Mavis Batey

Mavis Batey's story is well known, and when she died in 2013 the obituaries told her story about her time at Bletchley Park, working in The Cottage as one of Dilly Knox's "Girls". Her legacy is not only breaking the message revealing that the Italian Navy was at "D-3" readiness for an action, but realising its significance and making sure that it was acted on. She also played a key role in breaking Abwehr Enigma.

Less interesting, perhaps, to the general reader, but of great long term significance to those who followed in her footsteps was her share of the writing up of how Abwehr Enigma was broken. Mavis, her husband, Keith, Margaret Rock and Peter Twinn compiled the official history of this work in GC&CS Secret Service Sigint Vol II: Cryptographic Systems and their Solution. Batey, Batey, Rock and Twinn as it is usually known (which, as the GCHQ joke ran, sounded like a firm of solicitors in the Home Counties) describes in detail an important facet of the brilliant work carried out by cryptanalysts in Bletchley. Its sensitivity was such that GCHQ only released it in 2011. An original volume is now in The National Archives (reference HW 43/7) but GCHQ's Historian also presented a copy to Mavis at Bletchley Park which is now held in the Bletchley Park Trust's own archive to celebrate their achievement.