A former Bletchley Park codebreaker from Manchester has sadly died aged 98. Joseph Anthony Harney's family have paid tribute to his life and service ahead of his funeral. Mr Harney, known as Tony, was an aspiring journalist as a teenager and wrote for the Manchester Evening News early on in the Second World War. His family said he wrote a number of editorials in and around 1942, chronicling weddings in Greater Manchester of the time. Born in Chorlton , Mr Harney was called up into service and was posted to Bletchley Park as well as other Allied outposts. It's understood he was part of a top-secret radio control unit working to intercept and decode German messages. During the war Bletchley Park, in Buckinghamshire, housed the Government's secret Code and Cypher School, which obtained signals intelligence by breaking high-level and encrypted Nazi communications. It was also home to the Colossus machine, the first programmable electronic computer. After the war the codebreakers who worked at Bletchley Park were instructed not to reveal any aspect of their missions. Their decisive role in the Allied war effort, which some historians believe shortened the conflict by up to two years, was not fully recognised until the 1980s. Mr Harney's son, Simon, said: "At the time of being a journalist for the M.E.N., he enrolled in a night school course in the knowledge that he would be imminently called up into service. "This by all accounts, as well as being a highly intelligent man, seemed to be just what the recruiters at Bletchley Park were after as he was enlisted there, serving both at Bletchley Park and in Alexandria, Egypt, Arkley and Hounslope Park until the war ended. "He wanted to be armed with skills in order to attempt to be assigned a position within the intelligence branches or such like. "Presumably his skills learned at night school, and his academic ability, assisted him in being placed within the code deciphering force of Bletchley Park. "My dad grew up in Chorlton. Born in September 1926 with three siblings, he was keen to start working in his spare time as much as he could due to growing up in a time of hardship. He often described having three or four part time jobs going at any one time throughout his childhood from quite a tender age - a butcher's round, a paper round, a golf caddy at Chorlton Golf Club and a runner for his dad's bookmaking business. Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE "His two elder brothers were called up and went into the services, one in the RAF on Lancaster bombers and the other in the Navy, spending much of his service on the Russian convoy missions. As the youngest brother his time to be called up was obviously last. "My dad would never talk about his time during the war, or for that matter anything about the war. We only found out that he served at Bletchley Park around 1995, as a similar aged member of Chorlton Golf Club, where our family played golf, confided in my dad that he, too, was sworn by the Official Secrets Act." Following codebreaker Alan Turing's ground-breaking work on the Enigma machines at Bletchley Park, he began work on the Delilah project at Hanslope Park, in Buckinghamshire, to develop a portable encryption system or voice scrambler to protect military secrets in the field. "My Dad had never told anyone until then of his service," added son Simon. "The thing we as a family were always very grateful for is that all three brothers came home. Many didn't." Father-of-four Mr Harney passed away peacefully at his home in Sale Moor, Trafford , on May 12, surrounded by his family. Widower to Jackie, he's survived by his loving sister, Rosemary, and other family members, including six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. A funeral service will be held at Altrincham Crematorium at 11.30am on June 6.