Bletchley Park has been on Ross' bucket list for a while, so we decided we'd get going early and spend the day there. Even so, after a train, a tube and another train, it was just on midday when we arrived. After getting our bearings (it's a huge estate) and looking through the displays in block C, we ate lunch- an egg and bacon sandwich with an elderflower sparkling water for me- and then headed up to the Mansion to join the 1pm tour. Our guide was very informative and we found out everything we wanted to know which no one knew about till 30 years after the war finished. It was fascinating! We heard about the lives of some of the men and women who worked here during the war- over 9,000 on round-the-clock shifts, so 3,000 people coming and going every eight hours and no one in the village ever questioned it. It was wartime I suppose.
This was the place that the codebreakers worked day and night to break the Enigma codes- the Germans made a new code every single day so every single day it had to be broken. The Enigma machine had initially three rotating wheels so when a letter was typed, another letter was selected, I think 25x25x25 possibilities- the only thing that wasn't possible was the same letter was selected! Not much of a hint! As the war progressed, the Germans increased the difficulty of the Enigma machine by adding more wheels. Hitler also had a machine called a Lorenz whose code could only be cracked with the help of Colossus (a huge computer) and Tunny ( to decipher the code). They helped the D-Day invasion succeed by fooling Hitler into thinking they would land near Calais- so very very clever!
The operation started in The Mansion before the war and rapidly expanded to many huts where 3,000 people worked. The Mansion itself wasn't very old by English standards built in the late 1870's and was purchased by the Leon family in 1882. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk if you want to know more. The saddest thing was Alan Turing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing who was a major driving force in the development of machines to speed up the decrypting process was found guilty as a homosexual after the war and committed suicide by biting an apple coated in cyanide, whereas the German commander behind the Enigma machines was released after 3 years in jail. No charges were laid.
I tend to get carried away with history and its injustices. I sat sunning myself by the lake (it was a glorious day) while Ross walked a few more miles to actually see the Colossus and Tunny machines. I sat imagining what it would have been like to have been one of the workers back then. They had recordings at points around the lake of meetings between young men and women who worked there, so it was not too difficult to put myself back in history. The park itself is very peaceful with so much history that was secret for so long!
We then trained it back to Euston and headed to Joe and Angela's for a delicious Chinese takeaway, washed down with an Argentinian red- very multicultural. Joe dropped us back to our apartment- I don't think we could have managed an eight bus trip today- and once again I was showered and in bed asleep in seconds.
This was the place that the codebreakers worked day and night to break the Enigma codes- the Germans made a new code every single day so every single day it had to be broken. The Enigma machine had initially three rotating wheels so when a letter was typed, another letter was selected, I think 25x25x25 possibilities- the only thing that wasn't possible was the same letter was selected! Not much of a hint! As the war progressed, the Germans increased the difficulty of the Enigma machine by adding more wheels. Hitler also had a machine called a Lorenz whose code could only be cracked with the help of Colossus (a huge computer) and Tunny ( to decipher the code). They helped the D-Day invasion succeed by fooling Hitler into thinking they would land near Calais- so very very clever!
The operation started in The Mansion before the war and rapidly expanded to many huts where 3,000 people worked. The Mansion itself wasn't very old by English standards built in the late 1870's and was purchased by the Leon family in 1882. http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk if you want to know more. The saddest thing was Alan Turing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing who was a major driving force in the development of machines to speed up the decrypting process was found guilty as a homosexual after the war and committed suicide by biting an apple coated in cyanide, whereas the German commander behind the Enigma machines was released after 3 years in jail. No charges were laid.
I tend to get carried away with history and its injustices. I sat sunning myself by the lake (it was a glorious day) while Ross walked a few more miles to actually see the Colossus and Tunny machines. I sat imagining what it would have been like to have been one of the workers back then. They had recordings at points around the lake of meetings between young men and women who worked there, so it was not too difficult to put myself back in history. The park itself is very peaceful with so much history that was secret for so long!
We then trained it back to Euston and headed to Joe and Angela's for a delicious Chinese takeaway, washed down with an Argentinian red- very multicultural. Joe dropped us back to our apartment- I don't think we could have managed an eight bus trip today- and once again I was showered and in bed asleep in seconds.
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