Patricia Davies (codebreaker)

Patricia Davies (née Owtram; born 19 June 1923) is an English former codebreaker who served as a special duties linguist in the Women’s Royal Naval Service during World War II. She and her younger sister Jean Argles are often referred to as "The Codebreaking Sisters". As a teenage interceptor, Davies listened to radio transmissions in both German and encrypted code as part of the British war effort, transcribing and decoding the messages and passing them on to Bletchley Park.

After the war, Davies was a television producer, journalist, and author. She was also an organiser of the Chiswick Women’s Institute and a patron of the Sea Cadets. Until Argles died in 2023, the sisters were the last to have been required to sign the Official Secrets Act. In their later years they discovered that each had been doing top secret war work. In their nineties, they appeared frequently on radio and television relating stories of their wartime activities. Their book Codebreaking Sisters: Our Secret War became a best seller.