Bletchley Park
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Bletchley Park is a country house located in the town of Bletchley, near Milton Keynes, England. During World War II, Bletchley Park was the location of the United Kingdom's main codebreaking establishment. The Codes and ciphers of several Axis countries were deciphered there, most famously the German Enigma. The high-level intelligence produced by Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, is frequently credited with aiding the Allied war effort and shortening the war, although Ultra's effect on the actual outcome of WWII is debated.
Bletchley Park, sometimes referred to as Station X due to the secret radio station set up in the building, is now a museum and is open to the public during the summer.
Early history
The lands of the Bletchley Park estate were formerly part of the Manor of Eaton, included in the Domesday Book in 1086. Browne Willis built a mansion in 1711, but this was pulled down by Thomas Harrison, who had acquired the property in 1793. The estate was first known as Bletchley Park during the ownership of Samuel Lipscombe Seckham, who purchased it in 1877. The estate was sold on 4 June 1883 to Sir Herbert Samuel Leon (1850–1926), a financier and Liberal MP. Leon expanded the existing farmhouse into the present mansionEdward Legg, Early History of Bletchley Park 1235– 1937, Bletchley Park Trust Historic Guides series, No. 1, 1999 Keith A. F. Woodward, [Welcome to West Bletchley — The Birthplace of the Information Age], site retrieved 23 January 2006..The architectural style is a mixture of Victorian Gothic, Tudor and Dutch Baroque and was the subject of much bemused comment from those who worked there, or visited, during World War II. Leon's estate covered 581 acres (235 hectares), of which Bletchley Park occupied about 55 acres (22 ha). Leon's wife, Fanny, died in 1937 [link], and in 1938 the site was sold to a builder, who was about to demolish the mansion and build a housing estate. However, just in time, Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair, the Director of Naval Intelligence, head of MI6 and founder of the Government Code and Cypher School, knowing that war was imminent, bought the site with his own money in the Spring of 1938, having failed to persuade any government department to pay for itSmith, 1998, p. 20. The fact that Sinclair, and not the Government, owned the site was not revealed until 1997 when a trust was set up to save the site from redevelopment[[Citing sources citation needed]].
The estate was conveniently located on the "Varsity Line" (now largely closed) between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which supplied many of the codebreakers. It was also chosen for its proximity to a major road (the A5) to London and to a route for telephone trunk lines.
Wartime history
The Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS), the intelligence bureau responsible for interception and decryption of foreign transmissions amongst other things, moved into the main house in 1939. Until he broke down, the Sinclair's private chef made early service at Bletchley Park something to remember fondly. A wireless room was set up in the mansion's water tower and given the code name "Station X"Bob Watson, "How the Bletchley Park Buildings Took Shape", Appendix in F. H. Hinsley & A. Stripp, Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, 1993, a term now sometimes applied to the codebreaking efforts at Bletchley as a whole. (It was called Station X because it was the tenth in a series of radio stations, X being the Roman numeral for ten.) The radio station was soon moved away from Bletchley Park, possibly to divert attention from the site[[Citing sources citation needed]]. Additional listening stations such as the ones at Chicksands and Beaumanor Hall, the War Office "Y" Group HQ, also gathered raw signals for processing at Bletchley.
The only direct action that the site experienced was a bomb strike next to the despatch riders' entrance, shifting the whole of Hut 4 (the Naval Intelligence hut) two metres on its base. The bomb was thought to have been intended for Bletchley railway station.
The first government visitors to Bletchley Park described themselves as members of Captain Ridley's shooting party. The intelligence produced from decrypts at Bletchley was eventually code-named "ULTRA".
When the United States joined the war, a small number of American cryptographers were posted to Bletchley Park.
Cryptanalysis
Among the famous mathematicians and cryptanalysts working there, perhaps the most influential and certainly the best-known in later years was Alan Turing. In 1943, the Colossus, the world's first programmable digital electronic computer, was designed at Bletchley Park by Max Newman and his team. The computer was designed and built to help break the Fish Cyphers, in particular the Lorenz cipher. Tommy Flowers and his crew at the British Post Office actually built the computer(s) at its Dollis Hill facility.Some 9,000 people were working at Bletchley Park at the height of the codebreaking efforts in January 1945Smith, 1998, pp. 175-176, and over 10,000 worked there at some point during the warSmith, 1998, p. 176. They were selected for various intellectual achievements[[Citing sources citation needed]], whether they were chess champions, crossword experts, polyglots or great mathematicians. Some of them completed a five-year course in Japanese in just six months[[Citing sources citation needed]].
The Bletchley Park effort was comparable in influence to other WWII-era technological efforts, such as the cryptographic work at Arlington Hall, the Naval Communications Annex (both in Washington, DC, and both in commandeered private girls' schools), the development of sophisticated microwave radar at MIT's Radiation Lab, and the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons[[Citing sources citation needed]].
After the war
At the end of the war, much of the equipment used and its blueprints were destroyed. Although thousands of people were involved in the decoding efforts, the participants remained silent for decades about what they had done during the war, and it was only in the 1970s that the work at Bletchley Park was revealed to the general public. After the war, the site belonged to several owners, including British Telecom, the Civil Aviation Authority[link] and PACE (Property Advisors to the Civil Estate). GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), the post-war successor organisation to GC&CS, ended training courses at Bletchley Park in 1987.By 1991, the site was nearly empty and the buildings were at risk of demolition to make room for property development. The Bletchley Park Trust was formed on 13 February 1992 in order to further the maintenance of the site as a museum devoted to the codebreakers. The site opened to visitors in 1993, with the museum officially inaugurated in July 1994. The trust is volunteer-based and relies on public support to continue its efforts. The current director of the trust, Christine Large, was appointed in March 1998. On 1 March 2006, it was announced that Simon Greenish had been appointed Director Designate, and would work alongside Large in 2006[Bletchley Park® Trust Appoints Director Designate], Bletchley Park News, 1 March, 2006. In October 2005, American billionaire Sidney Frank donated £500,000 to Bletchley Park Trust to fund a new Science Center dedicated to Alan Turing[Action This Day], Bletchley Park News, 28 February, 2006.
A team headed by Tony Sale has undertaken a reconstruction of a Colossus computer in H block[link]. Another team has undertaken a rebuild of the bombe, led by John Harper[link].
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Buildings
The huts were designated by numbers; in some cases, the hut numbers became associated as much with the work which went on inside the buildings as with the buildings themselves. Because of this, when a section moved from a hut into a larger building, they were still referred to by their "Hut" code name.
Some of the hut numbers, and the associated work, are:
- Hut 3 — intelligence: translation and analysis of Army and Airforce Enigma decrypts
- Hut 4 — Naval intelligence: analysis of Naval Enigma decrypts
- Hut 6 — Cryptanalysis of Army and Airforce Enigma
- Hut 8 — Cryptanalysis Naval Enigma
- Hut 10 — Meteorological sectionDavid Kahn, 1991, Seizing the Enigma, pp. 189-190
- Hut 11 — The first Bombe building[link]
- Hut 14 — main teleprinter building[link]
See also
- List of people associated with Bletchley Park
- Arlington Hall
- National Cryptologic Museum
- Danesfield House
External links
- [Bletchley Park Trust]
- [Bletchley Park — Virtual Tour] — by Tony Sale
- [Telecoms at Bletchley Park]
- [Photographs and information about the Bletchley Park site]
- [link] — Bletchley Park Groups website
- [Codes and Ciphers Heritage Trust]
- ["New hope of saving Bletchley Park for nation"] (Daily Telegraph 3 March 1997)
- [2366 (Bletchley Park)ATC Squadron]
References
- Ted Enever, Britain's Best Kept Scret: Ultra's Base at Bletchley Park, 3rd edition, 1999, ISBN 0750923555.
- F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp, eds. Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Christine Large, Hijacking Enigma: The Insider's Tale, 2003, ISBN 047086346-3.
- Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, Enigma: the Battle for the Code, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000.
- Michael Smith, Station X, Channel 4 Books, 1998. ISBN 0330419293.
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