"Jane Fawcett. who has died aged 95, played a key role at Bletchley Park in the sinking in May 1941 of Bismarck, and went on after the war to save St Pancras and its Gothic Midland Hotel from the modernisers of British Rail. As one of the very first debs recruited to work at Bletchley Park, Jane Hughes, as she then was, was put to work in Hut 6, where the German Army and Luftwaffe Enigma ciphers were broken and where her knowledge of German would help in decoding the enemy’s messages. On May 25 1941, with the Royal Navy hunting down Bismarck in the North Atlantic, she was one of several staff briefed on the latest situation as they came on shift: “We all knew that we’d got the fleet out in the Atlantic trying to locate her because she was the Germans’ most important, latest battleship and had better guns and so on than anybody else, and she’d already sunk the Hood. So it was vitally important to find where she was and try to get rid of her.” As she typed out the message she realised that it was from Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin Just over an hour into her shift, she was typing out a Luftwaffe Enigma message on the specially adapted British machines which were designed to replicate the German Enigma device. As she typed out the message she realised that it was from Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin telling somebody important that Bismarck was heading for the French port of Brest. A Luftwaffe general whose son was on Bismarck had asked if he was all right and had been told that the German battleship was heading for France. Jane Hughes’s message was rushed immediately to the Admiralty. The following day, a Royal Navy Catalina flying boat was dispatched and spotted the battleship. The Navy gave chase and she was sunk. It was the first time the codebreakers had seen tangible evidence that their work was having an impact, and there was a rousing cheer in the dining room at the Bletchley Park mansion when the BBC reported that Bismarck had been sunk. Jane Fawcett was born Janet Caroline Hughes on March 4 1921 in Kensington, west London. Her father, George, was the Clerk of the Goldsmiths’ livery company. Jane attended Miss Ironside’s, a Kensington school for “young ladies” which did not encourage its charges to take exams or consider university. After leaving school, she won a scholarship to Rada, which she turned down in favour of a place at the Royal Ballet School. Just as her career appeared to be taking off, with a part in Swan Lake, however, the school’s principal, Ninette de Valois, told her she was too tall and would never make a professional dancer. Jane was distraught, and in order to help her get over it her parents sent her and a friend to spend six months learning German with a doctor in Zurich. Finding life there too dull and having seen a poster of skiers on the slopes at St Moritz, she telephoned her parents and announced that she and her friend were moving to the ski resort. They found another doctor who was very happy to take in young lady lodgers, though since the man was something of a womaniser, Jane’s time in St Moritz turned out to be rather more educational than her parents had planned. She later told friends that she had been lucky to get out with her virginity intact. After returning from Switzerland, she “suffered” the traditional “Season”, attending coming-out parties, dances and social events like Ascot and Wimbledon. After repelling the attentions of various “vapid” debs’ delights, she received a letter from an old school friend who was working at Bletchley Park. “Well, Jane,” the letter ran, “I’m at Bletchley and it’s perfectly frightful. We’re so overworked, so desperately busy. You must come and join us.” Intrigued, she accepted the invitation and, after lunch in the Bletchley Park mansion, was taken into Hut 6 and interviewed by Stuart Milner-Barry, one of the senior codebreakers. Though impressed by his fame as a chess player, she was rather less impressed by his interview technique. He was, she recalled, “desperately shy. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say and I couldn’t think of anything to say to him because I wasn’t supposed to say anything.” Yet she was offered the job and went home to tell her parents that she had been recruited into the Foreign Office." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/05/25/jane-fawcett-bletchley-decoder-obituary/
