WWII's Bletchley Park files to go online for the first time

London, June 5 (ANI): Over a million Second World War documents are to go online for the first time.

According to the BBC, files from Bletchley Park, the UK's wartime code-breaking headquarters, are to be digitised and put online in a large-scale project expected to take up to five years to complete.

Undercover mathematicians and military operatives produced high-level intelligence at the Milton Keynes base during the war, providing crucial assistance to the Allied effort.

The work of the Bletchley Park staff, which included cracking supposedly unbreakable German codes generated by the Enigma and Lorenz machines, has been credited with curtailing the length of the war by up to two years.

The Bletchley archive currently exists entirely in paper format and much of it is difficult to view, making it inaccessible to the general public. Until now, only limited access to the archive has been granted to academics and educators under strict supervision.

Following an initial digitisation phase lasting around a year the documents, including communication transcripts, memoranda and photographs, will be made available for access using a combination of paid-for and free content.

The project is a collaboration between Hewlett Packard (HP) and the Bletchley Park Trust, which runs Bletchley Park's National Codes Centre and its museum and educational facilities. (ANI)