Memorial to Wycombe district codebreaker (From Bucks Free Press)

Memorial to Wycombe district codebreaker

12:40pm Sunday 14th October 2012 in News By Rebecca Cain

A MEMORIAL to a British codebreaker will be revealed in Naphill, where he lived with his family.

Dilly Knox masterminded the breaking of the German Enigma encoding machine in this country.

The first Enigma research he completed took place at his home in Courns Wood in the adjoining village of Walters Ash in the early 1930s.

Before this he had started work in 1915 at the Admiralty Intelligence section working on German codes.

He moved to Bucks after he married Olive Roddam in 1920 and would commute to his work in London.

When the Government Code and Cypher School was transferred to its World War Two station at Bletchley Park, he then began work there.

He had bought his own Enigma machine in 1925, out of curiosity, but when Hitler came to power he ordered a more complicated version for his forces. In 1936 Hitler communicated with Franco and Mussolini.

These messages were intercepted in the UK and given to Dilly.

His greatest triumph was in October 1941 where he broke the multi-turnover Enigma machine used by the Abwehr- the equivalent of the UK's MI5 and MI6.

Dilly then became ill with cancer and could not work at Bletchley Park any longer, but he continued to work from home with the help of his two trusted lieutenants, Mavis Lever (soon to be Mavis Batey) and Margaret Rock.

His work helped the Allies gain a number of defeats.

Mavis Batey said Dilly did not live to see how his work was responsible for the most momentous piece of strategic deception when the Germans were led to believe the D-Day landings would take place at the Pas de Calais instead of Normandy.

He received the CMG on his deathbed form Buckingham Palace.

On Saturday October 20 at 2.30pm the memorial to Dilly Knox will be revealed at Naphill Village Hall.

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