Flowerdown

Flowerdown is near the south coast of England

The HRO of the National Radio Company was the most widely used wireless receiver in the British Y stations

Flowerdown (also: HMS Flowerdown and RAF Flowerdown ) is a former military base of the British Royal Navy (RN) ( Royal Navy ) and the Royal Air Force (RAF) (Royal Air Force ). It was 100 km southwest of London in the English county of Hampshire not far from the city center of Winchester . During the Second World War , there was an important listening point for the British secret service .

history

The site was acquired by the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) ( British Army - Air Force and forerunner of the RAF ) at the beginning of the First World War . Shortly after the war that drew Wireless School (radio troupe) of the RFC by 50 km northeast located base in Farnborough here. Later, in the 1930s, took over Royal Navy ( Navy of the United Kingdom ) the establishment and called it HMS Flowerdown .

During the Second World War, Flowerdown was one of the most important radio eavesdropping stations ( Y station ) of the British Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) ( German for "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 Italian and German radio traffic. For example, with the German Enigma machine encrypted and Morse code sent secret texts and using the Lorenz cipher encrypted secret German radio teletype (British code name Fish ) were collected in Flowerdown recorded and sent by dispatch rider ( despatch rider ) on the nearly 120 km long distance brought to Bletchley . There, the British Codebreakers succeeded in deciphering and evaluating the intelligence service . The German radio messages often contained important war information, which the British grouped under the code name Ultra and used for their own planning.

After the war, the station was used as a listening post for over thirty years by the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) , the successor organization to the GC & CS , before it was closed in 1977.

literature

• Jack Copeland : Colossus: Breaking the German 'Tunny' Code at Bletchley Park . The Rutherford Journal. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
• Nigel West: Historical Dictionary of Signals Intelligence. Scarecrow Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-7187-8 .

Web links

• Photo of the listening post Flowerdown. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
• Aerial view of the Flowerdown site. Retrieved March 21, 2017.
• Photo of the interior of a flowerdown barrack . Retrieved March 21, 2017.
• RAF Flowerdown (English). Retrieved March 21, 2017.
• A child on Naval Shore Wireless Station HMS Flowerdown . Retrieved March 21, 2017.
• Flowerdown RN Wireless Station (English). Retrieved March 21, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ RAF Flowerdown (English). Retrieved March 21, 2017.
2. ^ Military Units Winchester Garrison (English). Retrieved March 21, 2017.
3. ^ Nigel West: Historical Dictionary of Signals Intelligence. Scarecrow Press, 2012, p. 95, ISBN 978-0-8108-7187-8 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 5 ′ 23 "  N , 1 ° 20 ′ 24"  W.