Bletchley Park

December 2015

A story full of heroism and tragedy is now told at Bletchley Park in a new mini exhibition.

The Petard Pinch was the seizure of vital codebooks from a sinking U-Boat in which two young men drowned. But they didn’t die in vain - the intelligence treasures they captured were extremely valuable. They allowed the Codebreakers at Bletchley Park to break back into the naval Enigma network Shark, after a devastating ten month blackout.

Image: Petard Crew 1942 ©The Petard Association

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2, #History, #HMSPetard,

December 2015

Bletchley Park has had its best ever year. In the whole of 2014, 196,000 people came to discover the secret world of World War Two codebreaking and this year, with nearly a month still to go, the figure stands at more than 280,000 thousand.

New exhibitions which opened this year included The Road to Bletchley Park, about codebreaking during World War One, and the little-known story of one of World War Two’s forgotten heroes, Gordon Welchman. Among the treasures which went on show for the first time were secret notes stuffed into the roof cracks, found during the restoration of Hut 6, and the story of the seamen who drowned stealing vital codebooks from a sinking U-Boat which will open on 14th December.

Join host Katherine and producer Mark as they look back over this memorable year, in the company of many of our Veterans and their proud families.

Visit the Bletchley Park Roll of Honour to find your Codebreaker relative and email [email protected] to find out more about how you can celebrate that connection in our Codebreakers’ Wall.

Picture: ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2Veteran, #History, #BBC, #TheImitationGame,

December 2015

Professor Jack Copeland, Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, celebrated another forgotten hero of Bletchley Park, Max Newman, as part of the Bletchley Park Presents lecture series. His August talk ‘How Computers Were Used Against Hitler’, was a huge success.

Professor Copeland explored the story of little-recognised Codebreaker Max Newman, whose work was fundamental to the construction of the first electronic computer, Colossus. The section he founded and led at Bletchley Park was named after him; the Newmanry worked on the strategic-level Lorenz cipher, used by Hitler and the high command. Newman went on to establish the Royal Society Computing Machine Laboratory. In his talk, Professor Copeland looked back at his achievements and then sat down for a chat with Podcast Producer, Mark Cotton.

Picture: ©Bletchley Park Trust

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Lorenz, #Enigma, #Colossus, #WW2, #History,

November 2015

Time is running out to see That is All You Need to Know, an original play which shines a light on the Home of the Codebreakers.

Created by theatre company, Idle Motion, the work pulls together three different strands of Bletchley Park’s history; Alan Turing and his team breaking the Enigma code during World War Two, Gordon Welchman writing his ground-breaking book, The Hut Six Story, in the 1970s and the campaign to save the site for posterity in the 1990s.

That is All You Need to Know completes its final run next month, with shows each night from Tuesday 15 December to Saturday 19 December at the New Diorama Theatre in London.

Grace Chapman and Ellie Simpson, two of Idle Motion’s Co-directors, explained the inspiration behind the play. They said, “A couple of years ago now we learnt about Alan Turing and felt very inspired to put his life on stage. However, since we started researching his life we very quickly realised that all that he achieved at Bletchley Park was not just about Alan Turing’s genius. It was actually a collection of hundreds and hundreds of people’s hard work, and we felt very inspired to get the story on the stage.”

The show uses audio clips of Veterans’ interviews, provided by the Bletchley Park Trust Oral History Project, as well as multimedia projections, traditional props and even puppetry, to highlight the interweaving histories.

To buy tickets visit http://newdiorama.com/whats-on/that-is-all-you-need-to-know

Image: ©Idle Motion

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2, #History

November 2015

In the throes of war, difficult decisions have to be made. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was fully aware that Bletchley Park was breaking German codes, and even received regular digests of the intelligence gleaned, known as Hut 3 Headlines.

However, a myth was born in the mid-1970s that remains in circulation even now. The theory was that messages decoded by Bletchley Park warned Churchill that the Luftwaffe was heading for Coventry on 14 November 1940, and that he allowed the bombing go ahead in order to protect his secret source of vital information.

It has since been debunked, however, and in this month’s episode of the Bletchley Park Podcast, you can find out how. Here is an extract of this month’s episode, The Coventry Myth.

Image: Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspecting members of Coventry's Warden Service in Broadgate during his visit to Coventry in September 1941. ©Mirrorpix

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma,

November 2015

Hindsight can be cruel. The conspiracy theory that Churchill allowed Coventry to be bombed beyond recognition, killing hundreds of civilians, in order to protect the Ultra secret - that Bletchley Park was breaking German codes - is a myth.

In this episode we bring you memories of the devastating air raid on Coventry, which took place 75 years ago, on 14 November 1940. Hear from Sir Arthur Bonsall, who worked in the German Air Section, debunking the myth. And Bletchley Park’s Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon, explains how the theory came about and has since been disproved.

Also this month, the Bletchley Park Trust is reaching out to Veterans’ families, to create a worldwide community of people with a special link to this unique piece of British history. Dilly Knox was instrumental in codebreaking in both world wars. He was working to break into Enigma before World War Two even broke out, but died in 1943, so never knew how the war ended and never shared what he’d done with his family. They can now celebrate his achievements and did just that on a visit to Bletchley Park, during which they shared their pride with the Bletchley Park Podcast.

And we hear from Professor Jack Copeland, Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, celebrating another forgotten hero of Bletchley Park, Max Newman. In August, his talk ‘How Computers Were Used Against Hitler’, was a huge success. This episode features an extract of that talk as well as a rare interview with Jack.

Image: Prime Minister Winston Churchill accompanied by the Mayor and Alderman JA Mosely, inspects a large scale Civil Defence parade in Broadgate, Coventry in September 1941. ©Mirrorpix

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma,