U4s Visit Bletchley Park

On Wednesday 6 November, the U4s took a trip to Bletchley Park, the famous 19th-century mansion and estate in Milton Keynes that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War.

Melissa J kindly gave an account of their interesting trip:

At the beginning of November, the U4’s went to Bletchley Park. On the way there we watched the film ‘The Imitation Game’ which gave us a rough idea of the historical events that happened at Bletchley and how important it was to everything that happened in World War II.

When we arrived we split into groups and looked around the huts where all of the work happened. This was where the women intercepted the messages that the Germans were sending to each other, which had been coded using the Enigma machines.

Then we were given a tour where we learned about the thousands of people who were working there and how the messages were intercepted; then we had a go at cracking some codes ourselves.

We were also given the amazing opportunity to use an actual Enigma machine and how to change the different settings, so that we saw exactly why there were so many possible combinations and why it was so hard to break.