Station X, Bletchley Park
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Bletchley Park is an
English country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...
and estate in Bletchley,
Milton Keynes Milton Keynes ( ) is a city and the largest settlement in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was over . The River Great Ouse forms its northern boundary; a tributary ...
(
Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (), abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England that borders Greater London to the south-east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-ea ...
) that became the principal centre of
Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
code-breaking during the Second World War. The mansion was constructed during the years following 1883 for the financier and politician Sir
Herbert Leon Sir Herbert Samuel Leon, 1st Baronet (11 February 1850 – 23 July 1926) was an English financier and Liberal Party politician, now best known as the main figure in the development of the Bletchley Park estate in Buckinghamshire. Life He was ...
in the Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and
Dutch Baroque Dutch Baroque architecture is a variety of Baroque architecture that flourished in the Dutch Republic and its colonies during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. (Dutch painting during the period is covered by Dutch Golden Age painting). Li ...
styles, on the site of older buildings of the same name. During World War II, the estate housed the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powersmost importantly the German Enigma and
Lorenz Lorenz is an originally German name derived from the Roman surname Laurentius, which means "from Laurentum". Given name People with the given name Lorenz include: * Prince Lorenz of Belgium (born 1955), member of the Belgian royal family by h ...
ciphers. The GC&CS team of codebreakers included Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander, Bill Tutte, and Stuart Milner-Barry. The nature of the work at Bletchley remained secret until many years after the war. According to the official historian of British Intelligence, the " Ultra" intelligence produced at Bletchley shortened the war by two to four years, and without it the outcome of the war would have been uncertain. The team at Bletchley Park devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, culminating in the development of
Colossus Colossus, Colossos, or the plural Colossi or Colossuses, may refer to: Statues * Any exceptionally large statue ** List of tallest statues ** :Colossal statues * ''Colossus of Barletta'', a bronze statue of an unidentified Roman emperor * ''Col ...
, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer. Codebreaking operations at Bletchley Park came to an end in 1946 and all information about the wartime operations was classified until the mid-1970s. After the war it had various uses including as a teacher-training college and local GPO headquarters. By 1990 the huts in which the codebreakers worked were being considered for demolition and redevelopment. The Bletchley Park Trust was formed in February 1992 to save large portions of the site from development. More recently, Bletchley Park has been open to the public, featuring interpretive exhibits and huts that have been rebuilt to appear as they did during their wartime operations. It receives hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. The separate National Museum of Computing, which includes a working replica Bombe machine and a rebuilt Colossus computer, is housed in Block H on the site.


History

The site appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as part of the Manor of Eaton. Browne Willis built a mansion there in 1711, but after Thomas Harrison purchased the property in 1793 this was pulled down. It was first known as Bletchley Park after its purchase by the architect
Samuel Lipscomb Seckham Samuel Lipscomb Seckham (Oxford 25 October 1827 – 4 February 1901) was an English Victorian architect, developer, magistrate and brewer. He was born in Oxford, and later became the City Surveyor. He was the original architect employed by St ...
in 1877, who built a house there. The estate of was bought in 1883 by Sir
Herbert Samuel Leon Sir Herbert Samuel Leon, 1st Baronet (11 February 1850 – 23 July 1926) was an English financier and Liberal Party politician, now best known as the main figure in the development of the Bletchley Park estate in Buckinghamshire. Life He was ...
, who expanded the then-existing house into what architect
Landis Gores Landis Gores (August 31, 1919 – March 18, 1991) was an American architect, born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Landis was known for his modernist Gores Pavilion, the Gores Family House, and the House for All Seasons. Early life After growing ...
called a "maudlin and monstrous pile" combining Victorian Gothic, Tudor, and
Dutch Baroque Dutch Baroque architecture is a variety of Baroque architecture that flourished in the Dutch Republic and its colonies during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century. (Dutch painting during the period is covered by Dutch Golden Age painting). Li ...
styles. At his Christmas family gatherings there was a
fox hunting Fox hunting is an activity involving the tracking, chase and, if caught, the killing of a fox, traditionally a red fox, by trained foxhounds or other scent hounds. A group of unarmed followers, led by a "master of foxhounds" (or "master of ho ...
meet on
Boxing Day Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated after Christmas Day, occurring on the second day of Christmastide (26 December). Though it originated as a holiday to give gifts to the poor, today Boxing Day is primarily known as a shopping holiday. It ...
with glasses of sloe gin from the butler, and the house was always "humming with servants". With 40 gardeners, a flower bed of yellow daffodils could become a sea of red tulips overnight. After the death of Herbert Leon in 1926, the estate continued to be occupied by his widow Fanny Leon (née Higham) until her death in 1937. In 1938, the mansion and much of the site was bought by a builder for a housing estate, but in May 1938 Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the
Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
(SIS or MI6), bought the mansion and of land for £6,000 (£ today) for use by GC&CS and SIS in the event of war. He used his own money as the Government said they did not have the budget to do so. A key advantage seen by Sinclair and his colleagues (inspecting the site under the cover of "Captain Ridley's shooting party") was Bletchley's geographical centrality. It was almost immediately adjacent to Bletchley railway station, where the " Varsity Line" between Oxford and Cambridgewhose universities were expected to supply many of the code-breakersmet the main West Coast railway line connecting London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Watling Street, the main road linking London to the north-west (subsequently the A5) was close by, and high-volume communication links were available at the telegraph and telephone repeater station in nearby Fenny Stratford. Bletchley Park was known as "B.P." to those who worked there. " Station X" (X = Roman numeral ten), "London Signals Intelligence Centre", and " Government Communications Headquarters" were all cover names used during the war. The formal posting of the many "Wrens"members of the Women's Royal Naval Serviceworking there, was to
HMS Pembroke V RAF Eastcote, also known over time as RAF Lime Grove, HMS ''Pembroke V'' and Outstation Eastcote, was a UK Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), Ministry of Defence site in Eastcote, Middlesex. The British government first used the site during ...
. Royal Air Force names of Bletchley Park and its outstations included
RAF Eastcote RAF Eastcote, also known over time as RAF Lime Grove, HMS ''Pembroke V'' and Outstation Eastcote, was a UK Ministry of Defence site in Eastcote, Middlesex. The British government first used the site during the Second World War, constructing a ...
, RAF Lime Grove and RAF Church Green. The postal address that staff had to use was "Room 47, Foreign Office". After the war, the Government Code & Cypher School became the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), moving to Eastcote in 1946 and to
Cheltenham Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...
in the 1950s. The site was used by various government agencies, including the
GPO GPO may refer to: Government and politics * General Post Office, Dublin * General Post Office, in Britain * Social Security Government Pension Offset, a provision reducing benefits * Government Pharmaceutical Organization, a Thai state enterpris ...
and the
Civil Aviation Authority A civil aviation authority (CAA) is a national or supranational statutory authority that oversees the regulation of civil aviation, including the maintenance of an aircraft register. Role Due to the inherent dangers in the use of flight vehicles, ...
. One large building, block F, was demolished in 1987 by which time the site was being run down with tenants leaving. In 1990 the site was at risk of being sold for housing development. However, Milton Keynes Council made it into a conservation area. Bletchley Park Trust was set up in 1991 by a group of people who recognised the site's importance. The initial trustees included Roger Bristow, Ted Enever,
Peter Wescombe Peter Wescombe (4 January 1932 – 25 November 2014) was a British diplomat, amateur archaeologist, historian and founding member of the Bletchley Park Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Bletchley, Milton Keynes ( Buck ...
, Dr Peter Jarvis of the Bletchley Archaeological & Historical Society, and
Tony Sale Tony may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tony (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Gregory Tony (born 1978), American law enforcement officer * Motu Tony (born 1981), New Zealand international rugby leag ...
who in 1994 became the first director of the Bletchley Park Museums.


Personnel

Admiral Hugh Sinclair was the founder and head of GC&CS between 1919 and 1938 with Commander Alastair Denniston being operational head of the organization from 1919 to 1942, beginning with its formation from the
Admiralty Admiralty most often refers to: *Admiralty, Hong Kong * Admiralty (United Kingdom), military department in command of the Royal Navy from 1707 to 1964 *The rank of admiral * Admiralty law Admiralty can also refer to: Buildings *Admiralty, Tr ...
's Room 40 (NID25) and the War Office's
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. It contained "C&C", which was responsible for code breaking. I ...
b. Key GC&CS cryptanalysts who moved from London to Bletchley Park included John Tiltman, Dillwyn "Dilly" Knox, Josh Cooper, Oliver Strachey and Nigel de Grey. These people had a variety of backgroundslinguists and chess champions were common, and Knox's field was papyrology. The British War Office recruited top solvers of cryptic crossword puzzles, as these individuals had strong lateral thinking skills. On the day Britain declared war on Germany, Denniston wrote to the
Foreign Office Foreign may refer to: Government * Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries * Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries ** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government ** Foreign office and foreign minister * Unit ...
about recruiting "men of the professor type". Personal networking drove early recruitments, particularly of men from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Trustworthy women were similarly recruited for administrative and clerical jobs. In one 1941 recruiting stratagem, '' The Daily Telegraph'' was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which promising contestants were discreetly approached about "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". Denniston recognised, however, that the enemy's use of electromechanical cipher machines meant that formally trained mathematicians would also be needed; Oxford's Peter Twinn joined GC&CS in February 1939; Cambridge's Alan Turing and Gordon Welchman began training in 1938 and reported to Bletchley the day after war was declared, along with John Jeffreys. Later-recruited cryptanalysts included the mathematicians
Derek Taunt Derek Roy Taunt (16 November 1917 (Note 1) – 15 July 2004) was a British mathematician who worked as a codebreaker during World War II at Bletchley Park. Taunt attended Enfield Grammar, then the City of London School. He studied mathemat ...
, Jack Good, Bill Tutte, and Max Newman; historian Harry Hinsley, and chess champions Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry.
Joan Clarke Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray, MBE (''née'' Clarke; 24 June 1917 – 4 September 1996) was an English cryptanalyst and numismatist best known for her work as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Although she did not ...
was one of the few women employed at Bletchley as a full-fledged cryptanalyst. When seeking to recruit more suitably advanced linguists, John Tiltman turned to
Patrick Wilkinson Patrick Wilkinson (born May 19, 1999) is an American professional soccer player who plays for the Saint Louis Billikens. Career Wilkinson signed with United Soccer League side Swope Park Rangers on August 18, 2016. He made his debut on August ...
of the Italian section for advice, and he suggested asking Lord Lindsay of Birker, of
Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...
, S. W. Grose, and Martin Charlesworth, of
St John's College, Cambridge St John's College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge founded by the House of Tudor, Tudor matriarch Lady Margaret Beaufort. In constitutional terms, the college is a charitable corpo ...
, to recommend classical scholars or applicants to their colleges. This eclectic staff of " Boffins and Debs" (scientists and debutantes, young women of high society) caused GC&CS to be whimsically dubbed the "Golf, Cheese and Chess Society". During a September 1941 morale-boosting visit,
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
reportedly remarked to Denniston: "I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I had no idea you had taken me so literally." Six weeks later, having failed to get sufficient typing and unskilled staff to achieve the productivity that was possible, Turing, Welchman, Alexander and Milner-Barry wrote directly to Churchill. His response was "Action this day make sure they have all they want on extreme priority and report to me that this has been done." The Army CIGS Alan Brooke wrote that on 16 April 1942 "Took lunch in car and went to see the organization for breaking down ciphers – a wonderful set of professors and genii! I marvel at the work they succeed in doing." After initial training at the Inter-Service Special Intelligence School set up by John Tiltman (initially at an RAF depot in Buckingham and later in Bedfordwhere it was known locally as "the Spy School") staff worked a six-day week, rotating through three shifts: 4p.m. to midnight, midnight to 8a.m. (the most disliked shift), and 8a.m. to 4p.m., each with a half-hour meal break. At the end of the third week, a worker went off at 8a.m. and came back at 4p.m., thus putting in 16 hours on that last day. The irregular hours affected workers' health and social life, as well as the routines of the nearby homes at which most staff lodged. The work was tedious and demanded intense concentration; staff got one week's leave four times a year, but some "girls" collapsed and required extended rest. Recruitment took place to combat a shortage of experts in Morse code and German. In January 1945, at the peak of codebreaking efforts, nearly 10,000 personnel were working at Bletchley and its outstations. About three-quarters of these were women. Many of the women came from middle-class backgrounds and held degrees in the areas of mathematics, physics and engineering; they were given chance due to the lack of men, who had been sent to war. They performed calculations and coding and hence were integral to the computing processes. Among them were
Eleanor Ireland Eleanor D. L. Ireland (née Outlaw, born 7 August 1926) was an early British computer scientist and member of the Women's Royal Naval Service. Early life Eleanor Ireland was born on 7 August 1926 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England.Copeland, ...
who worked on the Colossus computers and Ruth Briggs, a German scholar, who worked within the Naval Section. The female staff in Dilwyn Knox's section were sometimes termed "Dilly's Fillies". Knox's methods enabled
Mavis Lever Mavis Lilian Batey, MBE (née Lever; 5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), was a British code-breaker during World War II. She was one of the leading female codebreakers at Bletchley Park. She later became a historian of gardening who campaigne ...
(who married mathematician and fellow code-breaker
Keith Batey Keith Batey (4 July 1919 – 28 August 2010) was a codebreaker who, with his wife, Mavis Batey (5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), worked on the German Enigma machine at Bletchley Park during World War II. Education Keith Batey was at Carlisle Gr ...
) and
Margaret Rock Margaret Rock (7 July 1903 – 26 August 1983) was one of the 8000 women mathematicians who worked in Bletchley Park during World War II. With her maths skills and education, Rock was able to decode the Enigma Machine against the German Army. H ...
to solve a German code, the
Abwehr The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...
cipher. Many of the women had backgrounds in languages, particularly French, German and Italian. Among them were Rozanne Colchester, a translator who worked mainly for the Italian air forces Section, and Cicely Mayhew, recruited straight from university, who worked in Hut 8, translating decoded German Navy signals. For a long time, the British Government failed to acknowledge the contributions the personnel at Bletchley Park had made. Their work achieved official recognition only in 2009.


Secrecy

Properly used, the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers should have been virtually unbreakable, but flaws in German cryptographic procedures, and poor discipline among the personnel carrying them out, created vulnerabilities that made Bletchley's attacks just barely feasible. These vulnerabilities, however, could have been remedied by relatively simple improvements in enemy procedures, and such changes would certainly have been implemented had Germany had any hint of Bletchley's success. Thus the intelligence Bletchley produced was considered wartime Britain's " Ultra secret"higher even than the normally highest classification and security was paramount. All staff signed the Official Secrets Act (1939) and a 1942 security warning emphasised the importance of discretion even within Bletchley itself: "Do not talk at meals. Do not talk in the transport. Do not talk travelling. Do not talk in the billet. Do not talk by your own fireside. Be careful even in your Hut..." Nevertheless, there were security leaks. Jock Colville, the Assistant Private Secretary to
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...
, recorded in his diary on 31 July 1941, that the newspaper proprietor Lord Camrose had discovered Ultra and that security leaks "increase in number and seriousness". Without doubt, the most serious of these was that Bletchley Park had been infiltrated by John Cairncross, the notorious Soviet mole and member of the
Cambridge Spy Ring The Cambridge Spy Ring was a ring of spies in the United Kingdom that passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and was active from the 1930s until at least into the early 1950s. None of the known members were ever prosecuted for ...
, who leaked Ultra material to Moscow. Despite the high degree of secrecy surrounding Bletchley Park during the Second World War, unique and hitherto unknown amateur film footage of the outstation at nearby
Whaddon Hall Whaddon Hall is a country house in Whaddon, Buckinghamshire. It is a Grade II listed building. History The first manor house was built on the site in the 11th century. The present house was built in 1820, replacing a house which was demolished i ...
came to light in 2020, after being anonymously donated to the Bletchley Park Trust. A spokesman for the Trust noted the film's existence was all the more incredible because it was "very, very rare even to have still photographs" of the park and its associated sites.


Early work

The first personnel of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) moved to Bletchley Park on 15 August 1939. The Naval, Military, and Air Sections were on the ground floor of the mansion, together with a telephone exchange, teleprinter room, kitchen, and dining room; the top floor was allocated to MI6. Construction of the wooden huts began in late 1939, and Elmers School, a neighbouring boys' boarding school in a Victorian Gothic redbrick building by a church, was acquired for the Commercial and Diplomatic Sections. After the United States joined World War II, a number of American cryptographers were posted to Hut 3, and from May 1943 onwards there was close co-operation between British and American intelligence. (See
1943 BRUSA Agreement The 1943 BRUSA Agreements (Britain–United States of America agreement) Ralph Erskine, ' Birch, Francis Lyall (1889–1956)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 was an agreement between the British and US go ...
.) In contrast, the Soviet Union was never officially told of Bletchley Park and its activities a reflection of Churchill's distrust of the Soviets even during the US-UK-USSR alliance imposed by the Nazi threat. The only direct enemy damage to the site was done 2021 November 1940 by three bombs probably intended for Bletchley railway station; Hut4, shifted two feet off its foundation, was winched back into place as work inside continued.


Intelligence reporting

Initially, when only a very limited amount of Enigma traffic was being read, deciphered non-Naval Enigma messages were sent from Hut 6 to Hut 3 which handled their translation and onward transmission. Subsequently, under Group Captain Eric Jones, Hut 3 expanded to become the heart of Bletchley Park's intelligence effort, with input from decrypts of " Tunny" (Lorenz SZ42) traffic and many other sources. Early in 1942 it moved into Block D, but its functions were still referred to as Hut 3. Hut 3 contained a number of sections: Air Section "3A", Military Section "3M", a small Naval Section "3N", a multi-service Research Section "3G" and a large liaison section "3L". It also housed the Traffic Analysis Section, SIXTA. An important function that allowed the synthesis of raw messages into valuable Military intelligence was the indexing and cross-referencing of information in a number of different filing systems. Intelligence reports were sent out to the Secret Intelligence Service, the intelligence chiefs in the relevant ministries, and later on to high-level commanders in the field. Naval Enigma deciphering was in Hut 8, with translation in Hut 4. Verbatim translations were sent 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 cross-references from a knowledge store of German naval technology. Where relevant to non-naval matters, they would also be passed to Hut 3. Hut 4 also decoded a manual system known as the dockyard cipher, which sometimes carried messages that were also sent on an Enigma network. Feeding these back to Hut8 provided excellent "cribs" for
Known-plaintext attack The known-plaintext attack (KPA) is an attack model for cryptanalysis where the attacker has access to both the plaintext (called a crib), and its encrypted version (ciphertext). These can be used to reveal further secret information such as secr ...
s on the daily naval Enigma key.


Listening stations

Initially, a wireless room was established at Bletchley Park. It was set up in the mansion's water tower under the code name "Station X", a term now sometimes applied to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. The "X" is the Roman numeral "ten", this being the Secret Intelligence Service's tenth such station. Due to the long radio aerials stretching from the wireless room, the radio station was moved from Bletchley Park to nearby
Whaddon Hall Whaddon Hall is a country house in Whaddon, Buckinghamshire. It is a Grade II listed building. History The first manor house was built on the site in the 11th century. The present house was built in 1820, replacing a house which was demolished i ...
to avoid drawing attention to the site. Subsequently, other listening stationsthe Y-stations, such as the ones at Chicksands in Bedfordshire, Beaumanor Hall, Leicestershire (where the headquarters of the War Office "Y" Group was located) and
Beeston Hill Y Station Beeston Hill Y Station was a secret listening station located on the summit of Beeston Hill, Sheringham in the English county of Norfolk. The chain of Y stations were the front line of the War Office's Bletchley Park, which had the code name ...
in Norfolkgathered raw signals for processing at Bletchley. Coded messages were taken down by hand and sent to Bletchley on paper by motorcycle despatch riders or (later) by teleprinter.


Additional buildings

The wartime needs required the building of additional accommodation.


Huts

Often a hut's number became so strongly associated with the work performed inside that even when the work was moved to another building it was still referred to by the original "Hut" designation. * ''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 2'': A recreational hut for "beer, tea, and relaxation". * '' Hut 3'': Intelligence: translation and analysis of Army and Air Force decrypts * ''
Hut 4 Hut 4 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park tasked with the translation, interpretation and distribution of '' Kriegsmarine'' (German navy) messages deciphered by Hut 8. The messages were largely ...
'': Naval intelligence: analysis of Naval Enigma and
Hagelin Hagelin may refer to: * Albert Viljam Hagelin (1881–1946), Norwegian World War II collaborationist and minister * Bobbie Hagelin (born 1984), Swedish hockey player * Boris Hagelin (1892–1983), Swedish businessman and inventor of a cryptography ...
decrypts * ''Hut 5'': Military intelligence including Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese ciphers and German police codes. * '' Hut 6'': Cryptanalysis of Army and Air Force Enigma * ''
Hut 7 Hut 7 was a wartime section of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park tasked with the solution of Japanese naval codes such as JN4, JN11, JN40, and JN-25. The hut was headed by Hugh Foss who reported to Frank Birch, the h ...
'': Cryptanalysis of Japanese naval codes and intelligence. * '' Hut 8'': Cryptanalysis of Naval Enigma. * ''Hut 9'': ISOS (Intelligence Section Oliver Strachey). * ''Hut 10'':
Secret Intelligence Service The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
(SIS or MI6) codes, Air and Meteorological sections. * ''Hut 11'': Bombe building. * ''Hut 14'': Communications centre. * ''Hut 15'': SIXTA (Signals Intelligence and Traffic Analysis). * ''Hut 16'': ISK (Intelligence Service Knox)
Abwehr The ''Abwehr'' (German for ''resistance'' or ''defence'', but the word usually means ''counterintelligence'' in a military context; ) was the German military-intelligence service for the ''Reichswehr'' and the ''Wehrmacht'' from 1920 to 1944. A ...
ciphers. * ''Hut 18'': ISOS (Intelligence Section Oliver Strachey). * ''Hut 23'': Primarily used to house the engineering department. After February 1943, Hut 3 was renamed Hut 23.


Blocks

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 indexes. * ''Block D'': From February 1943 it housed those from Hut 3, who synthesised intelligence from multiple sources, Huts 6 and 8 and SIXTA. * ''Block E'': Incoming and outgoing Radio Transmission and TypeX. * ''Block F'': Included the Newmanry and Testery, and Japanese Military Air Section. It has since been demolished. * ''Block G'': Traffic analysis and deception operations. * ''Block H'': ''Tunny'' and Colossus (now The National Museum of Computing).


Work on specific countries' signals


German signals

Most German messages decrypted at Bletchley were produced by one or another version of the Enigma cipher machine, but an important minority were produced by the even more complicated twelve-rotor Lorenz SZ42 on-line teleprinter cipher machine. Five weeks before the outbreak of war, Warsaw's Cipher Bureau revealed its achievements in breaking Enigma to astonished French and British personnel. The British used the Poles' information and techniques, and the Enigma clone sent to them in August 1939, which greatly increased their (previously very limited) success in decrypting Enigma messages. 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. Its pioneering design was developed by Alan Turing (with an important contribution from Gordon Welchman) and the machine was engineered by
Harold 'Doc' Keen Harold Hall "Doc" Keen (1894–1973) 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 machin ...
of the British Tabulating Machine Company. Each machine was about high and wide, deep and weighed about a ton. At its peak, GC&CS was reading approximately 4,000 messages per day. As a hedge against enemy attack most bombes were dispersed to installations at
Adstock ''For the municipality in Quebec, see Adstock, Quebec'' 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 populati ...
and Wavendon (both later supplanted by installations at
Stanmore Stanmore is part of the London Borough of Harrow in London. It is centred northwest of Charing Cross, lies on the outskirts of the London urban area and includes Stanmore Hill, one of the highest points of London, at high. The district, which ...
and Eastcote), and
Gayhurst Gayhurst is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority area of the City of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. It is about two and a half miles NNW of Newport Pagnell. The village name is an Old English language word meaning ...
. 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 the four-rotor Enigma for communications with its Atlantic U-boats, this traffic became unreadable for a period of ten months. Britain produced modified bombes, but it was the success of the
US Navy Bombe The bombe () was an Electromechanics, electro-mechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma machine, Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II. The United States Navy, US Navy and United Sta ...
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 messages were codenamed ''Tunny'' at Bletchley Park. They were only sent in quantity from mid-1942. The Tunny networks were used for high-level messages between German High Command and field commanders. With the help of German operator errors, the cryptanalysts in the Testery (named after
Ralph Tester Ralph Paterson Tester (2 June 1902 – May 1998) 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 (a Fish cipher). Backgroun ...
, its head) worked out the logical structure of the machine despite not knowing its physical form. They devised automatic machinery to help with decryption, which culminated in
Colossus Colossus, Colossos, or the plural Colossi or Colossuses, may refer to: Statues * Any exceptionally large statue ** List of tallest statues ** :Colossal statues * ''Colossus of Barletta'', a bronze statue of an unidentified Roman emperor * ''Col ...
, 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 prototype first worked in December 1943, was delivered to Bletchley Park in January and first worked operationally on 5 February 1944. Enhancements were developed for the Mark 2 Colossus, the first of which was working at Bletchley Park on the morning of 1 June in time for
D-day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...
. 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 Wrens in a section named the Newmanry after its head Max Newman. Bletchley's work was essential to defeating the U-boats in the
Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade ...
, 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 German forces under General
Erwin Rommel Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel () (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944) was a German field marshal during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox (, ), he served in the ''Wehrmacht'' (armed forces) of Nazi Germany, as well as servi ...
. General Sir Claude Auchinleck wrote that were it not for Ultra, "Rommel would have certainly got through to Cairo". While not changing the events, " Ultra" decrypts featured prominently in the story of Operation SALAM, László Almásy's mission across the desert behind Allied lines in 1942. Prior to the Normandy landings on D-Day in June 1944, the Allies knew the locations of all but two of Germany's fifty-eight Western-front divisions.


Italian signals

Italian signals had been of interest since Italy's attack on Abyssinia in 1935. During the Spanish Civil War the
Italian Navy "Fatherland and Honour" , patron = , colors = , colors_label = , march = ( is the return of soldiers to their barrack, or sailors to their ship after a ...
used the K model of the commercial Enigma without a plugboard; this was solved by Knox in 1937. When Italy entered the war in 1940 an improved version of the machine was used, though little traffic was sent by it and there were "wholesale changes" in Italian codes and cyphers. Knox was given a new section for work on Enigma variations, which he staffed with women ("Dilly's girls"), who included
Margaret Rock Margaret Rock (7 July 1903 – 26 August 1983) was one of the 8000 women mathematicians who worked in Bletchley Park during World War II. With her maths skills and education, Rock was able to decode the Enigma Machine against the German Army. H ...
, Jean Perrin, Clare Harding, Rachel Ronald, Elisabeth Granger; and
Mavis Lever Mavis Lilian Batey, MBE (née Lever; 5 May 1921 – 12 November 2013), was a British code-breaker during World War II. She was one of the leading female codebreakers at Bletchley Park. She later became a historian of gardening who campaigne ...
. Mavis Lever solved the signals revealing the Italian Navy's operational plans before the Battle of Cape Matapan in 1941, leading to a British victory. in Although most Bletchley staff did not know the results of their work, Admiral
Cunningham Cunningham is a surname of Scottish origin, see Clan Cunningham. Notable people sharing this surname A–C *Aaron Cunningham (born 1986), American baseball player *Abe Cunningham, American drummer * Adrian Cunningham (born 1960), Australian ...
visited Bletchley in person a few weeks later to congratulate them. On entering World War II in June 1940, the Italians were using book codes for most of their military messages. The exception was the
Italian Navy "Fatherland and Honour" , patron = , colors = , colors_label = , march = ( is the return of soldiers to their barrack, or sailors to their ship after a ...
, which after the Battle of Cape Matapan started using the C-38 version of the
Boris Hagelin Boris Caesar Wilhelm Hagelin (2 July 1892 – 7 September 1983) was a Swedish businessman and inventor of encryption machines. Biography Born of Swedish parents in Adshikent, Russian Empire, Hagelin attended Lundsberg boarding school and late ...
rotor-based
cipher machine In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
, particularly to route their navy and merchant marine convoys to the conflict in North Africa. As a consequence, JRM Butler recruited his former student
Bernard Willson Harold Bernard Willson (25 February 1919–1994) was a British linguist and noted academic, who during the Second World War was the first person to decrypt the Italian Navy Hagelin C-38 code machine. He was the father of television presente ...
to join a team with two others in Hut4. In June 1941, Willson became the first of the team to decode the Hagelin system, thus enabling military commanders to direct the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force to sink enemy ships carrying supplies from Europe to Rommel's Afrika Korps. This led to increased shipping losses and, from reading the intercepted traffic, the team learnt that between May and September 1941 the stock of fuel for the Luftwaffe in North Africa reduced by 90 percent. After an intensive language course, in March 1944 Willson switched to Japanese language-based codes. A Middle East Intelligence Centre (MEIC) was set up in Cairo in 1939. When Italy entered the war in June 1940, delays in forwarding intercepts to Bletchley via congested radio links resulted in cryptanalysts being sent to Cairo. A Combined Bureau Middle East (CBME) was set up in November, though the Middle East authorities made "increasingly bitter complaints" that
GC&CS Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Unit ...
was giving too little priority to work on Italian cyphers. However, the principle of concentrating high-grade cryptanalysis at Bletchley was maintained. John Chadwick started cryptanalysis work in 1942 on Italian signals at the naval base 'HMS Nile' in Alexandria. Later, he was with GC&CS; in the Heliopolis Museum, Cairo and then in the Villa Laurens, Alexandria."Life of John Chadwick : 1920 - 1998 : Classical Philologist, Lexicographer and Co-decipherer of Linear B"
, Faculty of Classics, Cambridge University


Soviet signals

Soviet signals had been studied since the 1920s. In 193940, John Tiltman (who had worked on Russian Army traffic from 1930) set up two Russian sections at Wavendon (a country house near Bletchley) and at
Sarafand Sarafand or Sarafend may refer to: Places * Sarafand, Lebanon, also spelled Sarafend ** Sarepta, an ancient Phoenician city at the location of the modern Lebanese town * Tzrifin, area in central Israel previously known as "Sarafand" or "Sarafend", ...
in Palestine. Two Russian high-grade army and navy systems were broken early in 1940. Tiltman spent two weeks in Finland, where he obtained Russian traffic from Finland and Estonia in exchange for radio equipment. In June 1941, when the Soviet Union became an ally, Churchill ordered a halt to intelligence operations against it. In December 1941, the Russian section was closed down, but in late summer 1943 or late 1944, a small GC&CS Russian cypher section was set up in London overlooking Park Lane, then in Sloane Square.


Japanese signals

An outpost of the Government Code and Cypher School had been set up in Hong Kong in 1935, the Far East Combined Bureau (FECB). The FECB naval staff moved in 1940 to Singapore, then Colombo,
Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...
, 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-Services Special 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 John 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. 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".


Postwar


Continued secrecy

After the War, the secrecy imposed on Bletchley staff remained in force, so that most relatives never knew more than that a child, spouse, or parent had done some kind of secret war work. Churchill referred to the Bletchley staff as "the geese that laid the golden eggs and never cackled". That said, occasional mentions of the work performed at Bletchley Park slipped the censor's net and appeared in print. With the publication of F.W. Winterbotham's ''The Ultra Secret'' (1974) public discussion of Bletchley Park's work finally became possible, although even today some former staff still consider themselves bound to silence. Professor Brian Randell was researching the history of computer science in Britain in 1975-76 for a conference on the history of computing held at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico on 10-15 June 1976, and received permission to present a paper on wartime development of the COLOSSI at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill. (In October 1975 the British Government had released a series of captioned photographs from the Public Record Office.) The interest in the “revelations” in his paper resulted in a special evening meeting when Randell and Cooombs answered further questions. Coombs later wrote that "no member of our team could ever forget the fellowship, the sense of purpose and, above all, the breathless excitement of those days". In 1977 Randell published an article "The First Electronic Computer" in several journals. In July 2009 the British government announced that Bletchley personnel would be recognised with a commemorative badge.


Site

After the war, the site passed through a succession of hands and saw a number of uses, including as a teacher-training college and local
GPO GPO may refer to: Government and politics * General Post Office, Dublin * General Post Office, in Britain * Social Security Government Pension Offset, a provision reducing benefits * Government Pharmaceutical Organization, a Thai state enterpris ...
headquarters. By 1991, the site was nearly empty and the buildings were at risk of demolition for redevelopment. In February 1992, the
Milton Keynes Borough Council Milton Keynes City Council is the local authority of the City of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, England. It is a unitary authority, having the powers of a non-metropolitan county and district council combined. It has both borough status a ...
declared most of the Park a conservation area, and the Bletchley Park Trust was formed to maintain the site as a museum. The site opened to visitors in 1993, and was formally inaugurated by the Duke of Kent as Chief Patron in July 1994. In 1999 the land owners, the
Property Advisors to the Civil Estate The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was a UK Government Office established as part of HM Treasury in 2000. It was moved into the Efficiency and Reform Group of the Cabinet Office in 2010, before being closed in 2011. Overview A ''Review of ...
and BT, granted a lease to the Trust giving it control over most of the site.


Heritage attraction

June 2014 saw the completion of an £8 million restoration project by museum design specialist, Event Communications, which was marked by a visit from Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. The Duchess' paternal grandmother, Valerie, and Valerie's twin sister, Mary (''née'' Glassborow), both worked at Bletchley Park during the war. The twin sisters worked as Foreign Office Civilians in Hut 6, where they managed the interception of enemy and neutral diplomatic signals for decryption. Valerie married Catherine's grandfather, Captain Peter Middleton. A
memorial A memorial is an object or place which serves as a focus for the memory or the commemoration of something, usually an influential, deceased person or a historical, tragic event. Popular forms of memorials include landmark objects or works of a ...
at Bletchley Park commemorates Mary and Valerie Middleton's work as code-breakers.


Exhibitions

* Block C Visitor Centre ** Secrets Revealed introduction ** The Road to Bletchley Park. Codebreaking in World War One. ** Intel Security Cybersecurity exhibition. Online security and privacy in the 21st Century. * Block B ** Lorenz Cipher ** Alan Turing ** Enigma machines ** Japanese codes ** Home Front exhibition. How people lived in WW2 * The Mansion ** Office of Alistair Denniston ** Library. Dressed as a World War II naval intelligence office ** The Imitation Game exhibition ** Gordon Welchman: Architect of Ultra Intelligence exhibition * Huts 3 and 6. Codebreaking offices as they would have looked during World War II. * Hut 8. ** Interactive exhibitions explaining codebreaking ** Alan Turing's office ** Pigeon exhibition. The use of pigeons in World War II. * Hut 11. Life as a WRNS Bombe operator * Hut 12. Bletchley Park: Rescued and Restored. Items found during the restoration work. * Wartime garages * Hut 19. 2366 Bletchley Park Air Training Corp Squadron


Learning Department

The Bletchley Park Learning Department offers educational group visits with active learning activities for schools and universities. Visits can be booked in advance during term time, where students can engage with the history of Bletchley Park and understand its wider relevance for computer history and national security. Their workshops cover introductions to codebreaking, cyber security and the story of Enigma and
Lorenz Lorenz is an originally German name derived from the Roman surname Laurentius, which means "from Laurentum". Given name People with the given name Lorenz include: * Prince Lorenz of Belgium (born 1955), member of the Belgian royal family by h ...
.


Funding

In October 2005, American billionaire
Sidney Frank Sidney E. Frank (October 2, 1919 – January 10, 2006) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He became a billionaire through his promotion of Grey Goose vodka and Jägermeister. Early life, family, education Frank was born to a Jewish ...
donated £500,000 to Bletchley Park Trust to fund a new Science Centre dedicated to Alan Turing.
Simon Greenish Simon Greenish is a British Chartered Civil Engineer and museum director. Greenish studied Engineering at Durham University, graduating with a third in 1971. In 1995, Greenish joined the Royal Air Force Museum to lead a £30 million developmen ...
joined as Director in 2006 to lead the fund-raising effort in a post he held until 2012 when Iain Standen took over the leadership role. In July 2008, a letter to '' The Times'' from more than a hundred academics condemned the neglect of the site. In September 2008,
PGP PGP or Pgp may refer to: Science and technology * P-glycoprotein, a type of protein * Pelvic girdle pain, a pregnancy discomfort * Personal Genome Project, to sequence genomes and medical records * Pretty Good Privacy, a computer program for the ...
, 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 October 2011, the Bletchley Park Trust received a £4.6m Heritage Lottery Fund grant to be used "to complete the restoration of the site, and to tell its story to the highest modern standards" on the condition that £1.7m of 'match funding' is raised by the Bletchley Park Trust. Just weeks later, Google contributed £550k and by June 2012 the trust had successfully raised £2.4m to unlock the grants to restore Huts 3 and 6, as well as develop its exhibition centre in Block C. Additional income is raised by renting Block H to the National Museum of Computing, and some office space in various parts of the park to private firms. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the Trust expected to lose more than £2m in 2020 and be required to cut a third of its workforce. Former MP John Leech asked tech giants Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft to donate £400,000 each to secure the future of the Trust. Leech had led the successful campaign to pardon Alan Turing and implement
Turing's Law The "Alan Turing law" is an informal term for the law of the United Kingdom, law in the United Kingdom, contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which serves as an amnesty law to pardon men who were Police caution, cautioned or convicted ...
.


Other organisations sharing the campus


The National Museum of Computing

The National Museum of Computing is housed in Block H, which is rented from the Bletchley Park Trust. Its Colossus and Tunny galleries tell an important part of allied breaking of German codes during World War II. There is a working reconstruction of a Bombe and a rebuilt Colossus computer which was used on the high-level Lorenz cipher, codenamed ''Tunny'' by the British. The museum, which opened in 2007, is an independent voluntary organisation that is governed by its own board of trustees. Its aim is "To collect and restore computer systems particularly those developed in Britain and to enable people to explore that collection for inspiration, learning and enjoyment." Through its many exhibits, the museum displays the story of computing through the mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s, and the rise of personal computing in the 1980s. It has a policy of having as many of the exhibits as possible in full working order.


Science and Innovation Centre

This consists of serviced office accommodation housed in Bletchley Park's Blocks A and E, and the upper floors of the Mansion. Its aim is to foster the growth and development of dynamic knowledge-based start-ups and other businesses.


Proposed National College of Cyber Security

In April 2020 Bletchley Park Capital Partners, a private company run by Tim Reynolds, Deputy Chairman of the National Museum of Computing, announced plans to sell off the freehold to part of the site containing former Block G for commercial development. Offers of between £4m and £6m were reportedly being sought for the 3
acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imp ...
plot, for which planning permission for employment purposes was granted in 2005. Previously, the construction of a National College of Cyber Security for students aged from 16 to 19 years old had been envisaged on the site, to be housed in Block G after renovation with funds supplied by the Bletchley Park Science and Innovation Centre.


RSGB National Radio Centre

The Radio Society of Great Britain's National Radio Centre (including a library, radio station, museum and bookshop) are in a newly constructed building close to the main Bletchley Park entrance.


Final recognition

Not until July 2009 did the British government fully acknowledge the contribution of the many people working for the Government Code and Cypher School ('G C & C S') at Bletchley. Only then was a commemorative medal struck to be presented to those involved. The gilded medal bears the inscription ''G C & C S 1939-1945 Bletchley Park and its Outstations''.


In popular culture


Literature

* Bletchley featured heavily in Robert Harris' novel '' Enigma'' (1995). * A fictionalised version of Bletchley Park is featured in
Neal Stephenson Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, postcyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work exp ...
's novel '' Cryptonomicon'' (1999). * Bletchley Park plays a significant role in Connie Willis' novel '' All Clear'' (2010). * The Agatha Christie novel ''
N or M? ''N or M?'' is a work of detective fiction by Agatha Christie first published in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1941 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in November of the same year.Chris Peers, Ralph Spurrier and Jamie Sturgeon. ''Coll ...
'', published in 1941, was about spies during the Second World War and featured a character called Major Bletchley. Christie was friends with one of the code-breakers at Bletchley Park, and MI5 thought that the character name might have been a joke indicating that she knew what was happening there. It turned out to be a coincidence. *Bletchley Park is the setting of
Kate Quinn Kate Quinn is an American writer, known for her works of historical fiction. Biography Quinn is a native of Southern California. She is based in San Diego. She graduated from Boston University with a master's degree in classical voice. Quinn ...
's 2021 historical fiction novel, ''The Rose Code''. Quinn used the likenesses of true veterans of Bletchley Park as inspiration for her story of three women who worked in some of the different areas at Bletchley Park.


Film

* The film '' Enigma'' (2001), which was based upon Robert Harris' book and starred
Kate Winslet Kate Elizabeth Winslet (; born 5 October 1975) is an English actress. Known for her work in independent films, particularly period dramas, and for her portrayals of headstrong and complicated women, she has received numerous accolades, incl ...
, Saffron Burrows and Dougray Scott, is set in part in Bletchley Park. * The film '' The Imitation Game'' (2014), starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, is set in Bletchley Park, and was partially filmed there.


Radio

* The Radio Show ''
Hut 33 ''Hut 33'' is a BBC Radio 4 sitcom set at Bletchley Park in 1941. It includes both the writer ( James Cary) and producer (Adam Bromley) from ''Think the Unthinkable'' and ''Concrete Cow''. Production The first six-part series was recorded at ...
'' is a
Situation Comedy A sitcom, a portmanteau of situation comedy, or situational comedy, is a genre of comedy centered on a fixed set of characters who mostly carry over from episode to episode. Sitcoms can be contrasted with sketch comedy, where a troupe may use ne ...
set in the fictional 33rd Hut of Bletchley Park. * The
Big Finish Productions Big Finish Productions is a British company that produces books and audio plays (released straight to compact disc and for download in MP3 and m4b format) based, primarily, on cult science fiction properties. These include ''Doctor Who'', the ...
''
Doctor Who ''Doctor Who'' is a British science fiction television series broadcast by the BBC since 1963. The series depicts the adventures of a Time Lord called the Doctor, an extraterrestrial being who appears to be human. The Doctor explores the u ...
'' audio ''Criss-Cross'', released in September 2015, features the Sixth Doctor working undercover in Bletchley Park to decode a series of strange alien signals that have hindered his TARDIS, the audio also depicting his first meeting with his new companion Constance Clarke. * The Bletchley Park Podcast began in August 2012, with new episodes being released approximately monthly. It features stories told by the codebreakers, staff and volunteers, audio from events and reports on the development of Bletchley Park.


Television

* The 1979 ITV television serial '' Danger UXB'' featured the character Steven Mount, who was a codebreaker at Bletchley and was driven to a nervous breakdown (and eventual suicide) by the stressful and repetitive nature of the work. * In '' Foyle's War'', Adam Wainwright ( Samantha Stewart's fiancé, then husband), is a former Bletchley Park codebreaker. * The Second World War code-breaking sitcom pilot "Satsuma & Pumpkin" was recorded at Bletchley Park in 2003 and featured 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 ''Hut 33'' is a BBC Radio 4 sitcom set at Bletchley Park in 1941. It includes both the writer ( James Cary) and producer (Adam Bromley) from ''Think the Unthinkable'' and ''Concrete Cow''. Production The first six-part series was recorded at ...
''. * Bletchley came to wider public attention with the documentary series '' Station X'' (1999). * The 2012 ITV programme, '' The Bletchley Circle'', is a set of murder mysteries set in 1952 and 1953. The protagonists are four female former Bletchley codebreakers, who use their skills to solve crimes. The pilot episode's opening scene was filmed on-site, and the set was asked to remain there for its close adaptation of historiography. *The 2018 programme, '' The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco'', is a spin-off of '' The Bletchley Circle''. It takes place in San Francisco and features two characters from the original series. * Ian McEwan's television play '' The Imitation Game'' (1980) concludes at Bletchley Park. * Bletchley Park was featured in the sixth and final episode of the BBC TV documentary '' The Secret War'' (1977), presented and narrated by William Woodard. This episode featured interviews with Gordon Welchman, Harry Golombek, Peter Calvocoressi,
F. W. Winterbotham Frederick William Winterbotham (16 April 1897 – 28 January 1990) was a British Royal Air Force officer (latterly a Group Captain) who during World War II supervised the distribution of Ultra intelligence. His book ''The Ultra Secret'' was t ...
, Max Newman, Jack Good, and Tommy Flowers. * The '' Agent Carter'' season 2 episode "Smoke & Mirrors" reveals that Agent Peggy Carter worked at Bletchley Park early in the war before joining the Strategic Scientific Reserve.


Theatre

* The play '' Breaking the Code'' (1986) is set at Bletchley Park.


Location

Bletchley Park is opposite Bletchley railway station. It is close to junctions 13 and 14 of the M1, about northwest of London.


See also

* Arlington Hall *
Beeston Hill Y Station Beeston Hill Y Station was a secret listening station located on the summit of Beeston Hill, Sheringham in the English county of Norfolk. The chain of Y stations were the front line of the War Office's Bletchley Park, which had the code name ...
*
Danesfield House Danesfield House in Medmenham, near Marlow, Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills is a former country house now used as a hotel and spa. The house stands on a plateau which shelves steeply down to the River Thames to the south. History ...
* Far East Combined Bureau in Hong Kong prewar, then Singapore, Colombo (Ceylon) and Kilindini (Kenya) *
List of people associated with Bletchley Park This is a list of people associated with Bletchley Park, the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War, notable either for their achievements there or elsewhere. Work at or for Bletchley Park is given first, followed ...
*
List of women in Bletchley Park Women made up the majority of the 10,000 people who worked at Bletchley Park. The following is a list of women who worked at Bletchley Park who have Wikipedia articles. List * Helene Aldwinckle * Margaret Allan (racing driver) * Ruth Camilla ...
*
National Cryptologic Museum The National Cryptologic Museum (NCM) is an American museum of cryptologic history that is affiliated with the National Security Agency (NSA). The first public museum in the U.S. Intelligence Community, NCM is located in the former Colony Sev ...
* Newmanry * OP-20-G, the US Navy's cryptanalysis office in Washington, D.C. * Testery * Wireless Experimental Centre operated by the Intelligence Corps outside Delhi * Y-stations


Notes and references


Notes


References


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * in * * Updated and extended version of ''Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer'' Bantam Press 2001 * in * * * That version is a facsimile copy, but there is a transcript of much of this document in '.pdf' format at: , and a web transcript of Part 1 at: * * * * ( CAPTCHA) (10-page preview from ''A Century of mathematics in America, Volume 1'' By Peter L. Duren, Richard Askey, Uta C. Merzbach, se
A Century of Mathematics in America: Part 1
; ). * Transcript of a lecture given on Tuesday 19 October 1993 at Cambridge University * * * * * * in * * * * * in * in * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * in * * in * * * in * * in * New edition with addendum by Welchman correcting his misapprehensions in the 1982 edition.


External links


Bletchley Park Trust
*
Bletchley Park—Virtual Tour
by Tony Sale
The National Museum of Computing (based at Bletchley Park)

The RSGB National Radio Centre (based at Bletchley Park)
* ('' The Daily Telegraph'' 3 March 1997)
Boffoonery! Comedy Benefit For Bletchley Park
Comedians and computing professionals stage comedy show in aid of Bletchley Park

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20170925063249/http://www.shedblog.co.uk/2009/09/19/bletchley-park-is-the-official-charity-for-shed-week-2010-bpark-shedweek/ Bletchley Park is official charity of Shed Week 2010]—in recognition of the work done in th
Huts

Saving Bletchley Park
blog by Sue Black * with Sue Black by Robert Llewellyn about Bletchley Park *
C4 Station X 1999 on DVD here

How Alan Turing Cracked The Enigma Code
Imperial War Museums
The Bletchley Park Podcast
on Audioboom
Bletchley Park Paperwork at The ICL Computer Museum
{{Authority control 1993 establishments in England Biographical museums in Buckinghamshire British Telecom buildings and structures Country houses in Buckinghamshire Cryptography organizations Enigma machine Foreign Office during World War II Historic house museums in Buckinghamshire History museums in Buckinghamshire Locations in the history of espionage Military and war museums in England Milton Keynes Museums established in 1993 Museums in Buckinghamshire Signals intelligence of World War II Telecommunications museums in the United Kingdom Tourist attractions in Buckinghamshire Toy museums in England World War II museums in the United Kingdom World War II sites in England Buildings and structures in Milton Keynes