Tributes have been paid to Second World War Bletchley Park codebreaker Ruth Bourne, who has died at the age of 98.
Ms Bourne, from High Barnet in north London, worked as a Bombe machine operator and checker at sites around Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire after joining the Wrens (Women’s Royal Naval Service).
Wartime codebreakers used the Bombe machine to break the Enigma code used by the Nazis to encrypt messages, changing the course of the war and preventing millions of deaths.
The Taxi Charity for Military Veterans, which broke the news of Ms Bourne’s death, paid tribute to the role she played in cracking Enigma.
“Ruth’s contribution to the monumental task of breaking the Enigma cypher was truly historic,” the charity wrote on Facebook.
“Ruth was a remarkable woman with immense charm and charisma, and she will be dearly missed by all who had the privilege of knowing her.”
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The Bombe was originally developed by Alan Turing to help work out the settings of Naval Enigma, which was not breakable using by-hand methods at the time.
The codebreakers enabled British intelligence to move more swiftly and act upon the information the Bletchley team gave them, contributing to several key military victories during the war.
Their work also sparked the industrialisation of codebreaking and helped set the foundations for the development of the first forms of the computers used today.
In 2018 Ms Bourne received the Legion d’honneur – France’s highest military honour – in recognition of her service.
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Hundreds of the machines were operated by Wrens.
