St Mary's Calne
During Academic Enrichment Week, UIV went to Bletchley Park to learn about the incredible achievements of Britain's World War Two codebreakers, in the place where it happened. Bletchley Park is an English country house and estate in Milton Keynes which was the home of codebreaking during WWII. The secret work carried out saved thousands of lives, and wasn't made public until many years after. Here, Renee reports on their visit:
We went to Bletchley Park to see the codebreaking machines and hear the stories of the women who worked all day on codebreaking during the Second World War.
During the War, the code used by the Germans was formed by creating certain rules - for example, rotating the alphabet twice - and putting that into a machine. This means that they could write the things they wanted without it being understood by English soldiers. The code would have been passed on to the next person, who then sent it out by Morse code to their teammate who would be waiting with a radio to receive the code. They will then input the code into a machine that reverses how the code was created in order to generate the message.
During the day, we did our own codebreaking activities; it was an amazing experience to see the history and take part in the activities.
Renee, UIV