Britain's Best Kept Secret, Literally (Bletchley Park)

Member Name: sandyback75

Product:	Bletchley Park
Date:	05/04/06 (830 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Day Out, Informative, Interesting

Disadvantages: None

What Happened At Bletchley Park?
===========================

In 1939 a large collection of mathematicians, chess champions, linguists and many others made their way to a country mansion in the Berkshire countryside. However, until 1979, if you'd ask them what they were doing they would have been unable to tell you. It's not that they didn't know, it's just that they were bound by a small piece of red tape known as the official secrets act.

For at Bletchley Park they were playing a vital role in the war effort. They were breaking the German Enigma code. It is estimated that the work done at Bletchley shortened the war by two years, saving countless lives.


The Enigma of The Enigma Code
==========================

Of course, this was not an easy task and required the best minds in the country. Most of them eccentric in one way or another.

The German Enigma machine took the letter pressed and passed it through a set of rotors with specific wiring on them that illuminated an unrelated letter to the operator who then transmitted that letter. An Enigma machine receiving a message would be set up the same as the one sending and key in the encoded letters illuminating the original letters. The Enigma's greatest weakness as a machine is that it would never encipher a letter as the letter itself. In other words the letter E would never ever be encoded as a letter E.

Even so, the odds against breaking the Enigma code are 150,000,000,000 to one. The Germans understandably believed that it was impossible to break. However, partly due to this complacency, it was eventually broken.

Alan Turing, a mathematician and genius along with Gordon Welchman built a machine know as the Bombe that exploited the above mentioned weakness in Enigma.


The Ultimate Challenge
===================

Enigma was not the only code to be broken at Bletchley. Hitler and his top staff had their own cipher that was many times more complicated than Enigma to break. The machine that was used to create the code was called the Lorenz.

The Lorenz machine used a method known as modula-2 addition to encode and decode the message. The letter being encoded had a random letter added to it and this was then transmitted. The receiving Lorenz machine set to the same settings as the one encoding added the same letter to the text and using modula-2 addition they cancelled each other out leaving the original letter.

Unfortunately for the Germans, as the Lorenz machine being a machine cannot generate a totally random number, it could only ever be pseudo random, so that made it possible to break.

However, by hand it could take weeks to break a message if at all, and by that time the information was usually useless. The Post Office's R&D department were approached about building a machine to speed up the process. Most thought it impossible except one man. Tommy Flowers. He devised a machine that used valves and was nothing less than the world's first programmable computer. It read paper tape using an optical tape reader. Flower's extraordinary computer could cut down the time taken breaking these vitally important messages to hours.


A Visit To Bletchley Park
===================

I visited Bletchley when I had to go to Milton Keynes with my girlfriend and had most of the day spare. I had wanted to go for years, so I was excited, even though it was freezing cold and raining quite heavily. After purchasing the tickets we were directed into the mansion.

It is a large building with a dome on the roof at the left, brick built. Inside the house we were greeted by a nice woman volunteer who gave us our time for the next tour. In the meantime we wondered about the excellent war exhibitions in the house.

After a short wait we were invited into one of the rooms and given a short lecture by on of the guides. Our party had seven people in it ourselves included. This gave a foundation for the rest of the tour. Our guide was very informative and obviously had a real passion about the place.

Other than the main house there are a series of huts. During the war each Hut had a dedicated task. For example, Huts six and eight were dedicated to breaking the Naval Enigma code. Most of the huts are still there. One has been converted into a canteen.

We were taken outside and around the back of the house and show where a bomber had dropped it's bombs, destroying one of the huts. The Y station, known as Station X (because it was station number ten). A Y station is an intercept station listening in on German messages sent in Morse code.

From there we were shown the Polish war memorial. Poland took many of the first steps towards breaking the Enigma code before they were invaded. Necessity being the mother of invention. Their contribution to breaking the code cannot be underestimated.

We were then taken into one of the huts where there is a replica Bombe. The Bombe was a machine that made finding the key settings for a message much quicker. The replica was built for the film Enigma, there is a working one being made. The machine is a large box with multicoloured drums on the front. When the machine had finished its run the key settings it has found were tried on a real Enigma machine to see if it came out with plain German.

You are then left at a museum of all things World War II and Enigma. There is also a large and growing collection of computers. There is an original four rotor Enigma machine on display. The four rotor Enigma was used mostly by the German Navy, of course this extra rotor made the possible number of keys exponentially greater. This new addition stopped the code breakers for months allowing the German U-Boats free reign in the North Atlantic. Eventually it was worked that in order to communicate with regular three rotor Enigmas one of the 26 positions the fourth rotor had no effect, making it in effect just another regular Enigma machine.

In total the tour lasted around 45 minutes. There is also an extensive museum dedicated to Winston Churchill. It's probably worth setting aside at least three hours for a visit to be able to take in everything.


Conclusion
=========

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Bletchley Park. Everyone who works there has a real enthusiasm for the place. If you are interested in code breaking and the second world war then you can't fail to be fascinated by the story.

My only disappointment was that I didn't get to see the Colossus rebuild that was being re-housed at the time of our visit. That's a great excuse for another visit (in summer next time).

They get no Government of Lottery funding so I would encourage people to support them before this vitally important piece of modern history is lost forever. I would hate to see a housing or industrial estate built there. Don't forget to make your entrance fee a donation, you have to sign something so that the Tax man doesn't get his fat greasy hands on it.

Thanks for reading.


Further Reading And Information
==========================

Station X, The Code breakers Of Bletchley Park book.
Station X, the Channel Four programme available on video.
The Code Book By Simon Singh


Admission Charges And Opening Times
=============================

Adults: £10.00
Concessions: £8.00 (OAPs, students with valid ID card and children aged 8 to 16)
Children under 8 admitted free of charge
Family Ticket: £25.00 (Two adults + Two children aged 8 to 16)

All WW2 veterans are admitted to Bletchley Park free of charge.


Opening Times
============

Bletchley Park will re-open on 1st April 2006. The opening times are different for weekdays and weekends:
Weekday - 9.30am to 5.00pm. Last admission at 3.30pm.
Weekend - 10.30am to 5.00pm. Last admission at 3.30pm.


Parking
======

On weekdays - parking is available on-site for £3.00, redeemable when £10.00 or more is spent in a single transaction either in the gift shop or on catering.

On weekends - car parking is available on-site for £5.00, again fully refundable when £12.00 or more is spent in a single transaction in either the gift shop or on catering.

We parked on the Bletchley train station car park on a Saturday and it was free and only a short walk the Bletchley Park.

Contacting Bletchley Park
====================

The Mansion
Bletchley Park
Milton Keynes
MK3 6EB

Telephone: 01908 640404
Bletchley Shop: 01908 272671

Summary: A Fascinating Day Out