intelligence officer. Between 1919 and 1921, he was Director of British Naval Intelligence, and helped to set up the Secret Intelligence Service before the Second World War.-Career:Sinclair joined the Royal Navy in the...
(Director of Naval Intelligence and head of MI6) bought the site. To cover their real purpose, the first government visitors to Bletchley Park described themselves as "Captain Ridley's shooting party".
The estate was conveniently located within easy walking distance of Bletchley railway station
Bletchley railway station
Bletchley is a railway station that serves the southern districts of Milton Keynes , and the north-eastern parts of the Buckinghamshire district of Aylesbury Vale....
, where the "Varsity Line
Varsity Line
The Varsity Line is an informal name for the railway route that formerly linked the English university cities of Oxford and Cambridge, operated successively by the London and North Western Railway, the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, and British Railways...
" between the cities of Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
and Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
– whose universities supplied many of the code-breakers – met the (then-LMSR
London, Midland and Scottish Railway
The London Midland and Scottish Railway was a British railway company. It was formed on 1 January 1923 under the Railways Act of 1921, which required the grouping of over 120 separate railway companies into just four...
) main West Coast railway line
West Coast Main Line
The West Coast Main Line is the busiest mixed-traffic railway route in Britain, being the country's most important rail backbone in terms of population served. Fast, long-distance inter-city passenger services are provided between London, the West Midlands, the North West, North Wales and the...
between London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
. Starting in 1938, Post Office Telephones laid dedicated cables, for numerous telephone and telegraph circuits, from the nearby repeater station at Fenny Stratford
Fenny Stratford
Fenny Stratford is a constituent town of Milton Keynes, ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire, England and in the Civil Parish of Bletchley and Fenny Stratford. Originally an independent town, it was included in the Milton Keynes "designated area" area in 1967...
(on Watling Street
Watling Street
Watling Street is the name given to an ancient trackway in England and Wales that was first used by the Britons mainly between the modern cities of Canterbury and St Albans. The Romans later paved the route, part of which is identified on the Antonine Itinerary as Iter III: "Item a Londinio ad...
, the main road linking London to the north-west, later to be designated the A5).
Wartime
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
, was acquired for the Commercial and Diplomatic Sections.
Both of the two German electro-mechanical rotor machine
Rotor machine
In cryptography, a rotor machine is an electro-mechanical device used for encrypting and decrypting secret messages. Rotor machines were the cryptographic state-of-the-art for a prominent period of history; they were in widespread use in the 1920s–1970s...
s whose signals were decrypted at Bletchley Park, Enigma and the Lorenz Cipher, were virtually unbreakable if properly used. It was poor operational procedures and sloppy operator behaviour that allowed the GC&CS cryptanalysts to find ways to read them.
The intelligence produced from decrypts at Bletchley was code-named "Ultra". It contributed greatly to Allied success in defeating the U-boat
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to the British naval victories in the Battle of Cape Matapan
Battle of Cape Matapan
The Battle of Cape Matapan was a Second World War naval battle fought from 27–29 March 1941. The cape is on the southwest coast of Greece's Peloponnesian peninsula...
and the Battle of North Cape
Battle of North Cape
The Battle of the North Cape was a Second World War naval battle which occurred on 26 December 1943, as part of the Arctic Campaign. The German battlecruiser , on an operation to attack Arctic Convoys of war materiel from the Western Allies to the USSR, was brought to battle and sunk by superior...
. In 1941, Ultra exerted a powerful effect on the North African desert campaign
North African campaign
During the Second World War, the North African Campaign took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940 to 13 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts and in Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia .The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis powers, many of whom had...
, against the German army, under General Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel , popularly known as the Desert Fox , was a German Field Marshal of World War II. He won the respect of both his own troops and the enemies he fought....
. General Sir Claude Auchinleck
Claude Auchinleck
Field Marshal Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck, GCB, GCIE, CSI, DSO, OBE , nicknamed "The Auk", was a British army commander during World War II. He was a career soldier who spent much of his military career in India, where he developed a love of the country and a lasting affinity for the soldiers...
stated that, but for Ultra - "Rommel would have certainly got through to Cairo". Prior to the Normandy landings on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies knew the locations of all but two of the 58 German divisions on the Western front. Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as "The geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled".
When the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
joined the war, Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
and Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
agreed to pool resources. A number of American cryptographers were posted to Bletchley Park and were inducted and then integrated into the Ultra structure, being stationed in Hut 3. From May 1943 onwards there was very close cooperation between the British and American military intelligence organisations. Conversely, the existence of Bletchley Park, and of the decrypting achievements there, was never officially shared with the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, whose war effort would have greatly benefited from regular decrypting of German messages relating to the Eastern Front. This reflected Churchill's concern with security, and his distrust of and hostility to communism, even during the alliance imposed on him by the Nazi threat.
The only direct enemy action that the site experienced was when three bombs, thought to have been intended for Bletchley railway station
Bletchley railway station
Bletchley is a railway station that serves the southern districts of Milton Keynes , and the north-eastern parts of the Buckinghamshire district of Aylesbury Vale....
, were dropped on 20–21 November 1940. One exploded next to the despatch riders' entrance, shifting the rear end of Hut 4 (the Naval Intelligence hut) two feet on its base. As the huts stood on brick pillars, workmen just winched it back into position while work continued inside.
Recruitment
Commander Alistair Denniston, was operational head of GC&CS from its formation from the Admiralty'sAdmiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
Room 40
Room 40
In the history of Cryptanalysis, Room 40 was the section in the Admiralty most identified with the British cryptoanalysis effort during the First World War.Room 40 was formed in October 1914, shortly after the start of the war...
(NID25) and the War Office's
War Office
The War Office was a department of the British Government, responsible for the administration of the British Army between the 17th century and 1964, when its functions were transferred to the Ministry of Defence...
MI1
MI1
MI1 or British Military Intelligence, Section 1 was a department of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. It was set up during World War I...
b in 1919, until 1942. On the day that Britain declared war on Germany, he wrote to the Foreign Office about recruiting "men of the professor type" . Personal networking was used for the initial recruitment particularly from the universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Aberdeen. Reliable and trustworthy women to perform administrative and clerical tasks were similarly recruited by personal contacts. This has been characterised as recruiting "Boffin
Boffin
In the slang of the United Kingdom, boffins are scientists, medical doctors, engineers, and other people engaged in technical or scientific research.-Origin:...
s and Debs
Debutante
A débutante is a young lady from an aristocratic or upper class family who has reached the age of maturity, and as a new adult, is introduced to society at a formal "début" presentation. It should not be confused with a Debs...
".
Cryptanalysts were selected for various intellectual achievements, whether they were linguists, chess champions, crossword experts, polyglots or great mathematicians, hence their referring to GC&CS as "the Golf, Cheese and Chess Society". In one instance, the ability to solve a Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
crossword in under 12 minutes was used as a test. The newspaper was asked to organize a competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked whether they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F H W Hawes of Dagenham
Dagenham
Dagenham is a large suburb in East London, forming the eastern part of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and located east of Charing Cross. It was historically an agrarian village in the county of Essex and remained mostly undeveloped until 1921 when the London County Council began...
in Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
who finished in less than eight minutes.
Some 9,000 people from the armed services and civilians were working at Bletchley Park at the height of the codebreaking efforts in January 1945, and over 12,000 (of whom more than 80% were women) worked there at some point during the war. A relatively small number of men were also employed on a part-time basis, typically for one shift each week (e.g. Post Office
General Post Office
General Post Office is the name of the British postal system from 1660 until 1969.General Post Office may also refer to:* General Post Office, Perth* General Post Office, Sydney* General Post Office, Melbourne* General Post Office, Brisbane...
employees who were experts in Morse code or the German language). Among the famous mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
s and cryptanalysts
Cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
working there, the most influential and the best-known in later years was Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
who is widely credited with being "The Father of Computer Science".
Security
Sustained breaking of an enemy's ciphers can be a very fragile business. The Germans progressively increased the security of Enigma networks, which required additional cryptographic developments by GC&CS. A major setback was caused by the German Navy introducing the four-rotor Enigma used for communicating with U-boatU-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
s. This change temporarily stopped the ability to read this network from February to December 1942.
Even a small improvement in operating policies or procedures could have set back the deciphering process by months, or even permanently. Knowing that the slightest suspicion by the Axis powers that their ciphers were being broken, could lead to such a change, the authorities at Bletchley Park were extremely concerned about security. All staff had to sign the Official Secrets Act (1939)
Official Secrets Act 1939
The Official Secrets Act 1939 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It substitutes a new section 6 into the Official Secrets Act 1920, which limits the scope of that offence to offences under section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911...
, and were instructed that they should never discuss their work outside their immediate section. A May 1942 personal security form stated:
The strict adherence to these constraints, and to the requirement never to ask about anyone else's work, was well accepted in a country where there were many wartime posters stating Careless Talk Costs Lives. Not until F. W. Winterbotham's book The Ultra Secret was published in 1974 did ex-Bletchley Park staff feel free to reveal something of their wartime work. Deaths before that time meant that many parents, spouses and children were never told more than that it was secret work for the Foreign Office or one of the armed services. Even 70 years later, some people still regard themselves bound to remain silent.
Intelligence reporting
There was an ever-present danger that some ill-considered military or other action by the AlliesAllies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
might alert the enemy to the possibility that their codes were being broken. Had this happened, they would undoubtedly have introduced changes in policies and procedures, and even equipment. Such changes could have rendered previous methods of codebreaking insufficient, with serious implications for the conduct of the war.
There was a separation between deciphering the messages, and sending out intelligence derived from them. In the case of non-naval Enigma, deciphering was performed in Hut 6
Hut 6
Hut 6 was a wartime section of Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine ciphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma...
, and translation indexing and cross-referencing with existing information, in Hut 3. Only then was it sent out to the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), the intelligence chiefs in the relevant ministries, and later on to high-level commanders in the field.
A similar situation existed for naval Enigma messages. Deciphering was in Hut 8
Hut 8
Hut 8 was a section at Bletchley Park tasked with solving German naval Enigma messages. The section was led initially by Alan Turing...
and translation in Hut 4. Verbatim translations were sent solely to the Naval Intelligence Division
Naval Intelligence Division
The Naval Intelligence Division was the intelligence arm of the British Admiralty before the establishment of a unified Defence Staff in 1965. It dealt with matters concerning British naval plans, with the collection of naval intelligence...
(NID) of the Admiralty's Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) supplemented by information from indexes as to the meaning of technical terms and abbreviations, and cross-referenced information from a store of knowledge of German naval technology.
Hut 4 also decoded a manual system known as the dockyard cipher. This sometimes carried messages that were also sent on an Enigma network. Feeding these back to Hut 8 provided excellent cribs
Known-plaintext attack
The known-plaintext attack is an attack model for cryptanalysis where the attacker has samples of both the plaintext , and its encrypted version . These can be used to reveal further secret information such as secret keys and code books...
for breaking the current naval Enigma key.
Listening stations
Initially, a wirelessRadio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
room was established at Bletchley Park. It was set up in the mansion's water tower and given the code name "Station X", a term now sometimes applied to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. The "X" denotes the Roman numeral "ten", as this was the tenth such station to be opened by the Secret Intelligence Service. Due to the long radio aerials stretching from the wireless room, the radio station was moved from Bletchley Park to nearby Whaddon Hall to avoid drawing attention to the site.
Subsequently, other listening stations – the Y-stations
Y-stations
Y-stations were British Signals Intelligence collection sites initially established during World War I and later used during World War II. These sites were operated by a range of agencies including the Army, Navy and RAF plus the Foreign Office , General Post Office and Marconi Company receiving...
, (such as the ones at Chicksands
Chicksands
Chicksands is a village in the Central Bedfordshire district of Bedfordshire, England and part of the civil parish of Campton and Chicksands . It is on the River Flit. Nearby places are Shefford and Campton....
in Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire
Bedfordshire is a ceremonial county of historic origin in England that forms part of the East of England region.It borders Cambridgeshire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the west and Hertfordshire to the south-east....
and Beaumanor Hall
Beaumanor Hall
Beaumanor Hall is a stately home with a park in the small village of Woodhouse on the edge of the Charnwood Forest, near the town of Loughborough in Leicestershire in the United Kingdom. It was built in 1845-7 by architect William Railton in Elizabethan style for the Herrick family. and is a Grade...
in Leicestershire
Leicestershire
Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...
where the headquarters of the War Office "Y" Group was located) – gathered raw signals for processing at Bletchley. Coded messages were taken down by hand and sent to Bletchley on paper by motorcycle couriers or, later, by teleprinter. Bletchley Park is mainly remembered for breaking messages enciphered on the German Enigma cypher machine, but its greatest cryptographic achievement may have been the breaking of the German on-line teleprinter Lorenz cipher
Lorenz cipher
The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42A and SZ42B were German rotor cipher machines used by the German Army during World War II. They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin. They implemented a Vernam stream cipher...
(known at GC&CS as Tunny).
German and Italian signals
The majority of the mechanically enciphered messages subjected to cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park were the product of some variation of the EnigmaEnigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
cipher machine. Five weeks before the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
's Biuro Szyfrów
Biuro Szyfrów
The Biuro Szyfrów was the interwar Polish General Staff's agency charged with both cryptography and cryptology ....
(Cipher Bureau) revealed its achievements in decrypting German Enigma ciphers to astonished French and British intelligence. The British used the Poles's information and techniques, and the Enigma clone sent in August 1939, to greatly increase their, previously very limited, success in decrypting Enigma.
The bombe
Bombe
The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
was an electromechanical device whose function was to discover some of the daily settings of the Enigma machines on the various German military networks
Telecommunications network
A telecommunications network is a collection of terminals, links and nodes which connect together to enable telecommunication between users of the terminals. Networks may use circuit switching or message switching. Each terminal in the network must have a unique address so messages or connections...
. The functional design was produced by Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
with an important contribution from Gordon Welchman
Gordon Welchman
Gordon Welchman was a British-American mathematician, university professor, World War II codebreaker at Bletchley Park, and author.-Education and early career:...
, and the engineering was by Harold 'Doc' Keen
Harold Keen
Harold Hall "Doc" Keen was a British engineer who produced the engineering design, and oversaw the construction of, the British bombe, a codebreaking machine used in World War II to read German messages sent using the Enigma machine. He was known as "Doc" Keen because of his habit of carrying...
of the British Tabulating Machine Company
British Tabulating Machine Company
The British Tabulating Machine Company was a firm which manufactured and sold Hollerith unit record equipment and other data-processing equipment...
at Letchworth
Letchworth
Letchworth Garden City, commonly known as Letchworth, is a town and civil parish in Hertfordshire, England. The town's name is taken from one of the three villages it surrounded - all of which featured in the Domesday Book. The land used was first purchased by Quakers who had intended to farm the...
. Each machine was about 7 feet (2.1 m) wide, 6 in 6 in (1.98 m) tall, 2 foot (0.6096 m) deep and weighed about a ton.
At its peak, GC&CS were reading some 4,000 messages per day. Because of the danger of bombes at Bletchley Park being lost if there were to be an aerial bombing raid, five bombe outstations were established, at Adstock
Adstock
Adstock is a village and civil parish about northwest of Winslow and southeast of Buckingham in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire. The 2001 Census recorded a parish population of 415....
, Gayhurst
Gayhurst
Gayhurst is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Milton Keynes, ceremonial Buckinghamshire in England. It is about two and a half miles NNW of Newport Pagnell....
, Wavendon
Wavendon
Wavendon is a village and civil parish in the south east of the Borough of Milton Keynes and ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire, England. The village name is an Old English language word, and means 'Wafa's hill'. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in 969 the village was recorded as Wafandun. The...
, Stanmore
Stanmore
Stanmore is a suburban area of the London Borough of Harrow, in northwest London. It is situated northwest of Charing Cross. The area is home to Stanmore Hill, one of the highest points of London, high.-Toponymy:...
, and Eastcote
Eastcote
Eastcote is a suburban area established around an old village in Greater London, and is part of the London Borough of Hillingdon.In the Middle Ages, Eastcote was one of the three areas that made up the parish of Ruislip, under the name of Ascot...
.
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
messages were the first to be read in quantity. The German navy had much tighter procedures, and the capture of code books was needed before they could be broken. When, in February 1942, the German navy introduced a version of Enigma with a fourth rotor for messages to and from Atlantic U-boats, these became unreadable for a period of ten months. Britain produced modified bombes, but it was the success of the US Navy bombe that was the main source of reading messages from this version of Enigma for the rest of the war. Messages were sent to and fro across the Atlantic by enciphered teleprinter links.
Lorenz cipher
The Lorenz SZ40, SZ42A and SZ42B were German rotor cipher machines used by the German Army during World War II. They were developed by C. Lorenz AG in Berlin. They implemented a Vernam stream cipher...
codenamed Tunny at Bletchley Park, was even more complicated than Enigma. It was introduced in mid-1942 for messages between German High Command and field commanders. With the help of German operator errors, the cryptanalysts in the Testery
Testery
The Testery was a section at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. It was set up in July 1942 under Major Ralph Tester to achieve Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. The three original founding members, cryptographers, and linguists were Captain Jerry Roberts,...
(named after Ralph Tester
Ralph Tester
Ralph P. Tester was an administrator at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. He founded and supervised a section named the Testery for breaking TUNNY .-Background:...
, its head) worked out the logical structure of the machine despite not knowing its physical form. They devised automatic machinery to help with this, which culminated in Colossus
Colossus computer
Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...
, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. This was designed and built by Tommy Flowers
Tommy Flowers
Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers, MBE was an English engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.-Early life:...
and his team at the Post Office Research Station
Post Office Research Station
The Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, London, was first established in 1921 and opened by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1933.In 1943 the world's first programmable electronic computer, Colossus Mark 1 was built by Tommy Flowers and his team, followed in 1944 and 1945 by nine...
at Dollis Hill
Dollis Hill
Dollis Hill is an area of north-west London. It lies close to Willesden, in the London Borough of Brent. As a result, Dollis Hill is sometimes referred as being part of Willesden, especially by the national press...
. The first was delivered to Bletchley Park in December 1943 and commissioned the following February. Enhancements were developed for the Mark 2 Colossus, the first of which was working at Bletchley Park on the morning of D-day in June. Flowers then produced one Colossus a month for the rest of the war, making a total of ten with an eleventh part-built. The machines were operated mainly by members of the Women's Royal Naval Service
Women's Royal Naval Service
The Women's Royal Naval Service was the women's branch of the Royal Navy.Members included cooks, clerks, wireless telegraphists, radar plotters, weapons analysts, range assessors, electricians and air mechanics...
(Wrens) in a section named the Newmanry
Newmanry
The Newmanry was a section at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. Its job was to develop and employ machine methods in Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. The Newmanry was named after its founder and head, Max Newman...
after its head Max Newman
Max Newman
Maxwell Herman Alexander "Max" Newman, FRS was a British mathematician and codebreaker.-Pre–World War II:Max Newman was born Maxwell Neumann in Chelsea, London, England, on 7 February 1897...
.
Japanese signals
An outpost of the Government Code and Cypher School had been set up in Hong Kong in 1935, the Far East Combined BureauFar East Combined Bureau
The Far East Combined Bureau, an outstation of the British Government Code and Cypher School, was set up in Hong Kong in March 1935, to monitor Japanese, and also Chinese and Russian intelligence and radio traffic...
(FECB). The FECB naval staff moved in 1940 to Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, then Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
, Ceylon
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
, then Kilindini
Kilindini Harbour
Kilindini Harbour is a large, natural deep-water inlet extending inland from Mombasa, Kenya. It is 25-30 fathoms at its deepest center. It serves as the harbour for Mombasa, with a hinterland extending to Uganda and Sudan. Kilindini Harbour is the main part of the Port of Mombasa, the only...
, Mombasa
Mombasa
Mombasa is the second-largest city in Kenya. Lying next to the Indian Ocean, it has a major port and an international airport. The city also serves as the centre of the coastal tourism industry....
, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...
. They succeeded in deciphering Japanese codes with a mixture of skill and good fortune. The Army and Air Force staff went from Singapore to the Wireless Experimental Centre
Wireless Experimental Centre
The Wireless Experimental Centre was one of two overseas outposts of Station X, Bletchley Park, the British signals analysis centre during World War II. The other outpost was the Far East Combined Bureau....
at Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
.
In early 1942, a six-month crash course in Japanese, for 20 undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge, was started by the Inter-Service Intelligence school in Bedford, in a building across from the main Post Office. This course was repeated every six months until war's end.
Most of those completing these courses worked on decoding Japanese naval messages in Hut 7
Hut 7
Hut 7 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of Japanese naval codes such as JN4, JN11, JN40, and JN25...
, under Col. J. Tiltman. By mid-1945 well over 100 personnel were involved with this operation, which co-operated closely with the FECB and the US Signal intelligence Service at Arlington Hall
Arlington Hall
Arlington Hall was a former girl's school and the headquarters of the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service cryptography effort during World War II. The site presently houses the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, and the United States National Guard Readiness Center. It...
, Virginia. Because of these joint efforts, by August 1945 the Japanese merchant navy was suffering 90% losses at sea.
In 1999, Michael Smith wrote that: "Only now are the British codebreakers (like John Tiltman, Hugh Foss
Hugh Foss
Hugh Rose Foss was a British cryptographer.-Life:Foss was born in Kobe, Japan, where his father the Rt Revd Hugh Foss was a missionary bishop, and he learned Japanese....
and Eric Nave
Eric Nave
Captain Eric Nave was a Navy Paymaster Commander and an Australian cryptographer, before and during World War II. He served in the Navy from 1917 to 1949. As a midshipman in the 1920s, he was required to learn a foreign language and chose Japanese: with French and German you got sixpence a day...
) beginning to receive the recognition they deserve for breaking Japanese codes and cyphers".
Additional buildings
Some of the hut numbers, and the associated work, are:
- Hut 1 – The first hut, built in 1939 used to house the Wireless Station for a short time, later administrative functions such as transport, typing and Bombe maintenance. The first Bombe, "Victory" was initially housed here.
- Hut 3 – Intelligence: translation and analysis of Army and Air Force decrypts
- Hut 4 – Naval intelligence: analysis of Naval Enigma and HagelinC-36 (cipher machine)The C-35 and C-36 were cipher machines designed by Swedish cryptographer Boris Hagelin in the 1930s. These were the first of Hagelin's cipher machines to feature the pin-and-lug mechanism...
decrypts - Hut 5 – Military intelligence including Italian, Spanish and Portuguese ciphers and German police codes.
- Hut 6Hut 6Hut 6 was a wartime section of Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of German Army and Air Force Enigma machine ciphers. Hut 8, by contrast, attacked Naval Enigma...
– Cryptanalysis of Army and Air Force Enigma - Hut 7Hut 7Hut 7 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School in Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of Japanese naval codes such as JN4, JN11, JN40, and JN25...
– Cryptanalysis of Japanese naval codes and intelligence - Hut 8Hut 8Hut 8 was a section at Bletchley Park tasked with solving German naval Enigma messages. The section was led initially by Alan Turing...
– Cryptanalysis of Naval Enigma - Hut 9 – ISOS (Intelligence Section Oliver StracheyOliver StracheyOliver Strachey , a British civil servant in the Foreign Office was a cryptographer from World War I to World War II....
) - Hut 10 – Secret Intelligence ServiceSecret Intelligence ServiceThe Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
(SIS or MI6) codes, Air and Meteorological sections - Hut 11 – Bombe building
- Hut 14 – Communications centre
- Hut 15 - SIXTA
- Hut 16 - ISK (Intelligence Service KnoxDilly KnoxAlfred Dillwyn 'Dilly' Knox CMG was a classics scholar at King's College, Cambridge, and a British codebreaker...
) AbwehrAbwehrThe Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
ciphers - Hut 18 - ISOS (Intelligence Section Oliver Strachey)
In addition to the wooden huts there were a number of brick-built blocks.
- Block A - Naval Intelligence
- Block B - Italian Air and Naval, and Japanese code breaking
- Block C - Stored the substantial punch-card index
- Block D - Enigma work, extending that in huts 3, 6 and 8
- Block E - Incoming and outgoing Radio Transmission and TypeX
- Block F - Included the NewmanryNewmanryThe Newmanry was a section at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. Its job was to develop and employ machine methods in Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. The Newmanry was named after its founder and head, Max Newman...
and TesteryTesteryThe Testery was a section at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. It was set up in July 1942 under Major Ralph Tester to achieve Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. The three original founding members, cryptographers, and linguists were Captain Jerry Roberts,...
, and Japanese Military Air Section. It has since been demolished. - Block G - Traffic analysis and deception operations
- Block H - Lorenz and Colossus (now The National Museum of ComputingThe National Museum of ComputingThe National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is based at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England, and opened in 2007...
)
After the war
At the end of the war, much of the equipment used and its blueprintBlueprint
A blueprint is a type of paper-based reproduction usually of a technical drawing, documenting an architecture or an engineering design. More generally, the term "blueprint" has come to be used to refer to any detailed plan....
s were destroyed. Although thousands of people were involved in the deciphering efforts, the participants remained silent
Official Secrets Act
The Official Secrets Act is a stock short title used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, India and Malaysia and formerly in New Zealand for legislation that provides for the protection of state secrets and official information, mainly related to national security.-United Kingdom:*The Official Secrets...
for decades about what they had done during the war, and it was only in the 1970s that the work at Bletchley Park was revealed to the general public. After the war, the site belonged to several owners, including British Telecom, the Civil Aviation Authority
Civil Aviation Authority
This is a list of national and supra-national civil aviation authorities.-See also:* Air route authority between the United States and the People's Republic of China* National Transportation Safety Board -External links:****...
and PACE (Property Advisors to the Civil Estate). GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters
Government Communications Headquarters
The Government Communications Headquarters is a British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence and information assurance to the UK government and armed forces...
), the post-war successor organisation to GC&CS, ended training courses at Bletchley Park in 1987.
The local headquarters for the GPO was based here and housed all the engineers for the local area together with all the support they needed. The Eastern Region training school was also based in the park and later part of the national BT management college which was relocated here from Horwood House
Horwood House
Horwood House lies south east of the village of Little Horwood in Buckinghamshire. This mansion is a comparatively modern house, built in 1911, the date being embossed into the gutter hopper-heads...
. There was also a teacher-training college.
By 1991, the site was nearly empty and the buildings were at risk of demolition for redevelopment. On 10 February 1992, Milton Keynes Borough Council declared most of the Park a conservation area. Three days later, on 13 February 1992, the Bletchley Park Trust was formed to maintain the site as a museum devoted to the codebreakers. The site opened to visitors in 1993, with the museum officially inaugurated by HRH the Duke of Kent, as Chief Patron, in July 1994. On 10 June 1999 the Trust concluded an agreement with the landowner, giving control over much of the site to the Trust.
The Trust is volunteer-based and relies on public support to continue its efforts. Christine Large was appointed Director of the Trust in March 1998. On 1 March 2006, the Park Trust announced that Simon Greenish had been appointed Director Designate, and would work alongside Large in 2006, taking over on 1 May 2006.
In October 2005, American billionaire Sidney Frank
Sidney Frank
Sidney E. Frank was an American businessman who became a billionaire through his promotion of Grey Goose vodka and Jägermeister.-Early life, family, education:...
donated £500,000 to Bletchley Park Trust to fund a new Science Centre dedicated to Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
.
A team headed by Tony Sale has undertaken reconstruction of a Colossus computer
Colossus computer
Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...
at The National Museum of Computing
The National Museum of Computing
The National Museum of Computing is a museum in the United Kingdom dedicated to collecting and restoring historic computer systems. The museum is based at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, England, and opened in 2007...
, which is currently located within the park. Another team, led by John Harper, has undertaken a rebuild of the bombe
Bombe
The bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
. On 6 September 2006, the Trust demonstrated that the Bombe was back in action.
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Other museum attractions
The park is also home to a number of other organizations, especially The Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre.National Museum of Computing
In 2008 the museum signed a 25-year lease for the park's Block H to establish this national museum on the history of computing. The two trusts are separate legal entities.The museum includes a reconstructed Colossus computer
Colossus computer
Not to be confused with the fictional computer of the same name in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer. Colossus and its successors were used by British codebreakers to help read encrypted German messages during World War II...
by a team headed by Tony Sale, along with many important examples of computing machinery.
Radio Society of Great Britain
In April 2008 the General Manager of the Radio Society of Great BritainRadio Society of Great Britain
First founded in 1913 as the London Wireless Club, the Radio Society of Great Britain is the United Kingdom's recognised national society for amateur radio operators. The society's patron is Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and it represents the interests of the UK’s 60,000 licensed radio amateurs...
announced that the society was moving its "public headquarters", including its library, radio station, museum and bookshop, to Bletchley Park. Although the RSGB intended to open the "RSGB Pavilion" at the Park in late summer to early autumn 2008, the building allocated to them was beyond economical repair and they re-planned an opening, at a different location, in April 2010. In May 2011 this was postponed until January 2012.
Other attractions
Other buildings at Bletchley Park feature additional exhibits. Some are only open on specified days.- The mansion itself is open for tours on Sundays. It is also open on other days when it is not used for private functions.
- Rebuild of the BombeBombeThe bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
device used to help to decrypt German Enigma machineEnigma machineAn Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
-generated signals - Winston Churchill Exhibit - collection of Winston ChurchillWinston ChurchillSir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
memorabilia - Projected Picture Trust - collection of vintage cinemaFilmA film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
equipment and a small theatre showing World War II-era movie shorts - Toy & Memorabilia Collection - 1930s period toy soldierToy soldierA toy soldier is a miniature figurine that represents a soldier. The term applies to depictions of uniformed military personnel from all eras, and includes knights, cowboys, pirates, and other subjects that involve combat-related themes. Toy soldiers vary from simple playthings to highly realistic...
s, model trains, model vehiclesModel carA model car or toy car is a miniature representation of an automobile. Other miniature motor vehicles, such as trucks, buses, or even ATVs, etc. are often included in the general category of model cars...
, Wm. Britain's lead farm and garden, and other toys, dolls and teddy bears - Bletchley Park Garage - cars include two 1930s Austin Motor CompanyAustin Motor CompanyThe Austin Motor Company was a British manufacturer of automobiles. The company was founded in 1905 and merged in 1952 into the British Motor Corporation Ltd. The marque Austin was used until 1987...
autos that were used in the movie The Eagle Has LandedThe Eagle Has Landed (film)The Eagle Has Landed is a 1976 film version of the novel The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins. It was directed by John Sturges and starred Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland and Robert Duvall... - Bletchley Park Post Office - a recreation of the 1940s post office used as cover for mail delivered to the employees of Bletchley Park. The gift shop is a publisher of limited edition first day coversFirst day of issueA First Day of Issue Cover or First Day Cover is a postage stamp on a cover, postal card or stamped envelope franked on the first day the issue is authorized for use within the country or territory of the stamp-issuing authority. Sometimes the issue is made from a temporary or permanent foreign or...
.
Funding needs
In May 2008 it was announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates FoundationBill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world, founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It is "driven by the interests and passions of the Gates family"...
had turned down a request for funds because the foundation only funds Internet-based technology projects. Since Bletchley Park receives no external funding, it is in dire need of financial support. Simon Greenish, the Bletchley Park Trust's director said:
We are just about surviving. Money – or lack of it – is our big problem here. I think we have two to three more years of survival, but we need this time to find a solution to this.
On 24 July 2008 more than a hundred academics signed a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
condemning the neglect being suffered by the site. In September 2008, PGP
Pretty Good Privacy
Pretty Good Privacy is a data encryption and decryption computer program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. PGP is often used for signing, encrypting and decrypting texts, E-mails, files, directories and whole disk partitions to increase the security...
, IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
and other technology firms announced a fund-raising campaign to repair the facility.
On 6 November 2008 it was announced that English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
would donate £300,000 to help maintain the buildings at Bletchley Park, and that they were in discussions regarding the donation of a further £600,000.
In July 2009, the British government announced that personnel who had worked at the park during the war would be recognized with a commemorative badge.
In August 2011, it was noted that Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
provided partial funding for the purchase of Alan Turing
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing, OBE, FRS , was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst, and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of "algorithm" and "computation" with the Turing machine, which played a...
's papers and provided other support.
Sue Black
Sue Black (computer scientist)
Dr Sue Black FBCS FRSA is an English computer scientist. She is a Senior Research Associate at University College London, England. Previously she was Head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster, London. Sue Black founded BCSWomen, a Specialist Group...
and others have used Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
and other social media
Social media
The term Social Media refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0,...
to raise the profile and funding for Bletchley Park.
In October 2011, Bletchley Park was awarded a £4.6m Heritage Lottery Fund
Heritage Lottery Fund
The Heritage Lottery Fund is a fund established in the United Kingdom under the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. The Fund opened for applications in 1994. It uses money raised through the National Lottery to transform and sustain the UK’s heritage...
grant which will be used "to complete the restoration of the site, and to tell its story to the highest modern standards."
In popular culture
- Bletchley featured heavily in EnigmaEnigma (novel)Enigma is a novel by Robert Harris about Tom Jericho, a young mathematician trying to break the Germans' "Enigma" ciphers during World War II. It was adapted to film in 2001...
and its 2001 film adaptationEnigma (2001 film)Enigma is a 2001 British film about the Enigma codebreakers of Bletchley Park in World War II. The film, directed by Michael Apted, stars Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet. The film's screenplay was by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel Enigma by Robert Harris...
; although filming was done at Chicheley HallChicheley HallChicheley Hall, in Chicheley, Buckinghamshire, was built in the first quarter of the 18th century in the Baroque style. It is one of the finest country houses in Buckinghamshire, described by Marcus Binney in The Times as "one of the dozen finest and loveliest English country houses that will...
. - The World War II code breaking sitcom pilot "Satsuma & Pumpkin" was recorded at Bletchley Park in 2003 and featured the late Bob Monkhouse OBE in his last ever screen role. The BBC declined to produce the show and develop it further before creating effectively the same show on Radio 4 several years later, featuring some of the same cast, entitled Hut 33. Parts of the unseen pilot are to be shown on documentaries about Bob Monkhouse on both ITV & BBC in 2010.
- The BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
sitcom Hut 33Hut 33Hut 33 is a BBC Radio 4 sitcom set at Bletchley Park in 1941. It includes both the writer and producer from Think the Unthinkable and Concrete Cow.-Production:...
and the play Breaking the CodeBreaking the CodeBreaking the Code is a 1986 play by Hugh Whitemore about British mathematician Alan Turing, who was a key player in the breaking of the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during World War II...
were also set at Bletchley. - The ITV television serial Danger UXBDanger UXBDanger UXB is a 1979 British ITV television series developed by John Hawkesworth and starring Anthony Andrews as Lieutenant Brian Ash, a new direct commission officer in World War II....
featured the character Steven Mount who was a codebreaker at Bletchley, and was driven to a nervous breakdownNervous breakdownMental breakdown is a non-medical term used to describe an acute, time-limited phase of a specific disorder that presents primarily with features of depression or anxiety.-Definition:...
(and eventual suicideSuicideSuicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
) by the stressful and repetitive nature of the work. - In BBC's Torchwood series, the character Toshiko Sato is revealed to have had a grandfather who worked at Bletchley Park up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan. Whether he continued working there after Japan declared war on the Allies is unknown.
- A fictionalized version of Bletchley Park is featured in the novel CryptonomiconCryptonomiconCryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson. The novel follows the exploits of two groups of people in two different time periods, presented in alternating chapters...
by Neal StephensonNeal StephensonNeal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction.Difficult to categorize, his novels have been variously referred to as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and postcyberpunk...
. - On 19 June 2007 a 1.5-ton, life-size statue of Alan Turing was unveiled at Bletchley Park. Built from approximately half a million pieces of Welsh slateSlateSlate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. The result is a foliated rock in which the foliation may not correspond to the original sedimentary layering...
, it was sculpted by Stephen KettleStephen KettleStephen Kettle is a British sculptor who works exclusively with slate.His best known works include Supermarine Spitfire designer R. J...
, having been commissioned by the late American billionaire Sidney FrankSidney FrankSidney E. Frank was an American businessman who became a billionaire through his promotion of Grey Goose vodka and Jägermeister.-Early life, family, education:...
. - Bletchley came to wider public attention from the 1999 documentary series Station X.
- Bletchley Park plays a significant role in the Connie WillisConnie WillisConstance Elaine Trimmer Willis is an American science fiction writer. She has won eleven Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards. Willis most recently won a Hugo Award for Blackout/All Clear...
book "All Clear". - A mission in the Russian video game Death to Spies: Moment of TruthDeath to Spies: Moment of TruthDeath To Spies: Moment Of Truth is a third-person stealth action PC game set during World War II. Produced by 1C Company along with Haggard Games, Moment of Truth is a sequel to the stealth action title Death to Spies.- Game Overview :...
is called "Bletchley Park." It is set in a partial reconstruction of the actual estate, with certain landmarks and huts carefully reproduced. However, the plot doesn't involve Enigma, which is ironic, since in another mission of the same game the player is tasked with stealing an Enigma machine from a German submarine.
See also
- List of people associated with Bletchley Park
- http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/hist/history/RollofHonour.rhtmBletchley Park's Roll of Honour, containing lists of the men and women who worked at Bletchley Park, its outstations, in the Y Service, Special Communications Units, Special Liaison Units and the Radio Security Service during WW2. This list is frequently updated as it contains information from numerous sources, including from surviving veterans. ]
- NewmanryNewmanryThe Newmanry was a section at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. Its job was to develop and employ machine methods in Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. The Newmanry was named after its founder and head, Max Newman...
- TesteryTesteryThe Testery was a section at Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking station during World War II. It was set up in July 1942 under Major Ralph Tester to achieve Cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. The three original founding members, cryptographers, and linguists were Captain Jerry Roberts,...
- Y-stationsY-stationsY-stations were British Signals Intelligence collection sites initially established during World War I and later used during World War II. These sites were operated by a range of agencies including the Army, Navy and RAF plus the Foreign Office , General Post Office and Marconi Company receiving...
- Arlington HallArlington HallArlington Hall was a former girl's school and the headquarters of the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service cryptography effort during World War II. The site presently houses the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, and the United States National Guard Readiness Center. It...
- National Cryptologic MuseumNational Cryptologic MuseumThe National Cryptologic Museum is an American museum of cryptologic history that is affiliated with the National Security Agency . The first public museum in the U.S. Intelligence Community, NCM is located in the former Colony Seven Motel, just two blocks from the NSA headquarters at Fort...
- Danesfield HouseDanesfield HouseDanesfield House in Medmenham, near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills is a former country house now used as a hotel and spa...
- Beeston Regis, Norfolk Chapter on the Y Station on Beeston Bump
- Far East Combined BureauFar East Combined BureauThe Far East Combined Bureau, an outstation of the British Government Code and Cypher School, was set up in Hong Kong in March 1935, to monitor Japanese, and also Chinese and Russian intelligence and radio traffic...
in Hong Kong prewar, then Singapore, Colombo (Ceylon) and Kilindini (Kenya) - Wireless Experimental CentreWireless Experimental CentreThe Wireless Experimental Centre was one of two overseas outposts of Station X, Bletchley Park, the British signals analysis centre during World War II. The other outpost was the Far East Combined Bureau....
operated by the Intelligence Corps outside DelhiDelhiDelhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
External links
- Bletchley Park Trust
- Bletchley Park — Virtual Tour — by Tony Sale
- The National Museum of Computing (based at Bletchley Park)
- "New hope of saving Bletchley Park for nation" (Daily Telegraph 3 March 1997)
- Boffoonery! Comedy Benefit For Bletchley Park Comedians and computing professionals stage comedy show in aid of Bletchley Park
- Bletchley Park: It's No Secret, Just an Enigma, The Telegraph, 29 August 2009
- Bletchley Park is official charity of Shed Week 2010 — in recognition of the work done in the Huts
- Saving Bletchley Park blog by Sue BlackSue Black (computer scientist)Dr Sue Black FBCS FRSA is an English computer scientist. She is a Senior Research Associate at University College London, England. Previously she was Head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster, London. Sue Black founded BCSWomen, a Specialist Group...
- GCHQ: Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency
- 19 minute Video interview with Sue BlackSue Black (computer scientist)Dr Sue Black FBCS FRSA is an English computer scientist. She is a Senior Research Associate at University College London, England. Previously she was Head of the Department of Information and Software Systems at the University of Westminster, London. Sue Black founded BCSWomen, a Specialist Group...
by Robert LlewellynRobert LlewellynRobert Llewellyn is an English actor, presenter, and writer. He is best known as the mechanoid Kryten in the hit sitcom Red Dwarf, and for his role as presenter of Scrapheap Challenge.-Early career:...
about Bletchley Park