Wartime Royal Signals man who fed messages to Bletchley Park

Born: December 23, 1919;

Died: April 10, 2018

HUGH McKinlay, who has died aged 98, was a proud "Siggie," a Royal Signals operator, message interceptor and instructor during World War Two, when he picked up enemy German, Italian and Japanese Morse code and radio messages.

Mr McKinlay knew his messages could be important, possibly saving allied lives, as he handed them on to dispatch riders who in turn got them back to a secret location. What he did not know at the time was that their ultimate destination, known as Station X, was the then top-secret but now-famous Bletchley Park codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire whose work shortened the war and saved countless allied, and enemy, lives.

Having signed the Official Secrets Act, everything Mr McKinlay did during the war for the Royal Signals Y Service was on a "need to know" basis. It was only decades later, after Bletchley Park decided to blow its own cover, that people like Mr McKinlay's work was recognized. He was inducted into the Roll of Honour at Bletchley Park.

After the war, he worked for 40 years as a print compositor, including on Fleet Street but mostly in Glasgow for The Herald and the Scottish Daily Express. In later life, he was a much-loved and active member of the Knightswood branch of the Royal British Legion.

In compliance with the Official Secrets Act, Corporal McKinlay kept the details of his wartime service secret, even from his family, for around 40 years after the war until Bletchley Park's role in cracking Hitler's Enigma encryption machine became public. His family later visited Bletchley Park but Mr McKinlay himself never made it down to Buckinghamshire to see his name on the Roll of Honour.

Although he spent most of the war at Royal Signals monitoring stations in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, or on the Isle of Man, he also served in Germany at the end of the war in 1945. He was with frontline troops at Rendsburg at the Kiel Canal on the Baltic in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. Kiel had been a vital base for the German navy and a major centre for the production of Nazi U-boats and British signals operators played an important role in tracking their movements.

Hugh McKinlay was born on Dumbarton Road, Glasgow, on December 23, 1919, the eldest of three sons of Georgina (Richardson) and Hugh Sr, who died when young Hugh was nine and attending Scotstoun Primary School. He later went to Hyndland Secondary School before joining the book publishers William Collins in Glasgow as an apprentice compositor.

In April 1939, with war threatening, he enlisted in the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division of the Territorial Army as a piper in the regimental band. The regiment, led by Major General James Drew, was part of Scottish Command based in Edinburgh Castle along with the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division.

In 1941, having been trained as a Wireless and Line Operator, Mr McKinlay was posted to the Special Operators Training Battalion (SOTB) in Trowbridge. His task was to "get to know" enemy radio or morse operators - German, Italian and Japanese - in order to decipher each's individual "signature." From 1943-45, he had the same role at Douglas on the Isle of Man for the Special Wireless Group (SWG). He said capturing Japanese messages was particularly difficult since they came in from the Pacific theatre almost in stereo, from both east and west.

After he was demobbed in January 1946, Mr McKinlay returned to Glasgow to complete his apprenticeship as a compositor with the Collins publishing house before going south to gain experience with several newspapers in Fleet Street, the London hub of the newspaper business.

Back in Glasgow in 1951, he worked as a compositor for The Glasgow Herald for five years, then onto the Scottish Daily Express for 18 years, where he was the union FOC (Father of the Chapel) and secretary/treasurer of the Express Golf Club. Finally, he worked for the Govan and Clydebank Press where he stayed until he retired in 1985.

A keen golfer, he joined Cawder Golf Club, Bishopbriggs, in 1951 and played to a high standard well into his eighties, even after he was registered as partially sighted after suffering a detached retina in his right eye from heading a football. At Cawder, he would just ask his playing partners to "tell me where the pin is." Laser surgery, in its infancy at the time, did not work for him.

Following the death of his wife May in 2005 after a 52-year marriage, Mr McKinlay found new friends at the Knightswood branch of the Royal British Legion on Cairntoul Drive.

"He was a very quiet guy, still mourning, and he told me 'if I was younger, I'd loved to have got involved in the club," Barclay McCran, president of the Knightswood RBL, told The Herald. "I said, in fun: You're only 83, nothing to stop you. He became one of the club's favourite entertainers and was never slow to take the stage dancing or singing My Way, Can't Help Falling in Love or a brilliant version of Harry Lauder's Keep Right On to the End of the Road ... "though you're tired and weary, still journey on, till you come to your happy abode." He was still singing at the RBL until last year, when he was 97 and had been diagnosed with Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD).

One of his proudest moments was when the Knightswood RBL invited young servicemen from the Royal Signals to honour him, including Captain Jimmy Scott and piper David McRobb (who would also later play the pipes at Mr MacKinlay's funeral).

Hugh McKinlay died in St Margaret of Scotland Hospice in Clydebank. His wife Mary (May) McKenzie McKinlay (née Forbes) predeceased him as did his son Hugh. He is survived by his daughter June, six grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and a younger brother.

PHIL DAVISON