A SECOND World War RAF veteran has paid a visit to the top secret equipment he used to help direct aircraft over the Normandy beaches in the days after the D-Day landings.
Sergeant (Retd) Bernard Morgan returned to the once classified Type X machine, which he used in 1944 to encrypt messages telling aircraft where they were needed, at famous codebreaking site Bletchley Park ahead of the 70th anniversary of D-Day in June.
The 90-year-old also met his modern day equivalent, RAF Aerospace Battle Manager Flight Lieutenant Vikki Thorpe, during his visit to the Bletchley Park heritage site in Buckinghamshire yesterday.
The Type X machine was used to encrypt messages that told aircraft where they were needed for immediate action, before sending the coded messages back to Britain to be actioned, and was vital in helping the RAF's air superiority before, during and after D-Day.
About 12,000 of the machines, which were large and heavy and needed four men to carry them, were built by the end of the war.
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