May 2024 

 

Over the next 6 weeks, to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, we will be releasing 3 special episodes to tell the full story of The Longest Day. This first part is a complete remastering of our original Tide of Victory episode with the addition of much new content.

This first episode takes us to the south coast of Britain which, in May 1944, resembled one huge army camp as over 2 million men waited for D-Day. In the Buckinghamshire countryside the staff at GC&CS carried on feeding detailed and crucial intelligence to the Allied forces that would play an integral part in the success of the upcoming Operation Overlord.

The Western Front Committee was established at Bletchley Park in October 1942 and for the next 18 months built up a comprehensive picture of German forces in the West, recording every unit, its location and its strength. 

From February 1943 the committee began to produce reports of which over 450 pages are now held in our archives. Head of Content, Erica Munro and our Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon use these to illustrate how the various departments, using multiple sources, came together to create the vital information that the D-Day planners needed, in some cases even leading to last minute changes. Meanwhile our Research Officer, Dr Thomas Cheetham brings us the full story of a temporary Y Station set up at Bletchley Park just for D-Day.

This episode features the following from our Oral History archive:

Vera Bartram

Pat Davies

Edna Garbutt

Enid Wenban

Many thanks to Dr Ben Thomson for voicing our archival documents.

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2024

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