Jerry Roberts - in Retirement

In Retirement

Jerry Roberts met Mei 1990 in London and married soon after. Mei is an artist and book illustrator.

Jerry Roberts is the last survivor of the nine cryptanalysts who worked on Tunny. For the last 4 years, he has been campaigning for proper recognition for Bletchley Park's 4T’s - for his colleagues in the Testery, and especially for its three "Heroes"; Alan Turing who broke the naval Enigma, Bill Tutte who broke the Tunny system to helped shorten the War, and Tommy Flowers who designed and built the Colossus, the world's first electronic, digital, programmable computer - to vastly speed up some stages of the breaking of Tunny traffic. However, the majority of the work was performed by hand in the Testery by codebreakers and support staff.

Jerry was working in the same office when Bill Tutte broke the Tunny system in early 1942. He and a few other key colleagues also played an important role at Bletchley Park. The country was lucky to have these brilliant men in the right place at the right time. Without these three great minds and the many other supporting personnel at Bletchley Park, we could easily have lost the War.

Jerry Roberts was presented to H.M the Queen Elizabeth II in July 2011 at Bletchley Park. In October 2011, Jerry Roberts was featured in a BBC Timewatch Special titled Code-Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes; first broadcast on BBC Two on 25 October 2011. Jerry Roberts provided valuable background information for this programme and he was pleased to see Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers get credit. But this recognition comes so late, so many went unrecognised for the reasons of secrecy. Most people that served Testery are now dead, the Tunny story has yet to be fully told.