Any British Historians out there

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I need to know what the cover story was for the people who worked at Bletchley Park. I know they didn't run around with name tags that said German Secret Code Breakers. What did the people of Milton Keynes think they were doing.

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Bletchley Park

Rhona McCloud's picture

I bought this book you might find useful although I haven't read it yet. I got it after reading that at the first reunion after about 50 years a married couple found they both worked there but had never told the other.

Rhona McCloud

Cover story

I don't believe there was a single cover story for the groundbreaking work done at Bletchley Park, people were more willing to accept that stuff happened that they just didn't need to know about, it was assumed that the women were mostly clerks and I'm almost certain that the men were looked down upon because they were doing office work and not important war work in one of the uniformed services. Many parents died thinking their children had not been involved in the fight when in reality they had dramatically shortened the war.

PS At that time Milton Keynes only existed as a small village, I'm sure the people of Bletchley, Fenny Stratford and the surrounding area were curious but knew better than to ask, in the same way as those near munitions factories or any other of the countless activities that were not directly related to the conflict but the general public were better off for not knowing.

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You can't choose your relatives but you can choose your family.

Secret installation

erin's picture

I think the cover story for Bletchley Park was that it was a training school for diplomatic personnel. And they actually had a section for that. Their initials for the real installation were GC&CS which was jokingly referred to as Golf, Chess and Cheese Society. :)

I worked for the NSA during the 1970s and we were told to refer to the NSA as XYZ (I kid you not) and the ASA (Army section) was referred to as Radio Research and we wore Signal Corps insignia on our uniforms. :) I had a clearance so high, you had to have a secret clearance to know the name of it. I used my stamp on the cartoons I drew on Top Secret papers. :) That way, no one could show them to our colonel because he only had a Top Secret clearance!

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Don't forget

Angharad's picture

the Royal Naval officer who gave his life acquiring one of the Enigma machines from a sinking U-boat, his sacrifice saved countless lives by shortening the war.

Angharad

If I am not mistaken from my military history

MadTech01's picture

They simply called it the cryptography school or code breaking school no big fancy code name like the manhatan project.
But it was the material they got from the enigma code break that was given a code name it was called Ultra.
And the information could not be used for combat operations unless they could find a way to make it look like the information came from other more reasonable sources to the germans. Because the Germans had to be kept in the dark that the info was from there own coded radio trafic using the Enigma machine. What is funny is that in the US the material from the Breaking of the Japanese Naval code during world war II by the navy was also called Ultra.

The only thing I can remember that the British ever used subtravuge to hide something in their own country was the fuel pumping station for the Normandy Beach Head. The station was on the coast and pumped fuel through a small pipeline run across the English channel during the invasion. The Pumping station looked like a simple Icecream parlor of the day from the air but if you looked at it from the ground it stood out like a sour thumb. All the locals new what it was but in Typical British Manner simply did not talk about it to avoid the location being discoved by the Germans.

Most spys the Germans had in Britain we rounded up and given a choice turn and only send what we tell you to send of be deal with as a spy in the manners allowed by the Geneva convention. Basically you can be executed without due process is found to be a spy. That is why if a German soldier ever had to do anything behind enemy lines they wore their uniforms under the civilian cloths so they could not be condemned as spy's. Because if you are on a battlefield in a military uniform you are to be treated as a POW under the Geneva Convention and can not be executed without sufficient cause as prescribed.

"Cortana is watching you!"

The importance of uniform

My history teacher once told a story about the importance of uniform, he said that flying in the desert was so unbearably hot that aircrew favoured flying in their underwear, and while officers could afford the luxury of their own underwear, the ranks were stuck with their itchy government issued garments. The rub was (pun intended) that if they were captured these officers were not wearing uniform and therefore could be treated as a spy and shot.

I do not know whether anyone was treated in this way or even if this whole thing is nothing more than urban myth, it still makes a good story though. :)

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You can't choose your relatives but you can choose your family.

Bletchley

Bletchley park personnel as has been pointed out were not given one standard cover story. As in the group themselves there was never a standard moniker for each department. The British Government at the time used various stories and titles for the work going on there. Bletchley also was not just a cryptography centre but also held some of the draughting offices for the war office and various parts therein. The main use of departmental areas was within the personnel themselves and would usually be reffered to as hut N0 so and so or room so an so.

As long as when working on a story dealing with the "park" you keep the cover stories to plausible ones with the times it gels

yours allie

Are carrots good for eyesight?

erin's picture

Well, yes, but not particularly extraordinarily; pretty much all fresh veggies, especially green and red/orange/yellow veggies have lots of vitamin A. But carrots as improving night sight was the cover story the British used during the war to delay discovery by the Germans of the British invention of radar. Americans when let in on the secret went along with the gag and it became folklore. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

MK

They were in Bletchley Park, not Milton Keynes, which was then only a small village six or so miles away. MK as a town was only formed in the sixties.

Bletchley Park

There is a new film out 'the Imitation Game' starring Benedict Cumberbatch And Keira Knightley. Here is a link;
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/?ref_=nv_sr_1
On a personal level, I spent my eighteenth birthday on a course at Bletchley Park in the early seventies.. By that time it was used for training Post Office engineers, Telegraphists etc. The nissen huts were still in use, although they had just completed a new accommodation block.
Even when I was there all women ( married or single) had to be in their rooms by 10pm and a guard was on the door to ensure no men entered the building. The windows on the ground floor only opened by about four inches..
The union had engineering members paying their dues but had never been seen in any telephone exchange. They were working for the secret service instead. The fine line between when it stopped is also a moot point. Winston Churchill ordered the computer colossus to be destroyed, but it went to GCHQ and continued to be used as the Russians carried on using the confiscated Enigma machines after the second world war, unaware that the codes had been broken.

Love to All

Anne G.

The secret war

Greetings

Another aspect of the decoding of messages at Bletchley Park was how the messages were collected.

At the outbreak of the war all the radio amateurs in the UK had their licences revoked and equipment impounded. Then it was discovered they needed people who could receive messages sent by radio in Morse Code. Some of those radio operators were given their receivers back, with instructions to monitor and copy the radio traffic. That information was forwarded to Bletchley Park by motorcycle dispatch riders.

It was only a few years ago I discovered I knew one of the monitor operators and he did not tell me the story.

Brian