Year 6 – Trip to Bletchley Park

This week in Year 6, we had our first main class trip of the year. As part of our History topic on WW2, we spent the day at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes. This was the most secret location in England during the war, where female code breakers worked day and night, deciphering the coded German radio transmissions. Ultimately, their monotonous but incredible work won us the war.

Here is a recount of our day, written by Daniel and Jessica:

When we arrived, we watched a brief video of how Bletchley Park affected the war. Then we went to a gallery to have a look at lots of machines and equipment used to crack codes. There were even 2 working Bombe machines! After lunch, we were given a guided tour of the grounds. The tour guide told us that the 54 acres in Bletchley Park only cost £6000! Then we were taken to a big garage where there was a motorbike. The bikes were used to transport different codes to different places. He also took us to a courtyard where a bomb had landed but had never gone off! Some say it’s still there… Finally, we had an Inception and Intelligence workshop, where we decoded and deciphered Morse Code to be able to locate German ships in the Atlantic.

Things we learnt:

“I learnt that the code cracking machine is called the Bombe” – Grace

“I learnt about Morse Code” – Harvey

“I learnt that girls were very important in WW2” – Martyna

“I learnt that Polish mathematicians played a big part in Bletchley Park’s success” – Asti

“I learnt how they chose the girls that came to work at Bletchley Park” – Nathan

“I learnt that code breaking was a big part of the war” – Ben

“I learnt that girls had to do a tough interview to do the code breaking” – Maisy

“I learnt that Bletchley Park was a secret place” – Rory

“I learnt how to make words in Morse Code” – Tom

“I learnt that the people who worked at Bletchley Park didn’t know what it was for” – Jan

“I learnt how important girls were in WW2” – Meghan