Bletchley Park, Neptune, and the Kriegsmarine

by David Kenyon

On 5-6 June 1944 the codebreakers of Bletchley Park went to special effort to listen in on the response of the German Navy to the vast fleet of vulnerable Allied shipping crossing to Normandy that night. German message traffic from the period around D-Day survives, and Bletchley Park Trust holds a unique collection of these messages. A detailed examination of this material reveals a fascinating picture of just how effective GC&CS was in reading Naval Enigma, how this was communicated to Allied commanders, and exactly what the German navy did, or didn’t, do to repel the invasion.

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