Today was certainly a fascinating experience for both Marty and me! I had been somewhat familiar with Bletchley Park and its role in codebreaking during World War II from a PBS show that I had watched called The Bletchley Circle. It brought to light a group of women who had been chosen to be codebreakers.
But there was SO much more to see and learn visiting Bletchley Park today.
The house had been built in the French Renaissance style and after the original owner passed, a builder purchased it intending to develop a housing estate. But in May of 1938, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, head of the Secret Intelligence Service known as M16, purchased the site with his own funds. He saw the necessity of having a hidden property for the purpose of deciphering enemy codes and cyphers should it be needed.
This location ticked several boxes: it was in the country and was named as Ridley's Hunting Lodge to defray suspicion of groups of men in residence; it was midway between Oxford and Cambridge, and located next to a train station, making travel from both university cities easy.
It was easy to find, and only about 30 minutes from the inn where we were staying. We parked the car and headed to the Welcome Center to see what awaited us. It might be difficult to see, but I am in that photo.
Once inside, we paid the admittance fee and headed to the information panels to get a feel for what to expect.
There were interpretive boards which were instrumental in understanding the dynamics of what happened on these grounds.
But the first thing to understand was the why. The Germans realized during World War I, that their radio transmissions could be intercepted by the enemy, thwarting invasion plans. When World War II began, they wanted to secure message transmissions, so they incorporated the Enigma Machine. It was believed that using such a device would guarantee that their messages would be impossible to unscramble.
A group of Polish mathematicians were the first to recognize that these cyphers could be decoded, and they approached the British codebreakers, sharing what they had learned. This information was the missing link that the codebreakers needed to move forward.
A select group was invited to interview for positions, but all under the guise of a different government agency. Once approved, the original group was housed in the mansion on the grounds.
When there was an issue that needed to be resolved immediately, the code :"Auntie Flo is not so well" meant services were needed.
Everyone involved was required to sign the Official Secrets Act.
As a result, after cessation of hostilities, the information was never released to the public. And anyone involved had to continue to go on with their lives outside of Bletchley without releasing any information regarding what had happened there. Families never knew what their loved ones were doing at Bletchley. In fact, the museum is interested in hearing from anyone who might have been involved to improve their holdings.
But before I go any further, let me mention that the first building we visited was the radio transmission room. Marty walked inside and said, Hello, I'm NN3R from the United States. The other two men on the staff introduced themselves in similar fashion. They seemed very excited to see a fellow ham radio operator visiting the facility. Marty was sure to have me get his photo taken with them.
From here we walked through the various buildings that were set up as they would have looked in the 1944-45 time period when the camp would have been at its largest.
I'll admit, some of this was just mind boggling. I can't even imagine how these people would know where to begin.
The idea just seemed overwhelming. However there were two simple tests to determine how one looks at a problem to decipher it, and I was able to successfully answer both. But, as I said, they were very simple. The task of attempting to solve these transmissions knowing that the next day, any progress made was back to stage one, would seem just too frustrating to me.
But these brilliant men and women did it every day. There was a room in the mansion that was devoted to veteran histories from many of those involved. In the late 1970's, the men and women were cleared from the Official Secrets Act and they could begin to speak of their accomplishments. Here are just a couple examples.
This room was the secret meeting place of four American military personnel, Cpt Abraham Sinkov, LT Leo Rose, Lt Robert Weeks and Ensign Prescott Currier who met with the Bletchley team to discuss an exchange of information on Japanese and German codes and cyphers. They arrived in the dark of night.
The meeting was instrumental in setting up dialogue, and in 1942, Americans were posted to Bletchley Park where they became part of the team working on breaking Enigma. This led to the collaboration of intelligence that continued after the war in the UKUSA Agreement signed on March 5, 1946.
As more and more deciphering was needed, no space was unaffected. Here you see the library with working desks added.
The mansion also featured this beautiful glass ceiling near the dining room
and this ornate ceiling decorated the ballroom.
The ballroom, covered in linen fold Oak panelling is the largest room in the mansion. It was decided to use this room for recreation and rest rather than to use it as a typex machine repair workshop as originally suggested.
The out buildings, called huts, were added on as more and more room was needed. They were many items on display to help understand the complexity of just what was happening here.
Here is a Japanese vocabulary book
flashcards for learning the Japanese language
and a book filled with notes.
and there were boxes of flash cards to help with translation as well.
These cardboard letter strips were used to identify relationships between letters in the plain and cypher text. This gave the codebreakers the starting position of one of the three Enigma rotors which helped to determine the settings used to scramble the message initially.
Enigma machines do not transmit messages. By typing on the keyboard it creates a cypher, which changes the letters into other letters or numbers. The new letter appears on a lighted panel which a second person copies onto paper. Once completed, that enciphered message was transmitted by radio operator using standard Morse Code.
The recipient of the cypher has a similar Enigma machine set up with the same variables. When the message is typed in, the original words are revealed for the second person to copy down to be read.
The deciphered code was only good for one day as the Germans changed the settings every 24 hours.
Once deciphered, it would be translated by people on site who were fluent in the language, be it German, Italian or Japanese, as has been mentioned.
Staff in the Typing Room prepared the reports based on the deciphered messages. They were sent to M16 via currier.
The reports were written in such a way to keep secret the fact that Enigma had been broken. The report would imply that the information had been sent by a fictitious M16 spy codenamed Boniface.
When it appeared that the British were able to decipher the missives, the Germans then changed to a more sophisticated machine called the Lorenz. It required only one person as the results were punched onto tape, similar to typing.
With increase use of the Lorenz cypher machines, Colossus machines were produced to help organize the information for deciphering. A second machine was added just prior to D-Day.
Due to the efforts of Bletchley Park, the Germans were tricked into thinking that the Allied forces would be invading Calais and not Normandy. Despite the huge loss of life during that fateful day, the British military considered this landing to be a huge success due to the limited German resources at the time of the landing.
Did you get that explanation?
I was a bit disillusioned at first at the accolades that were being given to these people, claiming to have had played a huge part in saving so many lives. I didn't understand how that claim could be made, knowing all that I do in respect to researching Missing in Action soldiers from this same war.
But then, I came across the information in the naval decoding room, from which the above quote is taken. And it was there that I realized that the deciphering of German transmissions led to sinking of an enemy convoy who would otherwise have attacked several Allied ships. Every time an enemy ship was taken out, it was recorded to help keep an inventory of losses.
One man who made a huge impact to cracking the enigma and also was instrumental in the founding of the computer world was Alan Turing.
He was a brilliant mathematician who invented the machine known as the Bombe which significantly reduced the workload of the code breakers.
He can be considered one of the founders of computing and the father of AI and much of Bletchley's success is due to the efforts of the brilliant man. He was, however, a homosexual, which was considered to be illegal in his time. As a result, his life was cut short due to treatments that he had received.
Because he had signed the Secrets Act, his contributions were not recognized. If it were not for this man, it is questionable as to how successful Bletchley would have been.
Finally, in 1974, he was recognized posthumously for the outstanding contribution he made to mathematics, computing, and most importantly, to the war effort.
An entire hall is dedicated to Artificial Intelligence based on books and articles that Turing had written.
In answer to the question: What is AI:
This answer amused me:
And I found it interesting that they included Google's AI to answer the AI question.
Did you find that as funny as I?
Just a few other items from the Artificial Intelligence Hall.
Do you recall those histories that I mentioned earlier? Well, Hall A walks you through the life of the various people who would have worked here. I thought the presentation was quite unique.
There were several similar stories but I chose to highlight just these two.
On the grounds there is a memorial to the Polish mathematicians who helped Bletchley Park with codebreaking Enigma. I must presume that the delay in making the memorial was due to the Silence Act that prohibited any leak of information related to this project.
And finally, there is a memorial to those men and women who lived and worked here during those war time days. It might look like a scramble of letters, but if you look closely, you can see "We also served."
And that 's when I realized that these 9000 people involved had never been recognized post war for their service, because they were not permitted to tell anyone what they had done. It's good to know that the secret classification was finally lifted so that these men and women could tell their stories. And it certainly was an eye opening experience. One I'll soon not forget.
Before I leave, let me share this photo of the mansion in the background with a heron floating on a buoy on the lake.
A peaceful ending to a lovely day.
In gratitude
Until next time...
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