A Virtual Tour of Bletchley Park by Tony Sale page 3 of 5 pages illustrating Bletchley Park and its Museum

Tony Sale's Codes and Ciphers

Part 3: The Early Huts and A Block

As the volume of intercepted and deciphered communications grew, the operations could not be confined to the pre-war buildings and new wooden Huts had to be built around the Mansion. 17. The first to be built in 1939 was this small hut: Hut 1. 18. This is where Hut 2, the recreation hut, was sited. Now it is the car park, and a tall hedge hides the fuel tank. 19. The first Hut 3, a small Hut that was later superseded, stood here. Here the translation of the Enigma decrypts was set up under Cmdr. Saunders in February 1940. Again this was quarantined. The translated texts were issued to SIS as 'Secret Agent' reports to conceal yet further the true origin of the intelligence. 20. Hut 4 was built next. You can see it in the centre, to the left of the Mansion. Hut 4 was for Naval Intelligence. But Naval Intelligence soon outgrew the wooden Hut.

New brick buildings began to spread over the Park. 21. A Block was the first, and Naval Intelligence moved there from Hut 4 in 1941. 22. The intelligence for the battles against the U-boats was co-ordinated from here. 23. More teleprinter lines were urgently needed and this new teleprinter exchange was built in 1942. The building behind was the new teleprinter room with 350 teleprinters, a really noisy environment to work in. We are close to the heart of Bletchley Park: the secret mathematical methods that made this Intelligence possible. Behind the walls of these temporary structures lay the most sophisticated information-processing machines that had ever been devised. Later we shall see the Bombes, the machines that did the daily work of breaking the Enigma. But first we see the huts occupied by the brains that created and used them. 24. This is Hut 8 where Naval Enigma was broken, the U-boat messages in particular. 25. Alan Turing worked out the methods for breaking Naval Enigma. His office was here, behind the third window from the end of Hut 8. This Virtual Tour was conceived and written by Tony Sale to accompany his own photographs.

This page is the third of five parts. Continue to Part 4.