THG visit to Bletchley Park on Saturday 16th October 1999

Bltechley Park Swapmeet

Bletchley Park hosted a THG swapmeet in hut 14 which had once been home to the DTN-Defence Teleprinter Network, a very important part of the communications to the site.
Ken Bennett arrived in a green Post Office Telephones 5cwt Anglia van, serial number U230840, Telephone Manager, Portsmouth, which had been beautifully restored and was complete with authentic signwriting and reproduction banner adverts from the late Sixties; 'Be a Girofirst' National Giro and 'It's so cheap to phone your friends after six and at weekends.'

Ken Bennett & U230840

"Dolls-Eye" Switchboard
Our tour guide, John Pether recounted to us the early history of the Mansion, and a summary of the events leading up to the many code breaking activities on the site during the war. He briefly explained how each machine was used to help the mathematicians/crypto-analysists guess the wheel settings and thence decode the majority of the war messages. The information from each hut played a vital part in the processes, but secrecy meant that very few people were allowed to know the work of other sections within the Park. The success of Bletchey was the combination of all the seemingly insignificant messages to form a coherent whole, which was of course, the Ultra achievement.  [BP was known as Winston Churchill's Ultra Secret] 

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