Bletchley Park

June 2019    On June the 6th 2019, Bletchley Park ran a number of events to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day.   Never before seen handwritten decrypts were release to the public and we took over Twitter for the day to Tweet those very messages in real time, as if it was 1944. You can now find these messages on our website at www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/bletchley-park-and-d-day    In this episode we take you to the dining room of the iconic mansion and bring you the talk that our research historian Dr David Kenyon gave on the day to celebrate the launch of his new book; Bletchley Park and D-Day.    Bletchley Park and D-Day is published by Yale University Press.   Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2019   #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #DDay75, #BletchleyParkDDay

June 2019    75 years ago today, more than 150,000 allied troops were boarding planes, gliders and landing craft as they prepared to invade Fortress Europe in Operation Overlord, the Normandy Invasion. Meanwhile, 200 miles away in the Buckinghamshire countryside the Codebreakers of GC&CS were also ready and waiting.    A special section, known as NSV(X), spent the day decrypting German messages and forwarding that vital intelligence to allied commanders. In many cases only two hours after the German operators had sent them.   Today at Bletchley Park our Archive holds hundreds of these handwritten decrypts and using a selection of these we tell the story of The Longest Day. Our Research Historian Dr David Kenyon & Research Officer Thomas Cheetham will be your guides. Also Veterans’ Pat Davies & Colette Cook share a couple of short memories from that eventful day.   Special thanks to Mr Ben Thomson for playing the role of our Intelligence Officer.   Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2019   #BPark, #Bletc

May 2019     With the opening of D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion, the key role that Bletchley Park played in the success of the Normandy campaign is finally being told. Now, a new book written by our very own research historian, Dr David Kenyon adds even more depth to that story.   Using previously classified documents, David casts the work of Bletchley Park in a new light, as not just a codebreaking establishment, but as a fully developed intelligence agency. This account reveals the true character of GC&CS’s vital contribution to success in Normandy, and ultimately, Allied victory.   Podcast Producer Mark Cotton sat down with David to talk about the book, the process of writing military history, and the challenges of re-writing a well-known story in the light of new evidence.   Image: ©Yale University Press   #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #DDay75

May 2019  It Happened Here this month takes us to a Britain who’s south coast in May 1944 resembled one huge army camp as over 2 million men waited for D-Day. In the Buckinghamshire countryside the staff at GC&CS carried on feeding detailed and crucial intelligence to the Allied forces that would play an integral part in the success of the upcoming Operation Overlord.  The Western Front Committee was established at Bletchley Park in October 1942 and for the next 18 months built up a comprehensive picture of German forces in the West, recording every unit, its location and its strength.  From February 1943 the committee began to produce reports of which over 450 pages are now held in our archives. Our Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon uses these to illustrate how the various departments, using multiple sources, came together to create the vital information that the D-Day planners needed, in some cases even leading to last minute changes.  Special thanks to Mr Ben Thomson for playing the role

April 2019  In this month’s episode we take you to the preview opening of a major new exhibition, D-Day: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion.  For 18 months prior to the launch of Overlord the staff at GC&CS produced intelligence that was integral to the invasion plans. The detailed picture that the codebreakers created of German forces in France made sure that as the troops hit the beaches on the 6th of June 1944, they knew almost as well as the Germans what to expect.  Based on recently declassified information a specially commissioned 12 minute film is projected onto a curved 22m screen in the newly restored historic Teleprinter Building, giving visitors a truly immersive cinematic experience.  So join us at the launch party for interviews and speeches from some of the team who put this new experience together, including our Guest of Honour broadcaster Chris Packham.  Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2019  #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #DDay75

March 2019 In this It Happened Here episode we go back to the spring of 1944 when much of Europe, and indeed the world held its breath awaiting the ‘Second Front’ in Europe. This would be realised in June when Operation OVERLORD; the D-Day landings, began in France. During that spring, however British and Allied troops were involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, in Italy and in the Far East as the tide finally turned against the Japanese in Burma. The codebreakers at Bletchley Park continued to support these operations, and were able to achieve some of their most significant successes yet, against both German and Japanese codes and ciphers. As usual our guide to these events is Dr David Kenyon, Bletchley Park’s Research Historian. In memoriam, Stephen Freer (1920-2017) and Edward Simpson (1922-2019) Image: Original Japanese Section Archive material ©Bletchley Park Trust 2019 #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory

February 2019 This month we leave the code breaking behind and focus on what became an important part of the Off-Duty time for many of the staff at GC&CS during World War 2. Working long shifts and being far from the bright lights of London and other major towns, the staff of Bletchley Park organised much of their own entertainment. As early as 1940 the management recognised that the staff needed diversions to fill their down time and encouraged the organisation of many of these. With a staff drawn from so many clever and gifted people it wasn’t long before there was a film society, a gramophone club and various clubs for amongst other things fencing, sculpture, architecture and Scottish Dancing. One of the most successful of these was the Bletchley Park Drama Group who between 1941-1946, staged performances of established plays and wrote their own musical reviews. Bletchley Park volunteer steward and guide, Harold Liberty, has been researching the Drama Group over the last year and we sat down wi

January 2019  1943 had been a year of Turning Points in World War 2, but 75 years ago few people could have known for certain the monumental events that would unfold in 1944.  In this It Happened Here episode we take stock and look at the year ahead. The Big Three, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met together for the first time and took decisions that would ultimately lead to the 6th of June, D-Day.  In the wider war the Germans had bogged the Allies down on the Italian Front, while at sea Bletchley Park saw success with their contribution in the sinking of the Scharnhorst.  Meanwhile back in the Buckinghamshire countryside, GPO Engineer Tommy Flowers delivered Colossus 1 to Bletchley Park. Seen now as the world's first large scale electronic digital computer, at the time it was part of the evolution of machinery that the codebreakers had at their disposal.  As always, Bletchley Park’s Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon is our guide.  Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2019  #BPark, #Bletchley

December 2018 In this second of our two episodes this month we bring you two more interviews from our Oral History Archive. Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years with our Veterans’. Now with the support of Milton Keynes Council the project is being extended to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park. Judith Wainer couldn’t have been a closer neighbour to Station X as she lived on Wilton Avenue. Her family had senior GC&CS staff billeted on them but she never got to see what was inside the fence that was literally at the end of her road. In this interview she is joined by her childhood friend Jean Cheshire who grew up with her family during WW2 living in Cottage 2 within that very fence, as her father Robert was Chief Groundsman, Quartermaster, driver and Head of the Refreshment Hut. Jimmy Thirsk joined the Intelligence Corps in April 1942, first serving at Beaumanor before coming to the Home of The Co

December 2018 In the first of two episodes this month we bring you three interviews of Veterans and local people from our Oral History Archive. Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years. He tells us about a new project, being run with the support of Milton Keynes Council, to extend our archive to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park. At the outbreak of World War 2 Val Pinker was a teenager living in Wolverton Park House. She recalls her mother’s horror at the thought of having evacuees and instead had 4 members of staff from GC&CS billeted on her for the rest of the war. Gwendoline Herbert was not only a local but after an interview with her headmistress, started work as a civilian in the Transport Section at the home of the code breakers. Betty Lawrie’s memories of her time working for The Foreign Office at Bletchley Park are as clear as day, including her part in getting a grandmother of a future

November 2018 In this exclusive additional episode, podcast producer Mark Cotton was given special permission to record inside the normally top secret walls of GCHQ in Cheltenham. There he met GCHQ’s Departmental Historian Tony Comer to talk about the life of a modern GCHQ insider, how it has changed over the last 3 decades and was given a guided tour of their own secret museum. Tony also gives us some sneak peeks into how their upcoming Centenary in 2019 will be celebrated. Grateful thanks to GCHQ for all their help and for allowing us to record this very special episode. Image: ©Crown Copyright #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #GCHQ100

November 2018 In this month’s ‘It Happened Here’ we are marking 75 years since the establishment of the Eastcote Outstation, the site at which Bombe machines were operated from the autumn of 1943\. By 1945 over 100 machines were at Eastcote along with over 800 Wrens and RAF technicians, and a small group of American GIs. How did it start and what was life there really like? Bletchley Park’s research historian Dr David Kenyon tells us the complete story with help from our Archivist Guy Revell and Veterans’ Audrey Wind, Colette Cook and Betty Flavell. Image: Eastcote Joint RAF-WRNS Hockey Team ©Bletchley Park Trust 2018 #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Veteran, #OralHistory

October 2018 In this It Happened Here episode we are going back to the autumn of 1943 and the invasion of Italy. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw it as strike at the Germans via the “soft underbelly of Europe”, while our American allies saw it as a “tough old gut”. At a strategic level the allies may have had differing opinions but in the Intelligence War the cooperation grew closer with the increasing involvement of American personnel in the code breaking operations at GC&CS. Bletchley Park’s resident historian Dr David Kenyon explains what they were doing both over here in the UK and over there In the United States. Image: ©Crown. Reproduced by kind permission, Director, GCHQ #BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Veteran, #OralHistory

September 2018 During World War Two more than 10,000 people worked for GC&CS either at Bletchley Park, it’s Outstations or connected branches both Civilian and Military. This gives us a wealth of different stories to be able to tell and in this second visit to this year’s Reunion we will bring you 3 more exclusive interviews with our Veterans. Sergeant Stanley Clegg served from 1943 till 1945 in the RAF and with Special Liaison Unit 8 in North Africa, Italy and France. His fascinating story includes Jockeys hiding from the Germans and having to give up his nice warm palace for a tent.  Watching London being bombed early in the war gave Pauline Lee “a huge surge of patriotism” and after an interview at the Foreign Office her prayers were answered and she found herself at Bletchley Park for the next 4 years. Finally we hear how seventeen year old Tom Howie thought joining the RAF would be his route to escape working on a farm, but a failed medical and a visit from a man from Montrose, sent him off t

September 2018 Every year, close to the anniversary of GC&CS staff first arriving at Bletchley Park in 1939 we invite our Veterans and their families back to celebrate their vital war work. It’s our favourite day of the year at the Museum and it allows us to share their amazing stories with our listeners. This year also coincides with the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Auxiliary Territorial Service or ATS, the woman’s branch of the British Army during World War 2\. To celebrate, our Veterans were given a sneak peek at our new ATS pop-up exhibition. In this, the first of two episodes this month, we will take you to this year’s reunion and listen in as Betty Webb and Mary Watkins reminisce about their time in the ATS, the gas masks, the knickers and how it changed both their lives.     Also we hear from Doris Moss, who arrived at Bletchley in 1942 after escaping the German advance in Belgium two years earlier and went on to break both Italian & Japanese codes. Finally actress and drama

August 2018 This is the second of two episodes this month. In this It Happened Here episode we’ll be taking you further back than our normal 75 years, this time to September 1938. Twenty years after The Great War, the clouds of conflict were once again looming across Europe. Hitler threatened Czechoslovakia and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flew to Germany to try to avert war. At the same time in Buckinghamshire, at an unassuming, recently purchased country house, activity was stepping up. On the 18th of September, a group known today as Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party arrived at Bletchley Park. The cover story concealed their true purpose - a dress rehearsal for war. The 150-strong shooting party were staff from the Government Code and Cypher School and the Secret Intelligence Service, testing out a move to their War Station. Our Research Historian Dr David Kenyon delves into this part of our story to reveal recently discovered facts about the origins of codebreaking at Bletchley Park. Ima

August 2018 This is the first of two episodes this month. In August 1943 at the Quebec Conference the Allies began the initial discussions for what would ultimate become Operation Overlord, the invasion of France in 1944\. So it seems fitting that 75 years later Bletchley Park have released the plans for what will be an exciting new exhibition opening in spring 2019. D-DAY: Interception, Intelligence, Invasion will tell the story of the vital role that GC&CS played in informing the D-Day invasion, it will introduce the people involved and show how different kinds of intelligence were used by the Allies to enable the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 with precise detail. In this episode we will take you behind the hoardings of The Teleprinter Building. Our Research Historian Dr David Kenyon tells us how the restoration has revealed a wealth of new insights into the buildings and Exhibitions Manager Erica Munro explains why this story is so important. Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2018 #BPark

July 2018 This month we swing a shoe, meet the artist exploring the layers and fragmentation of the Bletchley Park story and hear from a Foreign Office clerk who thought she was going to be a spy. Hear what happened when Bletchley Park played host to a Guinness World Record attempt at the largest swing dance lesson. The swing dance club, JiveSwing, led the couples, many of whom who’d turned out in their best vintage gear, in a half hour lesson followed by a three minute dance, to take a crack at the record. Mary Kenyon had visions of being a sultry secret agent when she was called up to a mysterious sounding job at the Foreign Office in 1943\. But she was sent to Bletchley Park where she collected and collated messages, working alongside the luminary codebreaker Asa Briggs. Mary recalled her vital war work in Hut 6 when she told her story to Bletchley Park’s Oral History Project in 2014. Also in this episode, we meet Sally Annett, an artist whose vision is brought to life in a new exhibition in Bl

June 2018 This month it’s all about 007\. Bletchley Park has opened a new exhibition in historic Hut 12, featuring memos, letters and personal photographs of Ian Fleming, a fantastic collection of Bond novels through the decades and original, specially commissioned works by talented and innovative artists, inspired by scenes, themes and characters from Bond novels. The Bond creator and author, Ian Fleming, worked in Naval Intelligence during World War Two, and had close links with Bletchley Park. He was the right hand man of the head of Naval Intelligence, so he had the highest level of security clearance. Not only was he allowed to know about the existence of messages intercepted and deciphered by the government’s top secret code and cipher school, he was on the even shorter list of people who were allowed to actually read the messages as well. Fleming’s war work undoubtedly inspired his creation of Bond the character, and the dramatic scrapes he got himself into - and out of. We explore that connection i

May 2018 The Bletchley Park story is about more than Enigma. A different kind of traffic was also coming over the airwaves, being intercepted and mined for crucial intelligence. But it was generated by an even more fiendishly complex system than Enigma, which was itself believed to be unbreakable. Lorenz was the machine being used by Hitler and his high command to send top level, strategic messages. It was less portable and more secure than Enigma, but that didn’t defeat the boffins at Bletchley Park. They cracked this code too, code naming it Fish, and assigning individual fish names to links between different command posts and cities. The decision to establish a special section to mechanise the laborious process of cracking the machine’s ever-changing settings proved to be crucial in giving Allied commanders a glimpse into the highest-level decision making. It wasn’t just a breath-taking achievement to break into this system and read the top secret messages; this newly gleaned information had a huge i