The role of the people who were in control at Bletchley Park was to try and break these intricate codes. They would study the messages and look for similarities or patterns. A creative and imaginative approach to solving cryptic type problems was an essential quality in those engaged in the code breaking process. The task of getting into the enemies way of thinking and unravelling the codes used required this type of person.
Winston Churchill began to show greater in interest in Bletchley Park in May 1940. As more people were working at Bletchely, more equipment was needed. Winston Churchill said ‘make sure they have all they want as an extreme priority and report to me what has been done. Action this day’
The various roles of the code breakers varied. The first arrivals at Bletchley were the code breakers who had worked for the GCCS in the 1920s and 1930s. These people were used to cracking the codes using the pencil and paper method. They looked at the messages and tried to look for similarities. Later after they realised these code breaking methods were out of date new recruits joined them.
Work had been split up into different huts. The main hut ‘Hut 6’ put its efforts into the air force enigma. It received signals and messages and attempted to decode them. Sometimes they could not completely translate the code. Sometimes it was just a few words or a few letters. However Hut 6’s main role was not to decode the messages but to break through the enemy’s attempts at concealment. After this decoding process was complete the messages were passed on to Hut 3, which was next door.
When they arrived in Hut 3 the messages didn’t make any sense so the code breakers had a real job on their hands. Their job was to break the code as much as possible and try to turn it into text. They had to be able to identify German words from the few letters. Most of the staff was linguists anyhow.
As the volume of the messages increased, so did the number of watches. In Hut 3, the head of watch whose job was to allocate messages to staff as they arrived supervised each watch. This was highly skilled and very important role. The head of watch had to act quickly and had to decide whether or not the message looked important enough and then give it priority.
Even the all the workers of Bletchley Park didn’t know what the next person was doing they all worked together as a unit which helped to unveil the plans of the enemy. The hut system worked very well splitting up the messages in different areas in which the code breakers were good at decoding.
