The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park will host a special event titled “Dons, Wrens and Bombes” on Saturday, 30 May 2026, offering visitors an educational look at the people and machines that were critical to the success of D-Day.
Taking place from 10:30 AM to 1:00 PM, the event serves as a launch for a new presentation that explores the wartime codebreaking efforts through the lives of the academics known as “dons,” the women of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, and the complex Bombe codebreaking machines. The presentation aims to highlight how these groups worked in unison to provide vital intelligence to Allied commanders.
The timing of the event sits just days before the 82nd anniversary of D-Day, which took place on 6 June 1944. During the Second World War, the team at Bletchley Park provided intelligence for over 18 months leading up to the Normandy landings, with the workforce of 7,000 people decrypting nearly 5,000 Enigma messages every day by the time the operation began.
By 1944, a force of 1,676 members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service were responsible for operating more than 200 Bombe machines. These devices, which resembled large metal bookcases, were capable of processing up to 18,000 Enigma messages daily.
The event will be held in Block H, the world’s first purpose-built computer centre. The National Museum of Computing, which is an independent registered charity, houses the world’s largest collection of working historic computers, including the world’s only working Turing-Welchman Bombe and a rebuild of the Colossus computer. The museum operates separately from the Bletchley Park Trust and relies on ticket sales and the support of donors to fund its operations, including recent building restoration projects supported by the Post Office Remembrance Fellowship.
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