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The From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.

Welcome to the November 2021 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast,

Secrets of the Supermarina. Many visitors to Bletchley Park are familiar with the story of breaking enigma and reading German and even Japanese codes, but equally important work was done on Italian

ciphers. Not only were the coat breakers able to read Italian naval messages before and during

the war, but this information was used to decisive effect in the battle for North Africa and the

ultimate defeat of Italy in 1943. In this It Happened Here episode,

Bletchley Park's research historian Dr David Kenyon reveals the secrets of one of Bletchley Park's lesser-known decryption successes.

As always, grateful thanks go to Dr Ben Thompson

for voicing our archival documents. This is Bletchley Park.

It happened here.

We talk a lot on this podcast about German codes and breaking Japanese codes. But one of the

less known areas of Bletchley Park's work was breaking Italian codes. Before GCNCS even came to

Bletchley Park, when they were based in London, they were working on Italian codes.

But can you tell us why Italy was of interest to GCNCS?

I can. And it's interesting that a huge part of GCNs' focus in the pre-war period was towards Italy.

And this kind of gets overlooked by a lot of the people who focus on Enigma and the Germans in particular.

But in terms of Britain's strategic position in the world, in the 1920s, and particularly the 1930s,

the Mediterranean is of vital importance to Britain. You have the Suez Canal and the routes

to India and to the Middle East, British possessions in Palestine and Jordan since the end of World War I,

Egypt itself, of course. So activity in the Mediterranean and any threat to British interests

in that area is of vital strategic importance to the UK. You can contrast that in some ways with

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