Describe the organisation and work of the people at Bletchley Park

Bletchley Park is a large manor house, about fifty miles north of London. It was chosen to be an evacuation base for MI6, and the GCCS (Government Code and Cipher School). It was chosen in the year 1938, as the government needed a hideout, for ‘enigma’ to be broken. As the war was looming in order so that all the recruits could work confidentially and low key. World War 1 had brought about the use of wireless messages and Morse code for the first time. As World War 2 was approaching, the British Government wanted to be able to decode all of the enemy’s messages. Bletchley Park, was bought by the chief of M.I.6 Admiral Sinclair, he used his own funds as the government could not decide which department should pay for it. People started arriving in August 1939. The codename for the new centre was ‘Station X’. In 1939, there were less than a hundred people working there, but by 1944, the number had gone up to over 7,000. A lot of thought went into the organisation of Bletchley Park, as they did not want the service to be too close to the capital of London, as it would have made it easier for the Germans to track down where the organisation was held.

There were two main sections for the first people that worked there. There was the administration section, which consisted of mostly young women between the ages of 18 and 22. On the other hand, there were the code breakers who worked for the GCCS – these were mostly middle-aged academics from Oxford or Cambridge. After the British had worked out that the Germans were using a machine called ‘Enigma’, they began to hire more people to work at Bletchley Park. People were recruited in different ways, such as the crosswords to find the best suited people, as different skills were required for different areas. As some recruits that were infamous such as; Joy Higgins, Hugh Russell Caroline Shearer and other famous recruits such as Herivel and Turing which would have been more effective. Most new recruits were mathematicians from Universities, but they did not get on well with the code breakers, as they had different methods of decoding messages. As the mathematicians, were younger and worked in completely different ways, opposed to the more experienced code breakers. The mathematicians believed that, their way of cracking ‘enigma’ would be successful, this being to predict the possibility of random letters appearing in a sequence.

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The G.C and C.S code-breakers worked without much technology, as they would use the simplest thing’s such as paper and pencil in order to spot patterns. There jobs would be made more difficult as the Germans would change the codes as much as once a day. However, the administration section and the code breakers were becoming more successful in their attempt to crack enigma. Eventually it was the mathematicians who made the real breakthrough on the Enigma. The government then decided that it would be a good idea to hold a cryptic crossword for The Daily Telegraph. Those who solved it within twelve minutes would then have a good chance of being recruited for work at Bletchley Park. Another way to recruit workers for Bletchley Park was to employ mathematicians which were Oxford and Cambridge graduates. On the other hand some people wrote to Bletchley Park, yet not knowing what the job consisted of, just knowing it was a high class government job. Many graduates were recruited, some of these names being, Alan Turing and John Herivel, as the most important qualities needed where to work open minded and expect the unexpected, in being prepared for any backlash for instance if ‘Station X’ somehow failed and having back up plans to succeed.

Y Stations were set up all over Britain and the people that worked there had an important task. The operators there had to pick up the signal of the German messages at the correct frequency. Y stations being able to pick up and record the radio transmissions sent in Morse code by German operators, which was then sent along to Bletchley Park. As well as, everybody working together in order for secrecy to be remained, members of Bletchley Park did not discuss anything about their daily work for instance. Secrecy was one of the main reasons; everything had worked out, as everybody concentrated on their own work and this made the organisation successful in doing so.

Messages were intercepted from Y stations they would then be delivered to Hut 6, although some were delivered to different sections such as hut 3, when no enigma’s messages were successfully deciphered; their job was to then translate the Morse code and break the key and turn it into text. When it was successfully decoded, it was then passed to hut 3, next door by a broom handle. The messages often made no sense, the linguists would then have to identify the few German words and fit it into an overall message. The message would then be passed to MI6 in London. At the end of 1939 Hut 1- the ‘bombes’ were built, being used as the station sick bay. In 1940 it became the home of the first ‘bombe’ an electric machine designed by Turing to make life easier to trace clues. In March 1940, Turing and Twinn borrowed a couple of rooms in Hut 4 to set up a naval enigma research group, shortly after, the new section moved to hut 8, which was then equal to the job of hut 6.

A unit called ‘Z Watch’ became the naval section’s comparison to hut 3. However, in 1941 an improved version of the bombe, known as ‘jumbo’ was introduced. To reduce the risk posed by German bombing, the jumbos were dispersed to new ‘outstations’. At that very time, the bombes were moved from hut 1 into the newly built hut 11. As the war became more intense, the messages became more numerous. The Huts therefore had to be manned twenty-four hours a day. The staffs were divided into three watches, who worked eight hours each. The watches were supervised by the head of the watch, who distributed messages among the staff as they were received. It was organised in this way, as the chief members believed that everybody would work better this way and securely.

Finally, the work of the members from Bletchley Park helped England to be successful in their quest to defeat the Germans. Individuals, such as Twinn and Welchmann had done a great deal in order of setting the organisation up. Another main factor, in the success was the secrecy kept by all the members. The Hut’s were departmentalised, as they never discussed their work with anyone apart from their little group in the Hut. Some people did not talk about Bletchley Park for a mere 30 years, that’s how secret it was. Therefore, the organisation was successful as all the workers contributed and worked individually well. Winston Churchill showed a lot of faith in Bletchley Park and in the end paid off, as in 1941 Churchill made it clear that they should have the resources by saying ‘Make sure that they have all that they want extreme priority and report to me that this has been done. Action this day.’

Describe the organisation and work of the people at Bletchley Park