Most of the operation there we knew about, having read descriptions of it and seen some TV programs devoted to it. So we did know that they had a de-coding operation and that they had managed to discover how Enigma worked. We even knew that the British had "liberated" a Germany Navy machine from a captured U-boat, which is how they were able to track and sink most of the German U-boats. What we didn’t know was that the Polish Intelligence Service had already broken the code in the 1930’s, and even had built their own Enigma machine. Before Poland was overrun, the British were given the machine and the information. Apparently the young Polish scholar who did this work was killed during the war, but he certainly was one of the great heroes of the war.
We also were surprised to find that the British Secret Service was using pigeons in WWII to keep in touch with operatives in occupied territory. There was a pigeon loft at Bletchley Park. We knew that the first computer was built for the decoding operation and that it had been disbanded in secrecy on Churchill’s orders after the war. As a result, the young British engineer who designed it didn’t receive credit for his invention until long after the event. Furthermore, and perhaps more important, because all of the documentation had been destroyed, work on designing a computer after the war had to begin from scratch.
All of this was interesting, but even more remarkable to those of us who still struggle with concepts of engineering and math, was the fact that 9,000-10,000 people worked at this facility. There were almost a dozen long shacks similar to barracks. It was manned around the clock by de-coding people, WRENs (the Women’s Royal Navy) and other Navy personnel, army and air force personnel – thousands on every shift. The operation was designed to decode intercepted messages within hours and pass them along to the key personnel in each military service unit so that they would know exactly what the Nazi’s were planning very shortly after the Nazi’s received the message. (continued......)
