Listening to the Enemy - Mike Griffiths | Talk

If you take the road out of St Erth and travel up the hill towards St Erth Praze, you could easily miss, on your right, a dilapidated single storey concrete building. It is in a field close by the edge of the road. This is the guard/generator hut of a very secret and important MI6 Radio Listening Station. Together with its sister sites across the country, it had a profound effect on the outcome of World War 2.
Listening to the Enemy is a fascinating story of the Bletchley Park outstation. Over several years, Mike Griffiths has painstakingly researched the origins and purpose of this site. His father, Harry, was a radio operator at the station throughout the war and he recorded many of his contacts in a little black nook - his ‘Code Book’. This book - full of German and Italian radio nets, brevity codes and Double Agent call signs, encapsulates the role of Bletchley Park; the home of the Codebreakers.
St Erth Radio Station and its sister sites were quite literally the ears of Bletchley Park.
You can buy Mike's book from the TNMOC shop:
www.tnmoc.org/tnmocshop/liste...
Recorded 23/09/2023

[@tnmoc]

You can buy Mike's book from the TNMOC shop: www.tnmoc.org/tnmocshop/listening-to-the-enemy-war-comes-to-a-cornish-village-by-michael-griffiths

[@richardmoxon2025]

What an excellent talk, thank you very much, Mike.

[@mbak7801]

I was taught morse by the Royal Signals. The bulk of everything was five character groups without punctuation. Occasionally numbers. As a radio amateur I used a morse follower. It used 741 op amps, could latch onto a signal and echo it with a local oscillator. Then I turned down the background audio and all the other signals vanished leaving a clear copy of the signal. What was amazing is when the oscillator started to stumble I turned up the background volume and could barely hear the target signal. The Op amps could beat my hearing which was impressive. A very interesting talk about a very stressful time.

[@Petertronic]

Very interesting talk indeed

[@danielgregg2530]

It must get especially chilly there during the winter . . .

[@toma5153]

An interesting talk. I'm glad you took the time to put this together and have tnmoc put it up on KZbin so we could all enjoy it. One thing that amazes me is the great number of people involved at Bletchley plus the great number of Y station and signal corps personnel. All the activity never tipped off the Germans that something was up and most everyone never leaked information (except I believe to the Russians).

[@user-yf4do7hg3s]

Mike, really enjoyed this talk. You are doing such a great job to ensure that our respective fathers contributions to the success of the code breaking is known about and hopefully appreciated. Well done and thanks . Rod

[@dougmorris2134]

Thank you for such an interesting talk and photos etc. I recently watched the video of the developments leading to computer “Colossus” and Alan Turin and Tommy Flowers. Although I passed the RAE exam in 1983 and have since become a member of the RSGB, I didn’t take the Morse test and am not a licenced Radio Ham, radio will always be of interest to me. One particular radio/wireless station, “Aspidistra” as the transmitter was not far from where I was born and lived for a while. I remember the three masts. That’s enough info on me, my regards to Anne K-B as I’m sure she will take an interest in me. 73s and good DX.

[@localbod]

Thank you for posting this. This was a very interesting and informative presentation. It was especially useful to know which books to buy to further one's knowledge. Himmler's first name definitely was not Hendrik though.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Something I'd love to know - the "fist" of a Morse operator is recognisable. But was there a way to share that recognition between Wye staff? Did individual enemy radio operators get nicknames or personal code numbers, or was it just a matter of an individual listener noticing the chap from X regiment is now broadcasting from Y regiment?

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Was there anywhere near as much quackery about radio in 1939 as there is about "AI" today?