E46 - The Bismarck

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2016

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

May 2016

This month in the Bletchley Park Podcast’s It Happened Here series, we tell the story of The Bismarck. The iconic German battleship was sunk by the Royal Navy 75 years ago. While this clearly did not happen at Bletchley Park, but in the Atlantic Ocean, codebreaking and some of the pioneering techniques developed as part of it played a crucial role in locating the flagship of the German fleet.

Bletchley Park’s Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon, explains how work going on in wooden huts in the Buckinghamshire countryside contributed to the ship’s destruction, which was vital for the Allies, both strategically and symbolically.

Jane Fawcett worked in Hut 6 from 1940. She recalls “It may be the most important thing that any of us have ever done in our lives. We didn’t realise it at the time, but we do now.”

Hear about the special Bletchley Park beer being launched at the Fathers’ Day BBQ next month, and there’s news of how the ever-popular 1940s Boutique is expanding.

Also in this month’s episode, Dermot Turing opened up his family archive to give a rare insight into the man who’s become a figurehead for the breath-taking achievements of the Bletchley Park Codebreakers, his uncle, Alan Turing.

Alan Turing died before Dermot was born but his legend looms large in the family and Dermot has written a book, debunking some of the myths that have grown up about this intriguing man, and giving a unique family perspective on his remarkable work and the tragic end to his life. We hear highlights of Dermot’s talk at Bletchley Park, sharing some of what’s in his book, Prof: Alan Turing Decoded.

Visit Bletchley Park. It happened here. Book now.

Image: ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

In memory of Jane Fawcett, who passed away on 21 May 2016.

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2Veteran, #History, #Turing, #Bismarck

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:42.7	Welcome to the May 2016 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast, The Bismarck.
0:47.8	This is another story about the triumphs and agonies of the Bletchley Park Code Breakers.
0:51.4	It happened here, although in this case it didn't exactly.
0:54.8	All will become clear when we delve into the tale of how the iconic German battleship was located and sunk by the Royal Navy, with a bit of help from Bletchley
1:00.1	Park. It's a great example of the importance of some of the lesser-known techniques, including
1:05.7	direction finding and traffic analysis. Also coming up, a special Bletchley Park beer is being launched at the
1:12.5	Father's Day Barbecue next month, and there's news about the 1940s boutique too. Before all that,
1:18.4	though, Dermott Turing opened up his family archive to give a rare insight into the man who's
1:23.5	become a figurehead for the breathtaking achievements of the Bletchley Park Code Breakers,
1:28.4	his uncle, Alan Turing. Alan died before Dermott was born, but his legend looms large in the family,
1:34.8	and now Dermott has written a book, debunking some of the myths that have grown up about this
1:39.1	intriguing man, and giving a unique family perspective on his remarkable work and the tragic end to his life.
1:46.6	Dermott gave a talk at Pledgeley Park, sharing some of what's in his book, Prof Alan Turing decoded.
1:55.1	Thank you.
2:08.3	Well, thank you all very much. Thank you for the welcome. Welcome to Plexey Park. What I'm going to focus on is Alan Sherring's World War II experience, some of which wasn't actually at Bletchley Park. So that will be of
2:15.1	some interest. After leaving Sherbourne, Alan went to King's College, Cambridge,
2:21.1	and the maths course at Cambridge was a sort of slightly curious creature. And they had essentially
2:28.9	a postgraduate year for very bright kids. They could sort of basically stay on and do an extra year after the other students had graduated.
2:38.0	And this was clearly it was sort of a staging post for sort of taking an academic career.
2:44.2	Kind of these days, they probably call it a master's degree, but you sort of didn't get anything for it other than sort of a pat on the back really.
	...

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