February 2024 Meeting Report
'The Lady Codebreakers of Bletchley Park' by Ian Thomson
Despite the rain and navigating their way through protestors against the war on Gaza holding placards in the car park, our February meeting was very well attended by our members and also several visitors who we hope to see again.
One chap who came in and engaged Tracy in a loud and incoherent conversation during the presentation was not so welcome. Well done to Tracy and Keith for quickly persuading him to leave the premises. With his life-long interest in military history and a decade as a volunteer guide at Bletchley Park, our speaker Ian Thomson gave us an insightful and informative presentation on 'The Lady Codebreakers of Bletchley Park'.
He began by giving us some background on the development of our intelligence gathering services. The Government Code and Cypher School was created in 1919 by The Royal Army, Royal Navy and The Foreign Office, with M16 concerned with security outside the United Kingdom and M15 inside. With the prospect of World War 2 approaching in 1936 the Chief of M16, Admiral Hugh Sinclair, sought more secure premises outside of London. Bletchley Park was seen as ideal, being close to essential services. Due to wrangling between government departments he bought the estate himself. Incidentally, it was later saved from being demolished and turned into a housing estate when the government realised that it was not their property, being owned by the Admiral’s sister!
The Bletchley recruits, mainly from the upper and middle classes, were described as ‘boffins and debs’. The women were recruited from mainly mathematics, statistics, engineering, physics and language departments at Oxford and Cambridge universities; the Women’s Royal Naval Service; Auxiliary Air Force and Auxiliary Territorial Service; government departments and social networks and were mostly in their late teens and early twenties.
Despite comforts such as hairdressing services and meals being provided by top chefs, eccentric behaviour and depression was not uncommon, understandable given the nature of the work and that they had to make an oath never to speak of their roles, even to family members which were not lifted until 1975.
Ian endeavoured to explain the complexity of the encoding and enciphering machines. Each individual letter of a message went through a series of changes generated by several ‘rotators’ before being sent and received by Morse code. The possible combinations were immense – 158 million billion said Ian. Polish crypto-analysts were the first to break into Germany’s Enigma machine, further developed with other decoding machines, including The Bombe and Colossus at Bletchley Park. Working alongside well-known chief crypto-analysts such Alan Turing ‘The Prof’ and Dilly Knox were the women codebreakers.These included - Margaret Rock, graduate mathematician who, with Mavis Lever, broke the Abwehr Enigma machine code, giving us advantages in planning the D-Day landings and locating spy networks - Mavis Batey from a modest background whose German language skills helped to identify double agents - Janet Fawcett, later an opera singer, whose work identified the whereabouts of the battleship Bismarck, sunk by the Royal Navy - Jean Volentine who worked alongside Alan Turing on The Bombe – crypto-analystJoan Clarke and 19 year old Joan Joslin who intercepted Japanese and German secret messages – actress and linguist Pamela Gibson, leader of the indexing system – 18 year old society girl Jean Campbell-Harris, later Baroness Trumpington, who transcribed messages sent from German submarines to name a few. This was a sobering presentation in the light of current conflicts around the world. Vacancies for UK defence intelligence analysts are currently being advertised.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser.
Despite the rain and navigating their way through protestors against the war on Gaza holding placards in the car park, our February meeting was very well attended by our members and also several visitors who we hope to see again.
One chap who came in and engaged Tracy in a loud and incoherent conversation during the presentation was not so welcome. Well done to Tracy and Keith for quickly persuading him to leave the premises. With his life-long interest in military history and a decade as a volunteer guide at Bletchley Park, our speaker Ian Thomson gave us an insightful and informative presentation on 'The Lady Codebreakers of Bletchley Park'.
He began by giving us some background on the development of our intelligence gathering services. The Government Code and Cypher School was created in 1919 by The Royal Army, Royal Navy and The Foreign Office, with M16 concerned with security outside the United Kingdom and M15 inside. With the prospect of World War 2 approaching in 1936 the Chief of M16, Admiral Hugh Sinclair, sought more secure premises outside of London. Bletchley Park was seen as ideal, being close to essential services. Due to wrangling between government departments he bought the estate himself. Incidentally, it was later saved from being demolished and turned into a housing estate when the government realised that it was not their property, being owned by the Admiral’s sister!
The Bletchley recruits, mainly from the upper and middle classes, were described as ‘boffins and debs’. The women were recruited from mainly mathematics, statistics, engineering, physics and language departments at Oxford and Cambridge universities; the Women’s Royal Naval Service; Auxiliary Air Force and Auxiliary Territorial Service; government departments and social networks and were mostly in their late teens and early twenties.
Despite comforts such as hairdressing services and meals being provided by top chefs, eccentric behaviour and depression was not uncommon, understandable given the nature of the work and that they had to make an oath never to speak of their roles, even to family members which were not lifted until 1975.
Ian endeavoured to explain the complexity of the encoding and enciphering machines. Each individual letter of a message went through a series of changes generated by several ‘rotators’ before being sent and received by Morse code. The possible combinations were immense – 158 million billion said Ian. Polish crypto-analysts were the first to break into Germany’s Enigma machine, further developed with other decoding machines, including The Bombe and Colossus at Bletchley Park. Working alongside well-known chief crypto-analysts such Alan Turing ‘The Prof’ and Dilly Knox were the women codebreakers.These included - Margaret Rock, graduate mathematician who, with Mavis Lever, broke the Abwehr Enigma machine code, giving us advantages in planning the D-Day landings and locating spy networks - Mavis Batey from a modest background whose German language skills helped to identify double agents - Janet Fawcett, later an opera singer, whose work identified the whereabouts of the battleship Bismarck, sunk by the Royal Navy - Jean Volentine who worked alongside Alan Turing on The Bombe – crypto-analystJoan Clarke and 19 year old Joan Joslin who intercepted Japanese and German secret messages – actress and linguist Pamela Gibson, leader of the indexing system – 18 year old society girl Jean Campbell-Harris, later Baroness Trumpington, who transcribed messages sent from German submarines to name a few. This was a sobering presentation in the light of current conflicts around the world. Vacancies for UK defence intelligence analysts are currently being advertised.
Christina Tyler, Programme Organiser.