Top Secret Documents Decoded By Alan Turing To Go On Display
Top secret documents originally found in the roof of Hut 6, a wartime section at Blechley Park, will be going on display. Hut 6 was where Alan Turing, a British cryptanalyst, and his team worked to decipher messages from the German army and the air force.
According to New Historian, the findings were unique. All documentary evidence that involved codebreaking had to be destroyed based on the rules set for wartime security. A few of the documents that were found were Banbury sheets, which are cards that have holes punched into them for comparing the undeciphered Nazi messages. This technique of decoding was developed by Turing so that decryption could be done faster.
The information was revealed by punching encrypted messages into the Banbury sheets, after which it would be superimposed until it was all lined up. Every day, the German code setting would be changed because of which those in Hut 6 had to take up codebreaking as a daily challenge.
It was believed that the breaking of the German Enigma code helped in shortening the war in Europe by about four years. If Turing and his team were unsuccessful in cracking the code, then the hold of the German navy on North Atlantic would have been shortened, and there would have been delay in the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944.
Victoria Worpole, the director of learning and collections at Bletchley Park, said that there were some pieces of paperwork that they did not identify. She said that nobody was able to work out what they were, and it was sent to the Government Communications Headquarters. She added that they were unveiling a mystery as they were trying to understand a number of items properly.
In addition to that, ,there were other documents that were found which included parts of an Atlas, a fashion article and a pin board. It seemed like Turing's team was trying to fix up the holes in the roof with what was available to them.
The documents were discovered in 2013, and since then have been frozen so that the fragile documents could be preserved and there was no further damage to it. It would go on display in March at the Bletchley Park museum as it has been thawed and repaired.
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