Inside a 'Y'
Station
Messages transmitted
to and from U-boats were intercepted in Britain by Royal Air Force
'listening' stations, known as 'Y' Stations.
The 'Y' Stations
also intercepted thousands of other enemy messages each day.
Outside a 'Y'
Station a forest of tall aerials picked up radio signals from
as far away as the Soviet Union and Japan.
Inside, a team
of Morse code operators worked 24 hours a day, listening in to
coded messages and writing them down.
Your job would
be to translate the Morse signals into letters and write them
down as fast as you could - at least 90 letters a minute.
If you made just ONE mistake it would be impossible for
the code-breakers to break the code.
Listen to the sounds you would have
heard if you were one of the many servicewomen or civilians who
worked at a secret 'Y' Station.
Imagine
sitting in a cold wooden hut for eight hours at a time, wearing
heavy headphones and writing down thousands of letters. The words
made by these letters did not make any sense because they were
in code. All you were told was that the work you were doing was
vitally important and was helping to win the war...
