Bletchley park and big science: industrialising the secret war, 1939-1945

ABSTRACT

During the Second World War, Bletchley Park, the headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School, was the epicentre of a vast scientific enterprise which succeeded in reading enciphered Axis wireless traffic on an industrialised scale. Typically, this important intelligence agency has been depicted as a collegiate organisation with a clear Senior Common Room culture. This article argues that Bletchley Park is better understood as major mechanised, military orientated scientific enterprise with vast numbers of employees, a considerable budget and was subject to careful and professionally managed wartime media control which extended for many years into the post-war period. Each of these facets respectively represents each of the five ‘M’s of ‘Big Science’. As such, the agency can in fact, be viewed and understood as an example of quasi-Big Science.

KEYWORDS:

• Bletchley park
• history of science
• history of technology
• big science
• Second World War

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Christopher Moran, Classified: Secrecy and the State in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 256; Taylor Downing, Churchill’s War Lab: Code-Breakers, Boffins and Innovators: The Mavericks Churchill Led to Victory (London: Abacus, 2011), 160-165.

² Ewen Montagu, Beyond Top Secret U (London: Corgi, 1977, 1979), 45. This image was primarily fostered by memoirists in the 1970s and 1980s, like Montagu. For an example, see: Peter Calvocoressi, Top Secret Ultra (London: Cassell, 1980).

³ Given the centrality of his place within Bletchley Park ‘lore’, Turing has been immortalised repeatedly by biographers and even on the Silver Screen. See: Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (London: Burnett Books, 1983); Dermot Turing, Prof: Alan Turing Decoded (Stroud: The History Press, 2015). Other key figures have also been subjects of biographers, see: Robin Denniston, Thirty Secret Years: A. G. Denniston’s Work in Signals Intelligence 1914–1944 (Trowbridge: Polperro Heritage Press, 2007); Mavis Batey, Dilly: The Man Who Broke Enigmas (London: Dialogue, 2009); Joel Greenberg, Gordon Welchman: Bletchley Park’s Architect of Ultra Intelligence (London: Frontline Books, 2014).

⁴ Indeed one set of machines built for Bletchley Park were named Heath Robinson Machines, precisely because they looked eerily similar the caricature devices depicted by the famous cartoonist.

⁵ F. H. Hinsley, “The Enigma of Ultra,” History Today 43 (1993): 15-20.

⁶ Christopher Grey, Decoding Organization: Bletchley Park, Codebreaking and Organization Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

⁷ Jon Agar, The Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), 203-209.

⁸ Christopher Grey and Andrew Sturdy, “The 1942 Reorganization of the Government Code and Cypher School,“Cryptologia 32, no. 4 (2008), 311-333.

⁹ John Ferris, “Issues in British and American Signals Intelligence, 1919-1932,” United States Cryptologic History, Special Series 11 (2015), 9-10. Available online: https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/publications/misc/issues-in-british-and-american-signals-intelligence-1919-1932.pdf (accessed July 15, 2019).

¹⁰ David Edgerton, The Rise and Fall of the British Nation: A Twentieth Century History, e-book, (London: Penguin, 2018), 32.

¹¹ Colin Burke, “Automating American Cryptanalysis 1930-1945: Marvellous Machines, a Bit Too Late,” in Allied and Axis Signals Intelligence in World War II, ed. David Alverez (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999).

¹² Some other historians have made this claim, see: Subrata Dasgupta, It Began With Babbage: The Genesis of Computer Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 57.

¹³ Alvin M. Weinberg, “Impact of large-scale science on the United States,” Science (1961): 161-164.

¹⁴ Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press), 1963.

¹⁵ James H. Capshew and Karen A. Rader, “Big Science: Price to the Present,” Osiris 7 (1993), 3-25.

¹⁶ Gerard DeGroot, Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest (London: Jonathan Cape, 2007), 18.

¹⁷ Jeff Hughes, The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atom Bomb (Duxford: Icon Books, 2002), 9.

¹⁸ Capshew and Rader, op. cit. (15) 4.

¹⁹ Often without success: Nigel West, Mortal Crimes: The Greatest Theft in History: Soviet Penetration of the Manhattan Project (New York, NY: Enigma Books, 2004).

²⁰ Jon Agar, Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Cambridge: Polity, 2012), 330.

²¹ For an important series of essays see: Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (eds),Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

²² Mary Jo Nye, Before Big Science: The Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800-1940 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), xiii-xviii.

²³ Martin Campbell-Kelly, The Computer Age (Hove: Wayland Publishers, 1978), 40-41.

²⁴ Catherine Westfall, ‘Rethinking Big Science: Modest, Mezzo, Grand Science and the Development of the Bevalac, 1971–1993ʹ, Isis, (2003) 94, 30-56, 30-31.

²⁵ Segal Quince Wicksteed, Preliminary Study of the Attitude of UK Industry to Big Science: a report to the Department of Trade and Industry (1994).

²⁶ Elena Aronova, “Big Science and “Big Science Studies” in the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War,” in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, ed. Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (Cambridge MA.: The MIT Press, 2014), 393; Agar, Science in the Twentieth Century, 331.

²⁷ For excellent studies of the military impact of wartime cryptanalysis see: Ralph Bennett, Behind the Battle: Intelligence in the War with Germany, 1939–1945, rev ed. (London: Pimlico, 1999); F. H. Hinsley, et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War, vol. 5 (London: HMSO, 1979–1990).

²⁸ Eunan O’Haplin, “Financing British Intelligence: The Evidence up to 1945,” in British and American Approaches to Intelligence, ed. K.G. Robertson (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987).

²⁹ For a full discussion of the relationship between GC&CS and the Y Service, see: Kenneth Macksey, The Searchers: Radio Intercept in Two World Wars (London: Cassell, 2013).

³⁰ Greenberg, Gordon Welchman, 19-20.

³¹ Frank Birch, The Official History of British Sigint, 1914-1945, vol. 1 (part 1), John Jackson (ed.), Milton Keynes: The Military Press, 2004, p. 20. This now published volume is based on the internal histories of the agency entitled ‘A History of British Sigint, 1914-1945ʹ filed under HW 43/1 and the National Archives, Kew (TNA).

³² Juliette Pattinson, “The twilight war: gender and espionage in Britain, 1900-1950,” in Handbook on Gender and War, ed. Simona Sharoni, Julia Welland, Linda Steiner, Jennifer Pedersen (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016), 70.

³³ Keith Jeffrey, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909-1949 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010), 168.

³⁴ Alastair Denniston to C. E. D. Peters, 26 April 1932, TNA, HW 72/9.

³⁵ Gordon Welchman, The Hut Six Story: Breaking the Enigma Codes, Kidderminster: M&M Baldwin, 1982, 2014, p. 77.

³⁶ AP. Mahon, The History of Hut Eight 1939 – 1945, HW 25/2, TNA. This document is available online at, http://www.ellsbury.com/hut8/hut8-000.htm (accessed July 15, 2019), 28.

³⁷ Mahon, The History of Hut Eight, 14

³⁸ Ibid., 28. These reservations were a product of wider pessimism regarding Enigma and the utility of pouring resources into a potentially doomed project aimed at generating solutions. Frank Birch was informed at the beginning of the war that ‘all German codes were unbreakable. I was told it wasn’t worth while putting pundits onto them.’ He complained, in a later letter to the head of the agency, Commander Alastair Denniston, that ‘Defeatism at the beginning of the war to my mind, played a large part in delaying the breaking of codes.’ Mahon, The History of Hut Eight, 14. Like Mahon, the cryptanalyst Hugh Alexander noted, in an internal history of work on the Naval Enigma, that Birch and Travis were instrumental in changing the agency’s position. They were determined ‘that the problem should be solved and it is to the pertinacity and force that, in utterly different ways, both of them showed that success was ultimately due.’ See: C.H.O’D. Alexander, Cryptographic History of Work on the German Naval Enigma (no date, c. 1945), HW 25/1, TNA. This document is available online at, http://www.ellsbury.com/gne/gne-000.htm (accessed April 21, 2019), 20-21.

³⁹ Mahon, The History of Hut Eight, 29.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Grey, Decoding Organization, 89-95.

⁴² A.D.(Mech) [Gordon Welchman] to Director [Edward Travis], 10 July 1944, TNA, HW 62/6.

⁴³ ‘Memorandum by Nigel De Grey’, 17 August 1949, TNA, HW 50/50.

⁴⁴ Alexander, Cryptographic History, 57.

⁴⁵ For a discussion of the agency’s cipher-making machines see: John Ferris, Intelligence and Strategy: Selected Essays (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 138-180; Christopher Smith, “Bletchley Park and the Development of the Rockex Cipher Systems: Building a Technocratic Culture, 1941–1945,” War in History 24, no. 2 (2017).

⁴⁶ Martin Campbell-Kelly, ICL: a business and technical history (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 120-123.

⁴⁷ Grey, Decoding Organization, 216.

⁴⁸ Ron Gibbons interview with the Bletchley Park Trust, in Dave Whitchurch (ed.), Other People’s Stories, vol. 3, The Bletchley Park Trust Archive [BPTA], 22-24

⁴⁹ B. Jack Copeland, “Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer,” in Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers, eds. B. Jack Copeland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 101-115.

⁵⁰ Welchman, Hut Six Story, 178-179.

⁵¹ Paul Gannon, Colossus: Bletchley Park’s Greatest Secret (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), 239.

⁵² Ken Halton, “The Tunny Machine,” in Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, eds. F.H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 1994), 168.

⁵³ W. Heath Robinson, “The Professor’s Invention for Peeling Potatoes,” in The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm, ed. Norman Hunter, (London: Random House, 1933, 2013), 191.

⁵⁴ Kerry Johnson and John Gallehawk, Figuring it out at Bletchley Park, 1939-1945 (Redditch: BookTower Publishing, 2007), 14.

⁵⁵ Johnson and Gallehawk, Figuring It Out, 40-43.

⁵⁶ [No Author Given] ‘Locations and Numbers’, 29 July 1942, TNA, HW 62/4.

⁵⁷ Christopher Smith, The Hidden History of Bletchley Park: A Social and Organisational History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 79-80.

⁵⁸ Johnson and Gallehawk, 48-50.

⁵⁹ Jeffrey, MI6, 745-746.

⁶⁰ John Cairncross, The Enigma Spy: An Autobiography, the story of the man who changed the course of World War Two (London, Century, 1997), 98.

⁶¹ Quoted in Christopher Grey and Andrew Sturdy, “A Chaos that Worked: Organizing Bletchley Park,” Public Policy and Administration 25 (2010):, 47-66, 57.

⁶² R. A. Ratcliff, Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra, and the End of Secure Ciphers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 102-105.

⁶³ Grey, Decoding Organization, 188-189.

⁶⁴ Audra J. Wolfe, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2013), 48-53.

⁶⁵ Smith, Hidden History, 17; 26-30.

⁶⁶ W.H.W. Ridley to the Treasury Valuer, 23 July 1940, TNA, HW 64/42.

⁶⁷ O’Haplin, “Financing British Intelligence: the Evidence up to 1945,” 187.

⁶⁸ Civil Estimates and Estimates for Revenue Departments, Parliamentary Papers [PP], viii (1939-1940), 107; PP, vi.1 (1940-41), p. 195; PP, (1941-42) vi, 195; PP (1943-44) vi.1, 129; PP, (1944-45) viii.1, 138; PP, (1945-46) xvii.1, 160.

⁶⁹ PP, (1945-46) xvii.1, 160.

⁷⁰ ‘Public Accounts Committee. March 2^nd, 1943. Foreign Office Account 1941-42. Code and Cypher School’, 2 March 1943, TNA, CAB 301/78.

⁷¹ ‘Government Code and Cypher School Provision in 1946 Estimates’, 26 September 1945ʹ, TNA, CAB 301/78; PP, (1945-46) xvii.1, 160.

⁷² ‘Public Accounts Committee. March 2^nd, 1943. Foreign Office Account 1941-42. Code and Cypher School’, 2 March 1943, TNA, CAB 301/78.

⁷³ Grey, Decoding Organization, 53.

⁷⁴ ‘Rates of Pay (For Provisional Assessment) for Mobile Women Serving with the Women’s Forces’, [no date, though almost certainly written between December 1941 and January 1942], TNA, HW 64/67.

⁷⁵ Michael Smith, Station X: The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park (London: Pan Macmillan, 2004), 60.

⁷⁶ Baillie to [Edward] Travis, 2 December 1940, TNA, HW 62/4.

⁷⁷ A.D.(Mech) [Gordon Welchman] to Director [Edward Travis], 10 July 1944, TNA, HW 62/6.

⁷⁸ D.D.(S) [Edward Travis] to D.N.I. [Director of Naval Intelligence, Edmund Rushbrooke], 11 January 1944, TNA, HW 62/6.

⁷⁹ Smith, “Bletchley Park and the Development of the Rockex Cipher Systems”.

⁸⁰ Unknown [illegible signature] to Sir Edward Bridges, 17 July 1951, TNA, T 220/1444.

⁸¹ John Nichol, Spitfire: A Very British Love Story (London: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 53.

⁸² R. A. Burt, British Battleships 1919-1945: New Revised Edition, Kindle ed. (Barnsley: Seaforth, 1993), Kindle location 9205.

⁸³ Christopher Andrew, Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Septre, 1985), 628.

⁸⁴ A.D.(Mech) [Gordon Welchman] to Director [Edward Travis], 10 July 1944, TNA, HW 62/6.

⁸⁵ Grey, Decoding Organization, 230.

⁸⁶ Birch, The Official History of British Sigint, 1914-1945, vol. 1 (part 1), 41-42.

⁸⁷ AD(S) [Nigel de Grey], ‘Confidential’, 22 September 1943, TNA, HW 64/16; Denniston, ‘All Heads of Sections’, 7 January 1942, TNA, HW 64/16; Travis [DD(S)] ‘Serial Order No. 21ʹ, 30 April 1942, TNA, HW 64/16.

⁸⁸ North Bucks Times and County Observer, 7 June 1938, 4;North Bucks Times and County Observer, 28 June 1938, 4; The Bucks Standard, 4 June 1938, 3.

⁸⁹ Ron Staniford, “Conscientious Objector,” in Bletchley Voices: Recollections of Local People, ed. Robert Cook (Stroud: Chalford, 1998), 93.

⁹⁰ Birch, The Official History of British Sigint, 1914-1945, vol. 1 (part 1), 42.

⁹¹ Ratcliff, Delusions of Intelligence, 113-114.

⁹² John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, 1939-1945, London: Hodder and Straughton, 1985, 422.

⁹³ Alan McGowan, “Codebreakers at Bletchley, Scottish chess players at Bletchley,” Scottish Chess 198, June 2005. Available online: https://www.chessscotland.com/documents/history/CodebreakersBletchley.htm (accessed July 15, 2019).

⁹⁴ David Hooper, Official Secrets: The Use and Abuse of the Act (Sevenoaks: Coronet, 1987, 1988), 247-248.

⁹⁵ F. W. Winterbotham, The Ultra Secret (London: 1974), 2000.

⁹⁶ Christopher Andrew, “Codebreaking and Signals Intelligence,” in Codebreaking and Signals Intelligence, ed. Christopher Andrew (London: Frank Cass, 1986), 1-2.

⁹⁷ For a full discussion of this topic see: Moran, Classified, 273-280 and Hooper, Official Secrets: The Use and Abuse of the Act, Sevenoaks: Coronet, 1987, 1988, 247-248.

⁹⁸ IQ by Intel, “Bletchley Park, Intel and the Data that Changed the Course of History,” http://iq.intel.co.uk/bletchley-park-intel-and-the-data-that-changed-the-course-of-history/ (accessed April 13, 2016).

⁹⁹ Copeland, Colossus, pp. 108-115.

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Christopher Smith

Chrisopher Smith is an intelligence historian with interests in the social, cultural, organisational and gendered aspects of the British secret world. His first monograph,The Hidden History of Bletchley Park : A Social and Organisational History  was published by Palgrave in 2015. His second book, the first biography of the Soviet spy, John Cairncross, was published by The History Press in 2019.