Thursday 1 June 2017

Bletchley Park - Home of Codebreakers

Over the Bank Holiday weekend I went back to Bletchley Park for a long overdue return visit. For those that have been living in a cave for the last 70 years Bletchley Park was the central site for British code breakers during World War II. It was the home of the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) and was responsible to breaking the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers. The intelligence gathered was code named 'Ultra' and is credited with shortening the war by two to four years, arguably saving millions of lives.

I've been to Bletchley before but that was several years ago and since then the site has been extensively refurbished so a return visit was long overdue. 

One of several Enigma machines on display

The House...the original home of the Code and Cypher school

The office of Commander Alastair Denniston who ran the site.

Typical office space inside the house

Many of the huts have now been renovated and contain exhibits and displays

Another Enigma machine, There were several variations in use by different branches of the German military machine

A working replica of the Turin 'Bombe'. This forerunner of the computer was an electromechanical calculating machine designed specifically to break Enigma. 

There is a lot more to see and we didn't get around the whole site, but tickets are valid for a year so I expect we will try to go back again soon to see what we missed. 

4 comments:

  1. I met a lady on ANZAC Day who had worked there during WW2. Fascinating lady with some amazing stories. They really helped to turn the tide.

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  2. Thanks for the great pics. We studied Enigma in one of my pure maths subjects at uni - head spinning complexity. What a genius Turing was, such a pity he was treated so badly after the war.

    Cheers, Dave

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  3. I really must go, great to see that they are constantly improving it.

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