Bletchley Park24 Maj 2024

E164 - D-Day80 Part 1 Tide of Victory

May 2024

Over the next 6 weeks, to commemorate the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, we will be releasing 3 special episodes to tell the full story of The Longest Day. This first part is a complete remastering of our original Tide of Victory episode with the addition of much new content.

This first episode takes us to the south coast of Britain which, in May 1944, resembled one huge army camp as over 2 million men waited for D-Day. In the Buckinghamshire countryside the staff at GC&CS carried on feeding detailed and crucial intelligence to the Allied forces that would play an integral part in the success of the upcoming Operation Overlord.

The Western Front Committee was established at Bletchley Park in October 1942 and for the next 18 months built up a comprehensive picture of German forces in the West, recording every unit, its location and its strength.

From February 1943 the committee began to produce reports of which over 450 pages are now held in our archives. Head of Content, Erica Munro and our Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon use these to illustrate how the various departments, using multiple sources, came together to create the vital information that the D-Day planners needed, in some cases even leading to last minute changes. Meanwhile our Research Officer, Dr Thomas Cheetham brings us the full story of a temporary Y Station set up at Bletchley Park just for D-Day.

This episode features the following from our Oral History archive:
Vera Bartram
Pat Davies
Edna Garbutt
Enid Wenban

Many thanks to Dr Ben Thomson for voicing our archival documents.

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2024

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #D-Day80,

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(292)

E191 - Music at Bletchley Park

May 2026Against the backdrop of war and secrecy, the Codebreakers of Bletchley Park were often able to enjoy comfort in music. From choirs to orchestras, gramophone evenings to opera, music appears ag...

29 Maj 58min

E190 - Focus On: Josh Cooper

April 2026Thriving in the world of wartime codebreaking took more than just smarts and skill.Tact, diplomacy and organisational talent were needed to achieve results and navigate the fractious politic...

24 Apr 53min

E189 - Dilly and his Girls

March 2026The 28th of March 2026 will be the 85th anniversary of the naval Battle of Cape Matapan, fought by the Royal Navy against the Italian fleet in the Mediterranean. The battle was a significan...

27 Mars 59min

E188 - Focus On: Emily Anderson

February 2026Even amongst the distinguished ranks of WW2 codebreakers, Emily Anderson stood out. Recruited into military intelligence during WWI, her stellar career in diplomatic codebreaking lasted i...

27 Feb 1h 3min

E187 - Codebooks, Diplomats and Diamonds

January 2026Rome: the 1930s, and the Italian secret services were having extraordinary success in reading the messages sent by rival countries’ diplomats from their embassies in the ‘Eternal City’. Wi...

23 Jan 54min

E186 - Top Secret Misinformation - Part 5

December 2025 This is the fifth instalment of our annual episode where we celebrate the oncoming festivities of the snowy season - religious or secular - with a surfeit not of turkey and roasties but...

19 Dec 202552min

E185 - Reaping the Whirlwind

November 2025 During the second half of World War 2, the Allied air forces launched a large-scale heavy bomber offensive against German cities and war industries. This was designed to damage Germany'...

21 Nov 202559min

E184 - The SIS at BP

October 2025 Today GCHQ is an independent British intelligence organisation. However during World War 2, GC&CS, as it was then called, continued to be subordinate to the British Secret Intelligence S...

24 Okt 20251h