CAF visit to Bletchley Park

Bletchley park is the world famous home of the code breakers, mathematicians, analysts and engineers, who worked throughout WW2 to break the famous German Enigma code, in addition to many other code and cypher secret works on Japanese codes.  Home of the GC&CS (Government Code and Cypher School) forerunner to the modern GCHQ. These vital activities , producing the "Ultra" intelligence were deemed to have shortened the war by at least two years, saving thousands of lives. Winston Churchill said that Bletchley was "The Goose who laid the golden eggs" when referring to the strategic advantage that "Ultra" intelligence gave the war British and American planners in the allied command.  CAF Members were privileged to see the original huts and primitive equipment used to laboriously decode and de-cypher these "Unbreakable" codes.  It was especially good to see the newly opened exhibit sponsored by BT Plc (British Telecom), on the D-Day invasion.  This original teleprinter room used to send out "Utra" to high commands has been fully restored and now houses a great interpretation room on work at Bletchley, by the telecommunications fore-runners to BT, the GPO (General Post Office -Telephones Organisation) of the UK government.   Special note should be made of the "Bombe" decoding machines, and the "Colossus"- the worlds first electo-mechanical programmable computer...  A Very humbling place to visit when you see pieces of ticker tape and handwritten paper, with meaningless numbers and letter codes....but behind that story are the thousands of lives saved , and the course of history determined in all theaters of Allied war in WW2, from the earliest days during the period Britain stood alone in the Battle of Britain, and Battle of the Atlantic...through to the momentous intelligence gathering and deception plans for the ultimate invasion of Normandy in 1944.  From the bitter cold of the Arctic convoys to the heat of the Jungle in Burma,  Vital military decisions were made in all theaters by British and American Military commanders based on this information. A fascination site for CAF members to see