The Hut 11 complex, comprising Huts 11, 11A, and 11B (demolished after the war), housed the Bombe Section, superseding Hut 1 which was timber framed and cramped.. Bombes were electro-magnetic devices, developed from an original idea conceived by the Poles (who called their machine `Bomba' (probably because it had weights which dropped - like bombs - when correct wheel settings were identified) in the late 1930s and developed into a more sophisticated form in 1939 by Gordon Welchman, Alan Turing, and Harold Keen. Bombes were an automated means of testing hypotheses (called menus) for the daily setting of an Enigma machine by working through the 150 million million settings its rotors, rings, and plugsettings were capable of. By November 1939 the first bombe machine had been ordered from the British Tabulating Machine Co. of Letchworth, and this was delivered to Hut 1 in March 1940.
The first of the three huts, 11, was planned in late 1940 and completed in March 1941. Hut 11A was begun in mid 1941 and its fitting out completed (including air conditioning to combat the heat generated by the bombes) in February 1942. Hut 11A was intended to replace, not augment Hut 11, and when the former was complete all the bombe machines were moved into it. Later in 1942, as outstations (built in the grounds of local country houses) took on the role of housing the vastly increased number of bombe machines needed for decryption, Hut 11A developed into the control and communications centre linking those outstations with Huts 6 and 8. Some bombes, however, remained in 11A either as training aids or specialist or experimental machines, for instance `Funf' which was employed to solve the reverse Enigma used by the Abwehr (the German Secret Service).
In 1945 the Hut 11 complex was handed over to MOW direct labour organisation which used it as carpenters workshops and stores. When the Bletchley Park Trust was formed in 1992 Hut 11A became the club room of the Milton Keynes Model Railway Club.
This is part of the Job: 2K/32376 Huts 8, 11 and 11A at Bletchley Park, Sherwood Drive, Bletchley; within the Volume: VF000197 Historic Building Survey, Planning, Advice and Listing; within the Series: HEC01/026 Historic Building Survey, Planning, Advice and Listing; within the Collection: HEC01 Historic England
© Historic England Archive
Photographer: Davies, James O: Historic England
Second World War Hut, Second World War
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