Bletchley Park was the United Kingdom's main codebreaking establishment.
Over 10,000 people worked there, all sworn to absolute secrecy, and all remained silent about their work until the mid 1990s.
World War II enemy messages were produced in what seemed to be gibberish in five letter combinations generated by the German Enigma machine. Thousands of Enigma-coded messages were transmitted every day.
It's cipher had 150 million million million possible combinations which the Germans thought was unbreakable. I can't even imagine a number as large as that.
If you have some spare time and feel like building your own Enigma machine, this is how it worked.
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Huge noisy codebreaking machines called "bombes" were operated by Naval WRENs. By 1943, 3,000 messages per day were being intercepted and decoded.
There's lots more to the Enigma story than this, but the mind gets boggled by so much technology, well... mine does.
We spent a whole day here at Bletchley Park. Not only is the War Museum absolutely fascinating, the setting is in one of England's grand stately homes surrounded by well kept gardens.
Well worth a visit.
For more posts about my time spent in England, please scroll down.
ooh, goody! did you see the 2002 movie "Enigma"? Starring, among others, the sublime Kate Winslet? i did, and i loved it. but this is the real mccoy!!
ReplyDeleteSounds and looks fascinating, ex-S!
ReplyDeleteFascinating and to me totally mind boggeling. I'll bet this was such an interesting place to visit.
ReplyDeleteI must get there. It's about 15 minutes up the road from me and I've never been. My daughter and her then boyfriend went because his grandmother had worked there, and when they found out they asked her to get in touch. She was thrilled to bits to tell them all about her experiences. I must definitely visit. I've just been scrolling down your posts and your pictures are amazing.
ReplyDeleteFascinating, my dear! I have heard a little bit about "Enigma"...my heavens it is all too complex for me!
ReplyDeleteYou really got to see some unusual places and things on your special trip!
Thanks for this very interesting info... which led me to look at your different links and spend considerable time! Fascinating!
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the other commentors...this is truly fascinating :-)
ReplyDeleteWOW! What a machine!!
ReplyDeleteTHIS is so-o-o cool! It's so amazing that that Britain was cracking the Nazi code generated by the Enigma machine. And that so many people were able to keep the secret for so long! (And a lot of them were women, I hasten to point out. LOL)
ReplyDeleteDid anyone mention "Fascinating" already? Yes? Then I'll just repeat it. The machines are sooo cool! And it's incredible that the secret was kept until the mid 90's!
ReplyDeleteI can't even keep my p's and q's straight. I think I'll pass on codebreaking.
ReplyDeleteMy head is spinning just looking at this....this is fabulous....I posted a few more pictures of the Bride...unfortunately, I did not get the kind of shots I would have liked due to where I was sitting...her dress sure was stunning.....
ReplyDeleteOne of my husband's teachers at school used to work at Bletchley Park during the war and was responsible for a lot of the de-coding!
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