01-04-2025
Bletchley Park code breaker Betty Webb dead at 101
A decorated World War Two code breaker who spent her youth deciphering enemy messages at Bletchley Park has died at the age of 101.
Charlotte "Betty" Webb MBE - who was among the last surviving Bletchley code breakers - died on Monday night, the Women's Royal Army Corps Association confirmed.
Mrs Webb, from Wythall in Worcestershire, joined operations at the Buckinghamshire base at the age of 18, later going on to help with Japanese codes at The Pentagon in the US. She was awarded France's highest honour - the Legion d'Honneur - in 2021.
The Women's Royal Army Corps Association described Mrs Webb as a woman who "inspired women in the Army for decades".
Speaking to the BBC in 2020, she said she had "never heard of Bletchley" before starting work there as a member of the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
Her mother had taught her to speak German as a child and she said she was "taken into the mansion [at Bletchley] to read the Official Secrets Act".
"I realised that from then on there was no way that I was going to be able to tell even my parents where I was and what I was doing until 1975 [when restrictions were lifted]," she recalled.
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