The Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) and the Northern Ireland War Memorial (NIWM) welcome you to a talk by George Busby.

Few are aware of the contribution made by a small group of individuals from Northern Ireland who supplied Bletchley Park with raw signals intelligence, plus one Ulsterman who played a key role in the breaking of the Enigma Code when we as a nation faced possible defeat followed by invasion.

Behind an innocuous government building in the Castlereagh Hills was aspect of our World War Two history that had almost disappeared over the horizon, out of sight out of mind. Known simply as the Wireless Station, this had been in its day a place of absolute secrecy where questions were never asked because answers would not be forth coming.

George will tell the story Gilnahirk's time as an outstation of Bletchley Park and of select group of radio amateurs, known as Voluntary Interceptors, had been secretly recruited to seek out and record the encrypted signals intelligence traffic of the German Intelligence Service.

George is a veteran of 12 years’ service in the Royal Air Force, with postings as a ground engineer at RAF Ballykelly, RAF Laarbruch in Germany and RAF Brize Norton in England. After leaving the services George worked for 40 years as a Post Office telecommunications engineers with a sideline in the Royal Observer Corps. His book, The Spies at Gilnahirk, was published in 2016.

The lecture will take place on Thursday 20 March 2025 at PRONI (2 Titanic Boulevard, Titanic Quarter, Belfast, BT3 9HQ) starting at 1pm.

* Register for a FREE ticket via Eventbrite: Northern Ireland's Bletchley Connections *