Bletchley Park Essay

Bletchley Park, code named ‘Station X’, was and still is a mansion 50 miles North-West of London. It was bought by MI5 as an evacuation site and code breaking centre for the German ‘Enigma’. Bletchley Park was bought by Admiral Sinclair, the Chief of MI6. There other posts, ‘Station Y’s’, which intercepted the messages from the Germans and in turn, when sorted, sent the messages to ‘Station X’. These listening posts were set up to steal German messages off the radio waves. ‘Station X’ relied on the availability of these intercepted messages to break. Most of the staff in the ‘Y Stations’ were women. Basically, the ‘Y Stations’ were to pick up the messages and ‘Station X’ was to use the messages to decode and break the keys. As the war progressed it became easier for the operators to find the right frequencies at the right times, when the German transmissions were being sent. The messages were recorded in Morse code. All the administrative staff worked on interception whilst the academics worked on the actual code breaking, like the mathematicians, cryptic crossword solvers and chess players. Most of the workers in general were young. Most of the admin staff was girls and women, most of them linguists, and the code breakers were mathematicians, as Enigma was breakable by maths and equations some were also just ordinary chess players. However, by the end of 1941 Daily Telegraph cryptic crossword solvers were also taken in, as well as some of the old code breakers around, from the G. C. & C. S. At first the Navy were too proud to be interested in the transmissions, but later realised just how important Bletchley Park was. Gordon Welchman was a young mathematician, from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; and it was he who was responsible for the reorganisation of Bletchley Parks’ work into a fully functional code breaking site. He also introduced a five-point plan that would increase the efficiency of the work being produced. This was: close co-ordination of radio interception, the analysis of the intercepted messages, breaking the Enigma and Non-Enigma keys, decoding the messages from the broken keys and then extracting useful information from the decoded messages. It was then that Denniston began recruiting the high quality staff that was needed. In early 1939 the construction started of wooden huts centred on the mansion. The first huts built were numbered 1,2,3,4 & 5. The Naval Section moved into Hut 4 alongside the mansion on the South side. When Hut 5 was completed the Army section moved there and the dining room became a mess room, where the military had previously used as their base at ‘Station X’. However, Knox, Jeffrey’s and Turing moved into the Cottage in the Stable Yard so that they could work better with less distractions. Not many of the first arrivals knew what they were doing and had very little experience, but learnt quickly. The new young operators also knew nothing about their foreseeable work. After the first arrivals, Denniston’s mathematicians arrived, but they did not get on well with the older more experienced code breakers. This was because the older code breakers felt â€Å"out-of-date† as the new lot were young and had a different method to code breaking. It became blatant that the biggest break-through was from the mathematicians from the first years of the war. They were getting closer and closer to breaking the Enigma. Messages were sent to other huts via a broomstick and a wooden tunnel that was constructed to increase secrecy between a few of the more important huts (later on the messages were blasted along the tunnels with compressed air), like Hut 6 and Hut 3. Although, Hut 6 paid little attention to the messages they received from Hut 3 as they just did their job and the other huts would do theirs. Most of the messages that arrived at Hut 3 seldom made sense. When the messages were complete they were sent down to MI6 HQ in London by van. Hut 4 was used to break other non-Enigma codes from other foreign countries which was only classed as semi-important messages/codes. If some of the messages from Hut 6 were important enough then they would be classed as ‘Ultra’ or ‘Top-Secret’. There was also a slim chance that any foreign spy could get into ‘Station X’. the military officials would be on site to determine the importance of the messages that came out of the ‘Huts’. Bombes were also developed, these were electrical devices that made it easier to take advantage of the clues given from the coded messages. Eventually these were developed into ‘Jumbos’ a larger and faster version, that were introduced into Hut 1, but in the early part of 1941 they were dispersed and move into the ‘Outstations and Hut 11†² Later on into the war many people started taking a great deal of interest in the work done at Bletchley Park. This was because of a major incident when a crucial war ship was lost to the Germans at sea, but the Germans managed to salvage it and recover all its information it carried. However, due to the Germans’ arrogance and ignorance they did not except that Enigma had been broken, and ignored the fact that many of their messages had been decoded. After this incident, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, visited ‘Station X’ and after many consistent letters funded the project, as the Huts sometimes ran out of the simple needs of pencils and paper. At this point the ‘Yanks’ came over to help the Allied, only after they were bombed by the Japanese. Along with the Americans came new technology, many more soldiers that were properly trained and machines that were in better condition and were all better quality. This gave the Allies the advantage at this point in the war as they now had extra supplies and reinforcements. The first computer was built as well making the work a lot faster for everyone, this was code-named Colossus, it was room size. In conclusion to this, ‘Station X’ provided lots of important information for the military to use to their advantage on the battlefield. This also enabled many lives of the Allies to be saved. Without these code breakers and broken keys the war may have turn in favour of the Germans, so deeply the work that was done at ‘Station X’ was truly important. Although Bletchley Park was originally bought as an evacuation site for MI5 it became the most important code breaking site before, during and after the war.