Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [62]
In the midst of these events, Joan Murray gave a short description of Alan Turing, and his own gentle abstraction. ‘I can remember Alan Turing coming in as usual for a day’s leave,’ she wrote, ‘doing his own mathematical research at night, in the warmth and light of the office, without interrupting the routine of daytime sleep.’ Another veteran recalls Turing’s abstraction when being congratulated for his work by a senior ranking officer, while later, Hugh Alexander was to say of Turing’s role that ‘Turing thought it [naval Enigma] could be broken because it would be so interesting to break it … Turing first got interested in the problem for the typical reason that “no one else was doing anything about it and I could have it to myself.”’3
No better example then, of the partnership between unfettered mathematical inquiry and the national interest. For much of that summer, Bletchley was able to read the majority of German naval Enigma messages, and in so doing could provide protection beyond value to British shipping. In the days before either America or Russia had joined the conflict, and when Britain was standing quite alone, this feat could easily be counted as one of the decisive points in the war.
There were other examples in 1941 of just how vital the work at Bletchley was. It was entirely thanks to the decoders that the British were forewarned of the German intention to target not Malta – despite the false impression the Germans were trying to give – but Crete. In spite of this advance warning, Crete was to fall, but the warning did perhaps help with the evacuation of some 17,000 troops. Elsewhere, similarly, amid the generally dispiriting progress of the war in Africa, an Enigma decrypt concerning the size and formation of Rommel’s forces at the Halfaya Pass on the Egyptian border offered at least the consolation prize of enabling the British forces to escape being crushed.
There was also the fantastic coup of the Bismarck. In May 1941, this mighty and formidable battleship, commanded by Admiral Lutjens, had sunk the British vessel HMS Hood. Out of the crew of 2,500 men, only three survived. A few days later the Royal Navy had, with the help of Bletchley, tracked the position of the Bismarck. In an effort to conceal the fact that the signals had been intercepted, it was arranged for the air force to fly two or three reconnaissance planes over the area, to give the Bismarck’s crew the impression that this was how they had been spotted.
In fact, the Bletchley Park intercepts had been the result of a certain amount of serendipity. Jane Fawcett MBE was there as the scenario unfolded. She recalls:
‘I was in Hut 6 and on the occasion of the Bismarck codes, I worked a 24-hour shift all the way through. We intercepted a message from one of the senior military commanders in Berlin – he was asking German High Command for the whereabouts of the Bismarck because his son was on board. His message went: “Where is my son?” And the message back told him. The Bismarck was at Brest.’ Interestingly, in 1974, the late Diana Plowman made an inscription for the benefit of her family in her copy of Frederick Winterbotham’s book. In this inscription, she gave a miniature portrait of life at the Park. And at the very end – again, solely for the benefit of her relatives – she wrote: ‘But the Bismarck was my own special piece of luck.’
After the message was intercepted, a ring of British warships attacked the Bismarck. In all, 2,300 of its crew drowned. The mighty symbol of the strength of the German navy was scuttled. The effect in Germany was serious. One senior Reich figure observed: ‘The Führer is melancholy beyond words.’
The activity prior to this great triumph had been similarly intense in Hut 4. One veteran recalls cots, or small camp beds, being moved in so that the personnel concerned