Bletchley Park unveils its biggest ever exhibition on World War Two code-breaking

  • Watch Sarah Cooper's report from Bletchley Park

A new exhibition at Bletchley Park is revealing the personal stories of the people who kept the organisation running throughout World War Two.

The Intelligence Factory exhibition opened on Thursday 28 April at the historic codebreaking site in Milton Keynes.

For the first time in Bletchley Park's history, visitors have been able to explore Block A, a newly restored wartime building.

Peronel Craddock, Head of Programmes, Bletchley Park: “It’s a really key moment in Bletchley’s history, where the organisation scales up gigantically.

"Between 1942 and 1945 we went from just over 2,000 to nearly 9,000 people working on the site at Bletchley Park and its outstations.

Peronel Craddock, Head of Programmes at Bletchley Park, said the site 'gigantically' upscaled its workforce between 1942 and 1945 Credit: ITV News Anglia

"We had lots of people working on very discreet parts of the activity - all of which needed to work together really smoothly and in complete secrecy, so nobody was allowed to know what anyone else was up to.”

The exhibition - which is the largest Bletchley Park has ever created - gives a closeup look at wartime machinery and how the site handled millions of parts of data.

During the Second World War, Bletchley Park became the centre of the Allied code-breaking efforts, including Alan Turing's cracking of the Enigma code.