Updates

Future plans for blog

I plan to start another blog if I have time about the Y service as they were fundamental to the workings of Bletchley Park and receive even less recognition. 

With regards to this blog I intend to go into as much detail about the Testry as I can and then write about the Polish code breakers who initially broke into Enigma and then perhaps Turing or the Newmary.

Other relatedish news

I went to a Within Temptation concert last night in Manchester with my girlfriend and I don't quite understand she stopped singing to tell us the story about how a gay man invented the worlds first computer in Manchester and then killed himself with a poisoned apple. While this is wrong and very annoying it does show that the situation is improving and maybe people in that audience will gonaway and research it :) apart from that tiny detail it was a great night out.  at least turing is getting public recognition even it was the wrong thing and the wrong place.

I'm going to post more about the testery either later or tomorrow morning, however I think that that is enough procrastination for now. Back to tidying. 

Captain Jerry Roberts

Captain Jerry Roberts MBE died last Tuesday at the age of 93. Captain Roberts received his MBE as a result of his work trying to promote the  of work his former colleges at Bletchley. He believes that the four T's are yet to receive enough recognition for the work they did during the war. The four T's stand for the Testery , Tommy Flowers, Alan Turing and Bill Tutte.

Roberts is one of the reasons why I have started spending one Saturday a week producing this badly written rambling blog, because he inspired me I suppose to try and help the heroes of Bletchley Park get the recognition they deserve.

Captain Roberts arrived at Bletchley Park in 1941 after completing his degree in German at University Collage London. One of his professors at university Prof. Leonard Willoughby was a former Room 40 Code Breaker during the first world war and recommended him to GC&CS.

Before he arrived at the park he was first interviewed by Victor Marks who would be become a shift leader in the Testery. He told Masters that he enjoyed chess and attempting the Times Crossword puzzle. He was then sent to the Park.

When he arrived at the Park he was interviewed again, this time by senior Code Breaker and legendary code breaker John Tiltman. Roberts and the other members of the Testery helped to break the Tunny Cipher used by the Lorenz 42 which was used by the high ranking members of the German military. Roberts once decrypted a message signed by Hitler himself.

Tunny was so complex that it had the allied codebreakers completely stumped for the first two years of the war. The machine had 12 wheels compared to Enigmas three. the first five wheels enciphered the letter, then the next five enciphered it again. There were two wheels in the centre which added stutters to the code. These were random characters which were designed to make the enciphered message appear random. The total number of possible encryptions multiplies out to around 16 million million million. The fact that Roberts and his team were breaking this code by hand for the first few years of the war is remarkable.

After the war Roberts was transferred from Bletchley to the War Crimes Investigations Unit. Here he again put his German to good use and learnt to drive for the first time. He didn't enjoy the work as much as his work at Bletchley.

He then went on to have a successful career in marketing and advertising until he retired in 1993.

In 2002 he was finally able to talk about his work at Bletchley Park and it wasn't long before he began campaigning to get his colleges work recognized.

The New York Times Obituary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqxDEm0BTw0