by Sue Black
“This is sacred ground. If this isn’t worth preserving, what is?”
I spent the train ride home bending John’s ear. How could we help raise awareness of the importance of the site and help it survive? What could we do? Not only to share the stories and legacy of Bletchley Park, but also to ensure that it didn’t have to close its gates forever?
“We must do something about this,” I said. “But what?”
I start a “Saving Bletchley Park” blog
I arrived in London that evening full of energy. John and I had had a great chat about how wonderful Bletchley Park was and how we wanted to do something to help raise awareness of its plight.
I decided that I was going to start a campaign, though looking back, I realise I had already started my campaign the week before, when I sent that first email to CPHC. I also decided that my campaign needed a blog. I wasn’t quite sure how to go about setting one up, but luckily Chris Maigler, a great guy who’s married to my friend Maria Margeti, offered to help. I had chatted to Maria and Chris a couple of times about Bletchley Park, and being computer scientists themselves they both felt the same way that I did and wanted to help. Chris has a digital design company, Brave Media and said that he would be very happy to set up and host a blog for me through his company. I jumped at the chance and I’m eternally grateful to Chris for giving me that encouragement and opportunity. The blog ended up being a very important part of the campaign.
I had taken a few photos whilst at Bletchley Park for the reception, so I wrote a bit of text about our trip to go along with the photos and hit “post”, and, lo-and-behold, I was a blogger.
My first entry wasn’t earth-shattering, but it described what we had seen and done at the reception. Reading it back now, my words seem ominous. I had no clue then what was going to happen over the next few years. I naively thought that if we started a campaign, it would take less than a year to make sure that Bletchley Park was financially secure. Little did I know it was going to take quite a bit longer than that . . .
That first ever post, along with all of my campaign blog posts, can be seen at savingbletchleypark.org.
Bletchley Park visit
Tuesday 1 July 2008
Went to a reception at Bletchley Park with my colleague from the University of Westminster John Turner who is also a passionate supporter. We had an interesting tour of the site. Although delighted to have a good look around the site I was quite shocked at the state of some of the huts which appeared to be almost falling down. One in particular was covered at one end by a blue tarpaulin to keep out the rain. I took a few photographs.
Hut 3 We saw the Colossus and Bombe machines which have been rebuilt over the last few years by two remarkable men: Tony Sale and John Harper, supported by teams of enthusiasts, their dedication is amazing and an example to us all. We also got to see an Enigma machine and had a talk from the artist who has created a marvellous sculpture of Alan Turing.
John Turner, Alan Turing and me We had a really interesting and educational visit to Bletchley Park, but on the way home I could not get the picture of the hut with the blue tarpaulin out of my head. I have to do something to ensure that it and the other huts along with the rest of the site are saved . . .
Me and the Enigma machine
A letter to The Times
Over the next few days I kept an eye on the Downing Street petition, started writing regular content for my blog, and wondered what we could do next. I met up with John after a few days and we had a chat over coffee in the University of Westminster refectory. I was really keen that we should do something else to highlight Bletchley Park and its situation. I had gained confidence from the reaction of the CPHC members. Many computer science heads and professors thought the same way that we did – that meant we had support from an important group of powerful people. Bletchley Park mattered and we needed to do something to make sure that everyone else realised both its significant achievements and its extreme financial need.
As we chatted, my mind was focused on one thing.
“What can we do next, John? We need to keep the impetus going!”
John had a great idea: “Why don’t we write a letter to The Times?”
I thought it was a wonderful plan. A letter in The Times would hopefully mean that we’d draw some significant attention to Bletchley Park’s situation. I’d never written a letter to a newspaper before, and wasn’t quite sure what it should include, so I asked John to draft it and he said he’d be happy to. John emailed me a draft of the letter the very next day, and I sent it out to CPHC; I was sure that at least a few members would sign it and then I could send it in to the newspaper.
Subject: Saving Bletchley Park
From: Dr Sue Black
To: CPHC
Sent: 14 July 2008 17:51
Dear all,
Many thanks to the very many of you who along with me signed the Bletchley Park petition recently. As Simon Greenish, the Director of Bletchley Park pointed out to me, the Bletchley Park petition now ranks higher on the popularity list than the petition asking for a knighthood for Bruce Forsyth. Excellent news, well done everyone ;-)
This email is a bid to take the campaign one step further. I went to Bletchley Park this month taking in a wonderful guided tour of the site. Whilst absolutely amazed by the history and the interesting and exciting stories of the fabulous work that went on there during WWII I was horrified to see the state of some of the huts where the codebreaking took place. One hut in particular is falling apart and has a blue tarpaulin nailed over one end (small photo attached), to be honest I found it quite distressing.
I came home determined to do more. So, I am appealing to you again to help me continue with the campaign to save Bletchley Park.
Pasted below this email is a letter drafted by John Turner, a colleague of mine at the University of Westminster, which I would like you to read and ‘sign’ if you agree by replying to this email with your name and affiliation. We will send the letter along with signatories to the Times newspaper in approximately ten days time. If you know of any computing pioneers or others whose signatures you think may add weight to the campaign please do feel free to forward this request.
Apologies for taking up your time with another email on this subject, but I believe that, not only is this a cause worth fighting for, but also that time is of the essence, a hut from the 1940s covered in a tarpaulin is not going to last for ever.
Best regards
Sue
Within five minutes of sending my email around, I had several “signatures” coming in. The first was Professor Bill Roscoe, Director of the Oxford University Computing Laboratory, who replied at 17:51, within seconds of reading my email. Professor Roscoe was followed swiftly by Professors Peter Jimack and Roger Boyle from Leeds University at 17:52 and 17:53 respectively, and then Professor Nigel Smart from Bristol University at 17:57. It was looking good – I was sure that we would get enough signatures for the letter after such an auspicious start, and indeed email “signatures” from professors across the country continued to come in all evening. By the time I went to bed that night I knew that we would have enough, and I fell asleep happy.
04
Establishing Station X
“Nothing I did at Bletchley had any connection with my degree course in mathematics. But important facets of one’s mental make-up are deeply influenced by the nature ... of one’s education. Characteristics which were in great demand at BP were a creative imagination, a well-developed critical faculty, and a habit of meticulousness.”
—Unnamed mathematician[6]
The establishment of Station X wasn’t a response to war; it was a response to the threat of war. The house and grounds were bought in the spring of 1938 by Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair for use as an evacuation site for the already well-established MI6 and the Government Code and Cipher School[7] should war brea
k out and London be subjected to bombing raids. Astonishingly, he bought it with £7,500 of his own money – a huge sum back then – because he got fed up with waiting for the various Whitehall departmental bureaucrats to make a decision about who would fund the purchase. It’s assumed that he never got paid back, as he died in November 1939.
Sinclair, known to his friends and colleagues as “Quex”,[8] was, at the time of the purchase, a seasoned spymaster. He was the Director of British Naval Intelligence between 1919 and 1921 and then “C” – head of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), better known to us today as MI6. By 1938, he was running Section D, an MI6 unit dedicated to carrying out covert military operations and sabotage overseas. During the war, Section D would be amalgamated into the Special Operations Executive (SOE).
In September 1938, Sinclair organised a dry run of evacuation procedures by moving some of his codebreakers and other staff from London to Bletchley. Being something of a bon viveur he also took his favourite chef from the Savoy Grill, and the displaced workers ate very handsomely during the rehearsal. Known as “Captain Ridley’s Shooting Party” – due to the move being organised by an SIS administrative officer called Captain W H W Ridley – the group of middle-aged men and young women selected by Sinclair and his staff must have made the villagers in nearby Bletchley wonder whether something scandalously naughty was going on at the big house. What Sinclair learned from the dry run was that more space would be needed for staff. Convinced that war was inevitable, he therefore engaged the previous owner of the Bletchley Park Estate, property developer Captain Hubert Faulkner, to build the iconic huts in which so much was later to be achieved.
Meanwhile, events in Europe were escalating. The German military had begun mobilising in August 1938 and, by May 1939, had invaded Czechoslovakia and signed pacts with Russia and Italy. The invasion of Poland in September would signal Great Britain’s declaration of war. However, Sinclair had seen the signs and had made preparations.
Back in 1937, he had confided in Alastair Denniston, the head of the GC&CS, that he was convinced that war was inevitable. He then gave instructions for the school to locate and recruit the kinds of people who might be useful if war broke out. “The Emergency List” that was subsequently drawn up included many now well-known names such as Frank Adcock, Peter Twinn, Gordon Welchman, Hugh Alexander and Alan Turing. Then, in December 1938, Sinclair prepared a dossier for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in which he described Adolf Hitler as “possessing the characteristics of fanaticism, mysticism, ruthlessness, cunning, vanity, moods of exaltation and depression, fits of bitter and self-righteous resentment, and what can only be termed a streak of madness; but with it all there is a great tenacity of purpose, which has often been combined with extraordinary clarity of vision”. Six months later, in August 1939, a month before the declaration of war, Sinclair began moving his staff into Bletchley Park.
The winter of 1939/1940 was very cold. In January, the snow lay thick on the ground and the lake was frozen. The ice was sufficiently strong to allow the staff to skate upon it. A photograph exists of the skaters but it is a rare treasure; even before the declaration of hostilities, secrecy was everything and no photography was allowed. Perhaps it was deemed safe to take this photo because it was outside of the buildings and revealed no more than people having innocent fun.
At this point Station X had around 250 staff, mostly working on analysing message traffic and early ciphers. This work was an invaluable build up to what was to come – the breaking of the complex Enigma cipher – as it provided the codebreakers with many of the common words and phrases that would provide “cribs”, a best guess translation of part of a later Enigma-coded message.
The interception of enemy messages, or Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), had three distinct phases: Phase 1 was the signal interception itself. Radio operators trained in Morse code used log forms to record conversations and messages along with time, radio frequency, signal strength and direction. “We were there at that table, two or three girls. Everyone had a set. And we would listen for eight hours, every day,” says Margaret Reardon. “We used to do running hand when the messages came in. I could barely speak French so I just tried to write it down as best as I could and hope people would understand it.” Phase 2 was TA – traffic analysis. This used the information from SIGINT to plot up a map of where radio transmissions were originating from and of who was talking to whom. By doing so, they were able to focus resources on those sites that seemed to be most important. Some of this was done at Station X. The final Phase 3 was cryptoanalysis, the deciphering of any encoded traffic. As the arena of war expanded, so did the number of coded messages. At the height of its workload, BP was decoding and translating an average of around 4,000 messages per day.
The initial wave of codebreakers soon outgrew the space offered by the mansion. The huts weren’t yet built and they couldn’t move upstairs as that was occupied by MI6. So they spread out, first into the coach house/garage, then into the buildings around the stableyard, such as the fruit store. The tack and feed store had already been converted into three cottages, one of which housed the Budd family, who maintained the estate. Cottage 1 was used for meetings, but Cottage 3 was set aside for the top codebreakers. It was here that the first true breakthroughs occurred, led by the brilliant Dilwyn “Dilly” Knox, a veteran of WWI code breaking who was normally stationed at the Admiralty in London.
Knox, an expert in reading ancient papyrus, was a fellow at Cambridge when World War I broke out and he had received the call to join Room 40 at the Admiralty, a department involved in decrypting enemy communications. He was to stay there for the duration of the war and helped to decode many important messages, most notably the infamous Zimmermann Telegram. This was sent to the German ambassador in Mexico by Foreign Secretary Arthur Zimmermann who proposed that, if America entered the war, Germany would happily form an alliance with Mexico and support them in retaking Texas and some of the Southern states. The decryption of the telegram was a major factor in bringing the USA into the war. At the end of hostilities, Knox joined the GC&CS and eventually became chief cryptographer.
Something of an eccentric, Knox’s office at the Admiralty was the tiny Room 53, which contained a bath. Many of his greatest breakthroughs came to him while soaking, a fact that inspired his colleague Frank Birch to pen the lines:
“The sailor in Room 53
Has never, it’s true, been to sea;
But, though not in a boat,
He has yet served afloat,
In a bath at the Admiralty.”
Between the wars, Knox stayed on as a codebreaker while also continuing with his academic studies. A man known to get totally absorbed in his work, he was once so distracted that he forgot to invite two of his three brothers to his wedding, and he permanently damaged his eyesight while studying fragments of papyri in the British Museum.[9] Despite this, at the onset of war, he bought a motorbike and volunteered for night despatch work because, to his peculiar form of logic, his poor eyesight meant that he was as good a rider at night as by day.[10] Tall and angular – his uniform was said to have “hung on him like a sack” – and hesitant and shy, especially around women, he earned himself the nickname of “Erm” due to his tendency to become tongue-tied during conversation.
When the Enigma cipher machine became available in 1920, work at the Admiralty kicked up a gear. Enigma’s inventor, a German engineer called Arthur Scherbius, had originally developed it for commercial use, such as in banking, but the German military soon saw its potential, adopting it for Naval use in 1926 and for the Army a few years later. Scherbius himself would never see the impact his invention would have on world events as he was killed in an accident involving a horse carriage in 1929.
By the time war was declared, Station X was already functioning as an efficient code breaking department. As the war progressed it would face huge, seemingly impossible challenges. But, as history can now show, it woul
d not only face them but conquer them, helping to shorten the war by at least two years and saving an estimated 22 million lives.
05
Bletchley Park in the news
I woke up the next morning, thinking:
“A letter in The Times is great, but we need more publicity. If we are going to get support for Bletchley Park quickly, we need to make as big a splash as possible.”
I went off to work ruminating on what else I could do to raise awareness and spent all day with that thought in the back of my mind. By the afternoon I had decided to ask for help.
A couple of years previously I had been awarded a National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Crucible Award. The award meant that I got to spend four long weekends over one year hanging out with 29 other people who had PhDs and were keen on public engagement, changing the world and making a difference. They were, and still are, a wonderful bunch of people.
Our weekends away were spent in a different location each time and involved listening to interesting and diverse lectures by experts on topics as different as economic forecasting, molecular gastronomy and modern art. We also had really uplifting, mind-changing sessions in areas like working out our Myers Briggs personality types. I learnt a lot and gained so much confidence from the Crucible programme.
One of the great people I met through the Crucible experience was Viv Parry. She led some of the sessions, including one on how the press and media work and how to work with them to best effect. I decided to ask Viv for help with my Bletchley Park campaign.
I sent her an email that afternoon telling her about the campaign and the letter, and asking for advice on how to get the issue more publicity.
Subject: Advice please
From: Dr Sue Black