The other day I visited Bletchley Park – Home of the Code Breakers and it really is a fascinating museum; it has so much in it from the Engima machines, displays on the local country regiment the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry (who famously secured Peagus’s Bridge) to Toys of the War Era, including lots of old Britains and an amazing Churchill collection. It is a real step back in time.
Bletchley Park is most famous for being the Home of the Code Breakers; at its peak in WWII some 10,000 people were employed at Bletchley Park and its out stations breaking the Enigma Codes, Japanese codes and relaying critical information about the Axis intentions. Churchill described Bletchley Park as 'The geese that laid the golden eggs - but never cackled'.
The first pictures show the mansion; Hut 8 where Turing worked and his office; then a German U-Boat Enigma machine and finally the Turing Bombe that was used to Break the Codes.
The museum has a vast arrange of sub-museums in it. The main section focus on the various enigma machines, cipher machines, codes and Turing Bombe. The museum places great emphasis on the role the Poles had in understanding how Enigma worked before WWII.
There is a set up of a WWII German Signals Group - the 65th Nachrichten Abteilung with an Enigma machine.
What I did not realize was that codes were often cracked before Enigma was captured; the code breakers realised that German operators were often in a hurry to communicate their first message of the day and that that they did not randomly set the machine for the first message and so when words like XYZDON appeared the code breakers worked out it was London and then went to work cracking the codes. One early success meant that in 1941 at the Battle of Cape Matapan a combined RN and RAN fleet intercepted and destroyed 5 Italian Navy ships.
It also details the dramatic capture of the Enigma machine from U-559 by the Royal Navy (not the incorrect Hollywood version!!!). U-559 dived below the 500 ft depth charge range and so Thornton creatively stuffed soap in the holes of the primers so the water pressure would build up more slowly and thus explode at a deeper depth. This forced U-559 to move and she was eventually holed and forced to surface where 4 RN crew (the youngest was only 16) boarded her and secured the Enigma machine and code books. 2 of the 4 though failed to escape when the U-559 sunk suddenly.
The Turing Bombe is an amazing looking contraption and so complex but the mathematic genius as Bletchley park understood it !!! The last two pictures explain some of its workings
How important was cracking Enigma – well it had an instant effect. By December 1942 the codes were cracked and the location of 15 u-boats identified such that in Jan and Feb 1943 sinkings were halved from the high of the previous two months.
The Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry were the local county regiment and as such guarded BP in the early war years before going on to distinguish themselves on D-Day by securing Peagus’s Bridge.
The first picture is a Top Secret Ultra Message sent to Churchill that BP intercepted from the German’s and was the first confirmation to Churchill that the Benouville Bridge had been seized by the British.
There are also model boat museum with some impressive sailboats
A model train museum with some armoured trains - not as big or impressive as Figarti's
And even a museum to Pigeons !!!I kid you not. In WWII, the Britsih used 250,000 carrier pigeons and below are a couple of pictures of a para with a pigeon packed in the round case attached to his front and the story of the US pigeon GI Joe who won the Dickin’s Medal – the animal equivalent of the VC !!!
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