Enigma, Bletchley Park and the Battle of the Atlantic

I attended a very interesting BCS talk last night hosted by the West Yorkshire Branch about Enigma, Bletchley Park and the Battle of the Atlantic.

Dr Mark Baldwin is a superb speaker; he spoke about Enigma machine itself, the decoding efforts started by the Poles in the early 1930's, subsequent wartime efforts to break the codes, the machines used to aid in this process, the effects that code breaking had on the battle of the Atlantic and Bletchley Park itself for 2 hours without any notes! At the end of the talk, there was also the opportunity to examine a rare 4-rotor Enigma machine that Dr Baldwin had brought with him.

I was particularly intrigued to hear that the Germans thought that the sheer number of possible combinations that the Enigma machine allowed for (3 × 10114, a number significantly larger than the number of atoms in the observable universe!) precluded anyone being able to decode their messages; an assumption that remained until many years after the war. The rotors used with the Enigma machine were also not rewired at any point during the war. In addition, because they assumed that nobody could read the messages produced by such a system, they made very little effort to break the codes produced by our Typex system!

I was also saddened to see the state that Bletchley Park is now in. Many of the huts where so much incredibly important work was carried out are in a very poor state, some have even already been destroyed. Bletchley Park has receives no external funding and has been deemed ineligible for Heritage Lottery funding. I would urge you to sign the petition located at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BletchleyPark/ in the hope that the government will do something to help save this crucial piece of British history.

On a happier note, Robert mentioned to me that Black Marble does sponsor Bletchley Park! I look forward to being able to visit in the near future.