Beeston Hill Station

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beeston Hill Station (around 1940)
Postcard view of Beeston Hill Station (in the background on the summit)
The sparse remains of the foundation of the former station on Beeston Bump (2007)

Beeston Hill Station (also: Beeston Hill Y Station ) was a radio eavesdropping station of the British secret service . It was on Beeston Hill (also: Beeston Bump ), an approximately 60 m high hill directly on the English North Sea coast , not far from Beeston Regis , a community near Sheringham in the county of Norfolk .

history

During the Second World War, Beeston Hill was an important radio eavesdropping station ( Y station ) of the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) ( German about "Staatliche Code- und Chiffrenschule"). One of the British War Office Y Groups (WOYG) (radio eavesdropping groups of the War Ministry) was stationed here, whose task it was to intercept and record the enemy, especially German radio traffic. For example, with the German Enigma machine encrypted and Morse code sent secret texts were collected in Beeston Hill, recorded and sent by dispatch rider ( despatch rider ) on the 170 km route to Bletchley brought. There the British Codebreakers in Bletchley Park succeeded in deciphering and analyzing them for intelligence purposes . The German radio messages often contained important war information, which the British grouped under the code name Ultra and used for their own planning.

In addition, radio location was an important task of the station. In combination with other stations , Beeston Hill, for example , measured the locations of the German submarines operating in the Atlantic and thus contributed to their sinking.

After the war, the station was abandoned and demolished. Today only the meager remains of the foundation can be seen.

Web links

Coordinates: 52 ° 56 ′ 36 ″  N , 1 ° 13 ′ 30 ″  E