British Bombe

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, beginning WWII. In response, Britain assembled a special team of codebreakers led by Alan Turing at Bletchley Park as Bletchley Park had the needed secrecy and personnel. This team, using Poland’s information and ideas, captured Luftwaffe and Army Enigma machines, and Turing’s development of cribs and menus (mathematical formulas that found flaws in the Enigma code), created a new machine to break the Enigma code. ​​​​​​​

Bletchley Park (BP) was actually chosen in 1938 BEFORE  the war began in ANTICIPATION of the war.   It was chosen because it was near key communications, transportation, and academic locations and also because it was NOT in London but yet close enough to London for easy access to policymakers.​​​​​​​

Personal Interview with Gregory Nedved, Historian at the National Security Agency

"It was crucial to the survival of Britain, and indeed of the West."

-Iain Standen, Chief Executive of the Bletchley Park Trust, speaking of the work done there

The team successfully created the first version of the English Bombe, Victory, in March of 1940. Although Victory could decipher messages, it was too slow due to the extreme number of combinations per message. To compensate, cryptologist George Welchman created the diagonal board, speeding up the process considerably. This revised machine kept up with the ever changing Enigma codes for most German military communications except the more complex Naval Codes. The English Bombe was not able to break the Naval Enigma code without this machine and its code books. The Allies knew that if this barrier could be broken, the advantage would be monumental.

"A wartime picture of a Bletchley Park Bombe" December 31, 1944

Source: ​​​​schoolhistory.co.uk

“In the end, though, Bletchley Park's greatest achievement lay not in broken ciphers but in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of lives it saved.”

- Decoding Nazi Secrets November 9, 1999