Pupils reflect on trip to

Pupils reflect on trip to Bletchley Park

“Bletchley Park was a very important wartime asset to our nation, giving us the edge in strategic combat by breaking the German Enigma code in World War II. The breakthrough was vital in enabling the Western Alliance to glean immense amounts of covert intelligence on Nazi military movements and significantly shorten the war. One of the key motivations behind the trip was to inspire intellectual curiosity and to learn outside the classroom. I have been to Bletchley Park before but I was very curious about the three new exhibits – “The Intelligence Factory”, “D-Day Interception, Intelligence and Invasion” and “The Art of Data” – which were just a few weeks old when we visited Bletchley Park. Throughout our visit I thoroughly enjoyed all the exhibits, but my favourite was “The Bomb Breakthrough” in Hut 11A. I found this exhibit remarkably interesting – especially the way Alan Turing, Gordon Welchman and others involved in making the Bomb used an ingenious electro-mechanical device that was an early precursor to what would become known as the computer. This machine is incredibly complicated and its development must have involved a painstakingly long process of trial and error by the Bletchley Park codebreakers. Furthermore, this exhibit shows how code-breaking at Bletchley had a significant impact on the course of World War 2 and almost certainly sped the Allies to victory. I also enjoyed the exhibit about D-Day, which was the largest amphibious landing in history launched by the Allies to push the Germans back to Berlin, and on how Bletchley Park played a vital role in the invasion of one of Europe’s most heavily fortified fronts. I felt this exhibit was an impressively powerful way to convey the enormity of D-Day – while a specially commissioned film showed Bletchley Park’s huge contribution, making this an amazingly interactive and unforgettable exhibit. The use of interactive displays made the exhibits engaging and interesting and I loved the way the whole experience transferred you from the past to the modern day as you walked through the exhibits. Overall, I really enjoyed this trip to Bletchley Park and found it a lot of fun – but at the same time useful as we had completed a whole project based on this subject as well as weekly meetings on relevant topics such as team building, communication and time management. I look forward to going on another trip in Year 9.” - Ameya B (8SRP) n