Bletchley Park codebreakers 'dried their knickers on Hitler's Enigma machine'

12 Nov 2014

Bletchley Park codebreakers 'dried their knickers on Hitler's Enigma machine'
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Elizabeth 'Betty' Balfour, 88, says that during night shifts at Bletchley the
Enigma machine was the only warm thing to dry her smalls on

Betty Bafour spent up to 10 hours a day sifting through reams of code and said
they were never told where their work had actually succeeded

By Agency

A Bletchley Park codebreaker has revealed that during the war she and her
co-workers used Hitler's Enigma machine to dry their knickers.

Elizabeth "Betty" Balfour, 88, joined the Wrens when she was 17 and was
handpicked to work on the top secret team under code genius Alan Turing.

She said women at the cypher school would dry their damp underwear on the huge
computers linked to the seized Enigma machine as they were the only source of
heat at night.

Her secret comes days before the release of the Imitation Game film starring
Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing.

Mrs Balfour said : "One thing I remember was that during night shifts the
Enigma machine was the only warm thing about, so we used to wash our smalls
and hang them around it to dry.

"It used to be festooned with bras and pants all through our night duty. Back
then it must have looked a real sight."..../snip/


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11226192/Bletchley-Park-codebreakers-dried-their-knickers-on-Hitlers-Enigma-machine.html

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03104/Balfour_3104099b.jpg

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/11231608/Breaking-the-Enigma-code-was-the-easiest-part-of-the-Nazi-puzzle.html