To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more
In the previous two parts of our feature we looked at how Bletchley Park cracked the Engima code and helped win the war. After years of neglect the Bletchley Park Trust is doing a great job of preserving the site, but it needs help and money to realise its plans. In this part of the feature we’re looking at why the site needs saving and how you can help.
It’s hotly debated as to the actual results of the successes at Bletchley Park and whether or not the war was shortened by two years or more. This kind of talk is immaterial, as it’s impossible to work these things out. What we do know is that the code breaking was a massive success and let the Allies read secret German transmissions all the way from the lowliest train station all the way up to those sent by Adolf Hitler.
There are clear examples of where the work made a staggering difference to the war effort, particularly in the North Atlantic, where German U-Boats targeted merchant shipping brining supplies to the UK.
“You could argue that it made the difference in the North Atlantic,” says Simon Greenish, director of the Bletchley Park Trust. “If not for Bletchley, Britain could have been starved out.”
What was incredible about the work at Bletchley is the sheer number of messages decoded and sent on for processing by military intelligence. At the peak, 6,000 messages a day were handled by the team.
“They could see the bread and butter of what was going on in Germany,” says Greenish. “Everything that could be picked up was being decoded.”
A lot of it was pure junk, but the military personnel had everything they needed and could filter through the information for anything that could give the Allies an advantage. For example, an order to move vast quantities of fuel from a train station let the allies know that the Germans must have V-2 rockets there, and the site must be bombed.
Breaking Enigma helped the Allies plan and win important battles, such as that in North Africa.
“Bletchley was feeding Montgomery what Rommel was up to,” says Greenish.
This incredibly information meant that Monty had the upper-hand over Rommel, and knew everything about the situation in the Axis camp. This information was vital in the victory at El Alamein and the defeat of the German Army in Africa.
Getting access to the Enigma messages also gave the allies confidence in their tactics and the information that they were getting. In fact, they often intercepted messages from the Germans that stated Enigma was still secure.
Before the D-Day invasion of Europe, the Allies knew that the German army had fell for their misinformation about an army gathering in Kent poised to attack Calais. Regardless of any arbitrary figures, the simple fact is that the work at Bletchley Park played a significant role in the Allies’ war effort and helped us to defeat the German army. At the same time, the incredibly leap forwards in technology mean that Britain was, for a while, at the forefront of computer technology.
THE FALL OF THE PARK
Once the war was over, there was no need for Bletchley Park to continue in the same vein. The 12,000-odd personnel were let go and all maintained their secrecy oath. The scientists who worked at the park mostly went to work for the new GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) and continued their work.
For Bletchley Park it wasn’t particularly good news, as the buildings were abandoned and much of the equipment was broken up. Due to the secrecy of the project, much of the work at Bletchley was kept from the public.
“Everything was broken up,” says Greenish. “Some of the Colossus machines were used elsewhere until the 60s. Some of the maths was kept under wraps until a few years ago. The story was that Britain didn’t want the world to know how good they were at code breaking.”
The incredible success that the British had, not to mention the computers they invented, just dropped off the world’s radar and what had happened at Bletchley Park was forgotten, until the 1970s.
Bletchley Park passed through many hands, even ending up as a BT training centre for a while, before it was almost sold in 1991 for redevelopment and Milton Keynes Borough Council took over the site, handing it over to the newly-formed Bletchley Park Trust shortly after. Then began the long job of educating the UK and the world as to just how important the site was, not to mention redeveloping and repairing it. It’s that job that’s most important now.
A large part of Bletchley Park’s problems have come from the incredible level of security and secrecy surrounding it, which meant that few people knew what had gone on. It’s easy to see why. Bletchley Park was, really, pure technology and pure mathematics, but it ultimately had no direct control over the information it decoded, it merely passed the messages on.
This let the site stay a huge secret in a way that other projects in the war couldn’t. For example, the Manhattan Project, which created nuclear weapons, could hardly have been kept a secret after they were used on Japan. The simple fact that the British could keep Bletchley Park a secret, meant that the work done there would not reach the public for a long time.
“THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE”
Fortunately, there’s the Bletchley Park Trust and its goal over the last 18 years has been to bring the code-breaking work and genius of the world’s first computer to prominence. It’s a tricky job and highlighted by the shear plight of the buildings as you enter the Park.
Driving through, it’s impossible not to notice the poorly-kept roads. Then you lay eyes on Hut 6, run by Gordon Welchman, and see the state that it’s in. The wood has almost rotted through, and the hut’s no longer safe to enter as you’d fall through the floor.
The mansion house is imposing on the outside and still has its stunning ceilings and amazing panelling, but it too feels a little tired in places thanks to years of being treated roughly. But, then you start to realise how lucky the site is to have any of the huts left at all, as the early simple wooden buildings could easily have been demolished at any point during the end of the war and when the Bletchley Park Trust took over.
When you start to realise that you’re standing in the middle of what was quite-possibly the most important place of the war, you immediately begin to think how much it has to be saved. You notice then that The Trust is doing a fantastic job under very difficult conditions.
A PLAN FOR THE FUTURE
The main plan for the future is to sort out the buildings and infrastructure, in order to create a better museum experience for visitors.
“The site has not been maintained and parts were not meant to last this long,” says Greenish, describing the mammoth task of having to repair rotting huts that are approaching 70 years old, plus failing roofs on 200-year old buildings.
Then, there’s the problem of fixing the infrastructure and putting in things like car parks, so that the Park can cope with the 100,000+ tourists that enter it every year. Getting the money for this can be hard, as few companies or people want to be associated with basic repairs.
“We need yet more roofs and roads,” says Greenish. “They’re not very sexy, but necessary. The roads are basically potholes joined together by flat bits.”
A big problem is that the Park gets no funding from the government, which has steadfastly refused to support it. This is incredible, as Bletchley Park is stunningly important in world history, and a centre where British mathematics and engineering created the first electronic computer way before anybody else even got started. It’s not even that much money that’s required, with Greenish estimating that around £250,000 a year in the short-term would be good enough for some vital repairs and running costs, until the long-term Park plan can be implemented and the museum can become self-sufficient.
GOOD NEWS
While more money is always required, the site is currently applying for a Heritage Lottery Funding bid for a £4.1 million award, which would enable Bletchley Park to be preserved while improving its layout and accessibility.
We can all help the Trust until this award has been granted. The top ways are:
Visit the park
It’s brilliant to see and you’ll get first-hand information about the war effort from the friendliest museum staff you could ever hope to meet. Then there are the special events throughout the year, including the Battle of Britain flyby. You can view the upcoming calendar of events online at www.bletchleypark.org.uk. Tickets cost £10 for adults (£8 for concessions), £6 for children (under 12s are free), and a family ticket is just £22.50. Tickets are valid for 12 months, so they’re great value.
Donate money
If you can’t make a visit, why not donate some money instead? Visit the website and choose to leave a donation and your help will see that future generations can visit the park and see how important it is.
Write to your MP
Write to your MP and demand that the government provides financial support to Bletchley Park in order to ensure its long term future. You can find out who your MP is by going to www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/
Get your friends involved
No matter which route you take, get your friends to do the same thing. With these simple steps, Bletchley Park can get the money and recognition it deserves.
VIST THE SITE!
A visit is one of the most rewarding things that you can do. You can see original Enigma machines to get an idea of what the Germans used to encode their messages. Then there’s the completed building work of Alan Turing’s Hut 8, where you can see the great man’s office as it was when he left. This is complete down to the tea mug he chained to his radiator to stop people stealing it; he later lost the key, but continued to drink from it anyway. Inside the hut, you can see the communications room and see how people would have worked during the war.
Moving on to H-block, you enter the National Museum of Computing. Here you can see the love that volunteers have put into the site with a working replica of the Bombe, decrypting actual Enigma messages. There you can speak to a real Wren about her experiences working during wartime – first-hand information that you simply cannot get anywhere else.
There’s also the Colossus rebuild project, undertaken by Tony Sale. Incredibly, he managed to assemble parts from the age (BT was handily decommissioning some of its exchanges that used the exact parts Tommy Flowers used in the original Colossus), while working from eight wartime pictures of the machine, plus some fragments of circuit diagrams that engineers sneakily held on to. Importantly, he had help from Arnold Lunch who designed the reader system in 1942. It’s incredible to see in operation and you can still find Sale onsite and happy to talk people through the workings of the machine.
It’s these interactions and incredible sights that mean that Bletchely Park isn’t just one of the most important places in history, it’s also one of the most interesting to visit. With more visitors and more money, Bletchley Park can only get better and better, and more people will recognise the amazing work that was done here. With your help you can repay Bletchley Park for the work it did in saving us, and save it.
FURTHER READING
Tony Sale’s guide to cryptography
http://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/
Description of Colossus
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2008-09/colossus/index.html
The history from the trust
