Betty Hollingberry honoured for vital wartime secret Enigma work

Oct 23 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Betty said: “When I told my family I had been involved in it, they just said ‘oh’ – I don’t think they were impressed.”

The mother-of-three spent most of her life in London and Devon but moved to Marsden in 2002 to be closer to her daughter Mary Lane. Her husband passed away the following year.

Betty will give a talk on her wartime service to Marsden History Group at Marsden Mechanics Hall next month. For more information email info@marsdenhistory.co.uk

THE Enigma machine sent messages through a series of electrical impulses and rotating wheels which could be set in many ways.

The chances of cracking the code at random were 150 million, million, million to one.

British knowledge of the Enigma was greatly helped by a Polish officer who brought one of the machines to England just before the war started.

However, British intelligence officers still had to crack the codes, which the Germans re-set each day.

Mathematician Alan Turing invented the Bombe machine to de-crypt Enigma messages.

Some historians believe the code-breakers at Bletchley Park shortened the war by two years.

Mr Turing was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after admitting to having sex with another man. He was chemically castrated and took his own life two years later.