Information about Bletchley Park wasn’t released until 1974 and until that time all those who

knew
about the work then were sworn to secrecy. There are rumours of a story that a married couple
didn’t know for around thirty years that they had in fact worked alongside each other at Bletchley.
Whether or not this is true, those who worked at Bletchley Park were hailed as heroes and when it
seemed that the mansion of Bletchley was going to be destroyed, instead it was turned into a
museum to honour those who did the incredible work there.

The government purchased Bletchley Park to house the Government Code and Cypher School in
1938. It needed to be situated close enough London and the university cities: Oxford and Cambridge,
but it was important that the location was rural enough to avoid the bombing attacks that were
already predicted. However, working conditions at Bletchley were less than ideal; those that worked
there lived in cramped and basic conditions. One amusing example is that a Chief had to work from a
nursery, complete with Peter Rabbit wallpaper.

On September 5th, four days after the official start of World war two, the government pulled
together a team of scholar and academics codenamed ULTRA for the war effort. Earlier that year on
January 25th following the Polish creation of the first Bomba that successfully cracked Enigma for a
few weeks before it was modified beyond the Poles’ understanding, the Poles shared Cryptanalytic
information with France and Britain. This happened as a result of global fear of the looming war.

The Bombe computer, named after its polish forerunner, finished on the 15 th of January 1940 was
based on the original design by Alan Turing and nicknamed ‘Victory’. It regularly succeeded in
cracking Enigma’s code until the Axis navy added three more rotors to enigma, rendering the first
Bombe useless. Less than a month later the HMS Gleamer captured the German U boat: U-33;
finding on board two of the three missing rotors needed to decipher Enigma but the third rotor
wasn’t to be found until May, aboard the captured U-13.

The discovery of the three rotors proved to be worthless without assumed text (known as cribs). For
a year those working at Bletchley remained in the dark causing the Allies to suffer multiple losses.
Finally, on May 9th, 1941 the ‘Bulldog’ captured U-10 discovering enough information to decipher
and read German messages all through the Summer. With the advantage of anticipation of attacks
and battle plans the Allies won many more battles. In March of 1941, they successfully deciphered
codes intercepted from Italy’s naval Enigma helped Admiral Cunningham to lead the Allies to a
victory against the Italians at the Battle of Matapan. Later on, that year in early autumn they worked
out ciphers used by the Panzer army lead by Marshal Rommel's, in communications with Rome and
Berlin, giving the Allies an advantage that lead to victories in North Africa.

One of the little-known Bletchley workers, Harry Hinsley hypothesised that it wouldn’t only be the
war ships that carried information on the naval Enigma. Following this they attacked German
weather and supply ships more frequently until May when Hinsley was proved right and they found
Enigma codebooks on board a captured German weather ship ‘München’.

Intelligence gained from deciphering Enigma was consider top secret and only used sparingly in
situations of high urgency because it was important that the Germans did not figure out that the
British were able to understand their messages. However, Admiral Doenitz, head of the German
Navy, noticed Britain’s increased victories and he became suspicious that the British had cracked
Enigma. He appealed to his superiors, but German high command did not take him seriously so he
himself added a fourth rotor to the naval Enigma leaving Bletchley oblivious one more.
On October 30th, 1942 Colin Grazer and Anthony Fassim gave their lives for information. After
boarding the captured U-559 the managed to transfer encoded Enigma text before they went down
with the ship.

Although Enigma is the famous code that those who worked at Bletchley are best known for; they
also cracked the greatly more complex Lorenz cipher machine. It was used by the German high
command and even Hitler himself so deciphering it gave the Allies a window into exactly how the
Axis were thinking. Like Enigma, solving Lorenz relied on knowing the starting positions of the rotors
but Lorenz, a much bigger machine, had twelve wheels.

The Lorenz first started being used halfway through 1940. The people at Bletchley started
intercepting the radio signals almost immediately however whilst in the dark about what kind of
machine they might be using; it was insolvable. They Allies eventually got lucky when a German
operator made a mistake: he transmitted a twelve-character message stating the exact position of
the rotors for Lorenz. Unfortunately for the Germans this message didn’t transmit correctly so it was
resent according to procedure. With the information having been broadcast twice, the chief
cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park at the time; John Tiltman, saw it for what it was. Taking him ten days,
he was eventually able to read the messages in full and went on to assist building the first ever
programmable computer that would go on to be able to crack Lorenz regularly.

After the end of the war, the work done at Bletchley Park was concentrated on the Soviets and the
cold war. All of the documents and much of the machinery tied to the WW2 were destroyed
meaning that in the modern day, much of what we know about Bletchley park comes from the
recollections of those who were there. Perhaps there are secrets of Bletchley Park that still remain in
the dark.