One of the last surviving women codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War has died aged 99.

Margaret Betts was just 19 when she was recruited to help decipher enemy communications.

She was headhunted by “men from the ministry” in 1942 after performing well at school, her son Jonathan Betts, 68, said.

She went on to work at top-secret Allied codebreaking centre Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire from the summer of 1943 until the end of the war in 1945.

Mrs Betts, from Ipswich, Suffolk, died on 26 August this year of natural causes.

Her son said she kept her “sharp brain right until the end”.

Mr Betts, who describes himself as “terribly proud” of his mother, said she was always humble about her efforts.

“Like most of them did, she always played down her role,” said Mr Betts, who lives outside Salisbury, Wiltshire.

“She said ‘yes, I know it was incredibly important, our part in it, and I know it was highly secret, but please don’t come away with the idea that we’re all Alan Turing[s], because we’re not’.

“‘We were there operating the machines, we were obeying orders, we were applying logic to do what we were told to do, and we were doing so efficiently and intelligently, but we didn’t design the machines for decoding’.

“When we said that sounds really exciting like James Bond spy stuff, she said ‘no, it wasn’t at all like that, it was very humdrum’.”

‘I was one of those’

The codebreaker kept her role secret long after the war ended. It was only four decades later that her family learned the true part she played.

“For over 40 years she wouldn’t talk about it, all she told us was she worked in an office in the Royal Navy’s service at home,” Mr Betts said.

“It was only when documentaries started to appear on the TV and books started to be published that eventually she said ‘you know, I was one of those’.

“We said ‘gosh, why didn’t you tell us before!'”

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Mr Betts said it was work done by women like his mother that helped hasten the end of the Second World War.

“Without their work the war would have lasted longer – some people reckon it would have gone on two years longer if they hadn’t been able to break the German and Japanese codes.

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“She contributed a small part to a very important element in winning the war.”

Margaret Betts had five children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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