Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes: The Secrets of Bletchley Park

by Gwen Watkins

An intriguing page-turning and personal account of that most secretive of wartime institutions, Bletchley Park, and of the often eccentric people who helped to win the war Beryl BainbridgeBletchley Park, or 'Station X', was home to the most famous code breakers of the Second World War. The 19th-century mansion was the key center for cracking German, Italian and Japanese codes, providing the allies with vital information. After the war, many intercepts, traffic-slips and paperwork were burned (allegedly at Churchill's behest). The truth about Bletchley was not revealed until F. Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret was published in 1974. However, nothing until now has been written on the German Air Section. In Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes, former WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) Gwen Watkins brings to life the reality of this crucial division. In a highly informative, lyrical account, she details her eventful interview, eventual appointment at the 'the biggest lunatic asylum in Britain', methods for cracking codes, the day-to-day routine and decommissioning of her section.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction

210 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 15, 2006

About the author

Gwendoline Mary Watkins was a British codebreaker and author who worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, deciphering Luftwaffe communications. Born in West Bromwich in 1923, she was educated in Bournemouth and later married poet Vernon Watkins, with whom she had five children. She authored several books, including Dylan Thomas: Portrait of a Friend, Dickens in Search of Himself, and Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes, reflecting her literary and wartime experiences.

Reviews

[Reiver · Rating 5 out of 5]

We've all heard how the Enigma codes were broken, and of the biggest names in the codebreaking effort. Here, then, is the first book to truly enrapture me in the subject from a totally different angle - a low-level (if perfectly competent) WAAF code breaker doing her part, and with a much greater perspective on the reality of war in the countryside - perhaps less movie-worthy than the men at the front, or the biggest names at the top of any respective chain of authority - but none the less worthy to have learned what life was like for a tiny corner of England in the midst of rations, and housing shortages, and the little challenges of working for somewhere that does not, officially, exist...
Gently written, by someone who has the utmost respect for all involved. Oddly piquant, and absolutely worth a read for anyone fascinated by Bletchley Park.
(To be clear: It also has a perfectly decent explanation of the actual code-breaking in the appendices, which I found interesting as well - although I had already been thoroughly fascinated by the book before I even got to that part.)

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

a delightful book about working at bLetchley park during WW2. gwen watkins went there at the age of eighteen, and her book is crammed with interesting and amusing stories about her life there and the fascinating and eccentric people she met. she obviously feels herself very priviliged to have worked with so many remarkable people (she even married one of them) and her book is a joy to read.

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gwent Watkins decided to write this book after reading Robert Harris’s novel Enigma “I could not bear that readers should think BP was anything like that. Where were the glorious eccentrics, the brilliant wits, the men and women of outstanding intellect, even genius, who had helped to save Britain and, some critics say, to shorten the war by two years?”
Well, glorious eccentrics and brilliant wits abound in this book. Gwen Watkins was plunged into the extraordinary world of Bletchley Park in the spring of 1942, when she was just eighteen years old. She arrived at the gates not knowing where she was or what she was doing there. The guard didn’t want to let her in because she didn’t have a pass: ‘Look’ I said ‘I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’ ‘Come to the right place then,’ said the guard, ‘the most on ‘em here look as if they didn’t know where they was, and God knows what they’m doing.’ She had to sign the official secrets act “I read it through but I had not then, and I have not now, the faintest idea of its contents.” It was drummed into her by the wing commander who briefed her that she must never ever talk about her work at Bletchley to anyone, ever: ‘If you did, you would be liable to the extreme penalties of the law, and I’m not sure whether, at the moment, that’s hanging or shooting by firing squad.’ She was also given a pass and warned it must never leave her person: (“I had a mental image of myself in the bath, with the pass between my teeth”) or the consequences might be disastrous. She found in fact that passes did occasionally get lost “but the war effort did not seem in any way to be affected. There was in fact a certain gentleman in a certain hut who would make you, if you were desperate, a pass good enough to deceive the guards.”
Gwent went to work in the section decoding the Luftwaffe Codes(she never heard of Enigma, nor did most of the people who worked at Bletchley) , and found herself in vey congenial company. One of the most charming and eccentric was ‘the poet’ as she refers to him, who was charmingly vague and always getting lost as he had no sense of direction (spoiler - two years later she married him). She loved the people she worked with, the work she did, even the food which has been criticised elsewhere she thought was excellent, given wartime restrictions. The descriptions of the people and the living conditions are fascinating. I have to admit quite frankly that I was unable to understand anything at all about the work she did - decoding remains a mystery to me, I simply do not understand it and never will. But this does not matter as she and the brilliant eccentrics she worked with did understand it. As she says herself
“Of course we humbler code-breakers did not know until many years afterwards how outstanding some of our colleagues were nor how they had toiled to break the Engima codes. You might see a scruffy figure, tearing at the skin round his nails, shuffling rather like a crab into the Newmanry, But even if someone who had read mathematics at Cambridge had told you in an awed tone that he was Alan Turing, you would have been no wiser.”
A fascinating book about remarkable people in a remarkable place.

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant but unremarkable recounting of Bletchley Park, mostly an overview with a few personal anecdotes sprinkled in. Watkins takes a somewhat elegiac view of Bletchley - full of smart, interesting people, low on military discipline - probably helped along by the facts that she was eighteen when she arrived and it was there that she met her husband, whom she refers to throughout as "the poet." She is highly indignant at Robert Harris's "Enigma" and the depressing atmosphere Harris created for Bletchley. There's nothing particularly memorable here but it's an easy read and was a good introduction to a general view of Bletchley Park.

[Keith Gandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I expected a book that brings a person behind the scenes of Bletchley Park, I found it to be more like being handed a photo album of a family I do not know - the images were not speaking to me and did not capture my attention. While it is great material for those who had worked inside BP, for an outsider, it did not capture the details of how codes were going to be broken and the impact it would have on the war effort. The culture of not speaking about your work with either insiders or those outside the effort detracted from the subject title - the Secrets of BP. It was an invitation to walk the halls of a high school I did not attend as a teenager.

[Ameliedanjou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a better read than The Bletchley Girls, mainly because it was just the view of 2 people, not 15. An easy read, very clear. There's an appendix with an explanation and samples of some codes to try for yourself.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this memoir. As part of the small German Air Section in BP, she worked on a cipher many didn't know existed. Enigma is the show pony, and the codes used by the Luftwaffe are often forgotten.

Beautiful look at the people at BP as well as the work.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love all stories from Bletchley and this one was no different. Thanks for the insights, Gwen Watkins.

[Zoe Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insight insight insight