LAST month the Gazette revealed the details of how Dursley played an instrumental part in cracking the enigma code, which ultimately won Britain the Second World War. This week a former Mawdsley’s worker who made components for the code-breaking machine tells the story of how the secret was kept.

HARRY Stanley was 14 when he started work as an apprentice at Dursley engineering company Mawdsley’s in 1936, little did he know that four years later he would be making vital components that were being used in a machine to crack enemy codes in the Second World War.

Mr Stanley, now 87, said it was in 1940 they started producing a component called the V ring, usually used for dynamos, for an unknown supplier. The orders came in batches and the staff called the project WW – a reference to Wyrne-Williams who helped develop the project. "We had no idea what they were being made for," said Mr Stanley a father-of-two. "I was of the inquisitive mind and wondered what it was all about, but no one had a clue."

During the war Mr Stanley worked 12 hour shifts seven days a week and when on night shifts sometimes he would see the lorry pull up to take the V rings away.

The driver told them he took the consignment to a cross-roads where they were driven to their final location by another lorry.

This left the staff none the wiser and they continued making the items without asking questions. Several years later Mr Stanley found out that the V rings had actually been used in a machine called the Bombe, which cracked the enigma code.

The components had been taken to Bletchley Park where experts were working on cracking the German code, a task that has been credited as helping win the war.

The enigma code was the backbone of German military intelligence and communication and it was so complex it was widely thought to be unbreakable. The odds against anyone who didn’t know the settings being able to crack it were 150 million, million, million to one.

However mathematician Alan Turning developed the Bombe, an electro-mechanical machine that greatly reduced the odds, and the time required, to break the daily-changing enigma keys.

"It is mind-boggling to think of how the machine was put together," said Mr Stanley, who still lives in Dursley. "When it all came out everyone was gobsmacked, it is just hard to believe."

He added: "It is nice to think you that you helped in someway with the war effort."