🇬🇧WWII uncovered: Honouring the Service of Charlotte 'Betty' Webb: Code Breaker of Bletchley Park and the Pacific Theater.
🇬🇧WWII uncovered: Honouring the Service of Charlotte 'Betty' Webb: Code Breaker of Bletchley Park and the Pacific Theater.
Bletchley Park, a British government cryptological establishment in operation during World War II remained classified even after the end of the war.
The establishment was where Alan Turing and other agents of the Ultra intelligence project decoded the enemy’s secret messages, most notably those that had been encrypted with the German Enigma and Tunny Cipher machines.
The world would not fully learn of the valuable efforts put forth by approximately 12,000 men and women until 1974 when Frederick William Winterbotham received permission to publish his memoir, "The Ultra Secret.
At the age of 18 years old Charlotte 'Betty' Webb was serving with the Auxiliary Territorial Service when her extensive knowledge of the German language prompted interviewers to reassign her to Bletchley Park.
"I didn't really think of myself as being one of thousands of women working for Bletchley Park.
I was intrigued by the fact that I was chosen to work here, but none of us were fully aware of the scale of the operation or how many people were involved. We didn't realise how important we were.
Looking back, we all realise that our individual roles were much bigger than we imagined." - Betty Webb BBC
According to the BBC: "In 1943, she relocated to the Japanese Military Section in Block F, a concrete hut nicknamed the Burma Road because of its length.
It was there that Betty began decoding messages of the Japanese Army.
After four years of service at Bletchley, when the War ended in Europe in May of 1945, Betty was sent to America to continue her work at the Pentagon as a code breaker.
Webb played an integral part in the paraphrasing and transcription of the already decoded Japanese messages from the Pacific Theater. She was the only member of the ATS to be sent to the United States.
After the war Betty returned to the United Kingdom to work at Bletchley Park and when it closed down, she went back to Shropshire to work as a secretary at Ludlow Grammar School.
In 2015 Mrs Webb was awarded an MBE by Prince Charles for her work during the war effort and the Légion d'Honneur in 2014.
Staff Sergeant Charlotte 'Betty' Webb turned 100 years old on 13 May 2023 and is the last known surviving veteran who worked on both German and Japanese codes.
One week prior she was an honoured guest at the coronation of King Charles. Mrs Webb currently resides in Wythall, Worcestershire.
Please join us at WWII uncovered in honouring the service of Mrs Betty Webb - A true member of the Greatest Generation. Lest We Forget.
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