Pigeon Post

[Hugh]

With thanks to the NY Times. Note the reference to the Dickens Medal.

H

A Bird Skeleton, a Code and, Maybe, a Top Secret

SWNS.com

A chimney in a home in Surrey, England, was found in 1982 to hold the remains of a carrier pigeon bearing a World War II coded message. An effort is now under way to find out what it says.

By ALAN COWELL

Published: November 1, 2012

It kept its secret for decades. It perished in the process. It died, experts say, a valiant death, most likely on a hush-hush mission over wartime France, and was then, like so many others, forgotten.

But now, decades after the final flight of military carrier pigeon 40TW194, the bird’s secret message has become a matter of state and the grist of headlines. After a concerted campaign by pigeon fanciers, the encrypted message, which had been folded into a scarlet capsule on the pigeon’s leg, has now been sent to Britain’s top-secret GCHQ listening post and decoding department outside Gloucester to the west of London.

There, 40TW194’s World War II secret might finally be revealed. Or maybe not. “We cannot comment until the code is broken,” said a spokesman for GCHQ, which stands for Government Communications Headquarters. “And then we can determine whether it’s secret or not.”

The tale of 40TW194 speaks to many themes — among them, animal heroism. The Dickin Medal, Britain’s highest decoration for animal valor, has been awarded to 64 feathered, furry or four-legged creatures, including 32 pigeons, since 1943, making birds the bravest of the brave. They include an American pigeon called G.I. Joe, or Pigeon USA43SC6390, which, according to its citation, “brought a message which arrived just in time to save the lives of at least 100 Allied soldiers from being bombed by their own planes.”

A memorial to animals at war was unveiled on London’s Park Lane in 2004 and it, too, commemorates pigeons.

But the story of 40TW194, and its companion, 37DK76, also seems to be a story of just how forgotten a war’s forgotten heroes can be.

The bird’s skeleton was discovered in 1982 at the 17th-century Surrey home of David Martin as he sought to renovate a chimney. Amid a cascade of pigeon bones, “down came the leg with the red capsule on,” he said in one of many interviews he has given in recent days.

Inside the capsule, he discovered a coded message with crucial clues as to the provenance of the bird. The message, for instance, was marked as a duplicate to a message carried by 37DK76. (The first two numerals indicated the pigeon’s year of birth.) It was addressed to “xo2,” now thought to be code for bomber command.

The fact that two birds had been dispatched with the same message, and that the message was in code, seemed to suggest that it might have been carrying word of some major development.

The location of Mr. Martin’s home in Bletchingley might also be a key to the long-secret message. It is between the site of the Allied landing at the Normandy beaches in 1944 and a famous code-breaking center north of London at Bletchley Park. It is also, Mr. Martin said, near the site of a headquarters established by the British field marshal Bernard Law Montgomery at Reigate before the D-Day landings.

“The bird may well have been flying back to Monty’s HQ or Bletchley Park from Nazi-occupied Normandy during the invasion” of 1944, said Colin Hill, the curator of a pigeon exhibit at Bletchley Park, referring to Montgomery by his nickname. The pigeons, he said, routinely accompanied both ground forces and Royal Air Force bomber crews who were told to use the birds to report back their positions if they crash-landed in hostile terrain.

But at first, said Mr. Martin, now 74, and a retired probation officer, no one seemed interested in what might well be a gripping yarn of feathered valor. At the time, the Falklands War was under way. The code-breakers were too busy to worry about pigeon bones. “It wasn’t a story then,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

Only the community of people who love pigeons — including some who race the birds and are schooled in their wartime history — took an interest and began a campaign over many years to get officials to pay attention.

Two years ago, Mr. Martin and his wife, Ann, finally found a taker for a copy of the message: Bletchley Park, which is now a museum.

Over time, curators there became convinced of the message’s uniqueness — other pigeon files used little or no code. And so the original, a tiny message scribbled on a standard military form, was sent on to GCHQ to take a look.

By Thursday, the bird’s destiny was the subject of a bona fide news media happening. As Mr. Martin spoke on the telephone to one reporter, a photographer from another news media outlet was transmitting images from his yard. At Bletchley Park, Mr. Hill could not come to the phone immediately because he was giving a television interview.

Once known for its wartime secrecy, Bletchley Park on Thursday went public with a news release.

“World War II experts suspect the bird discovered by Mr. Martin was destined for the top-secret Bletchley Park — which is just 80 miles from Mr. Martin’s home,” the statement said. “During the war, Codebreakers worked there round the clock in top secret.” The statement added, “It was also home to a classified MI6 pigeon loft, manned by trainer Charles Skevington.”

Rendezvous Blog

The Foreign Correspondent and the Carrier Pigeon

Although the code is likely to be broken, the circumstances of how the bird that carried it died will probably remain a mystery.

One theory, Mr. Hill said, was that it became exhausted or overcome by fumes as it perched on the chimney and simply fell in. Another is that it was wounded by one of the German snipers stationed on the English Channel coast with orders: shoot the pigeons.

The companion bird does not appear to have made it home either. Adding to the mystery, Mr. Hill said, is that neither birds’ code numbers are included in any historical archive. “They’re not in the books anywhere,” he said. They were, he said, “special pigeons,” in much the same way as James Bond was a special agent.

For the moment, the tale has captivated the attention of many who had long since forgotten about the birds (though not this reporter, who once used carrier pigeons in Zimbabwe at the time of independence in 1980 to send dispatches from a remote encampment with no other means of communication).

The latest saga has revived talk of pigeons in history. Among the little-discussed facts: some 100,000 pigeons flew their missions in World War I, and 250,000 in World War II.

And then there is this: In 1945, the head of a Pigeon Policy Committee in the Air Ministry Pigeon Section, Wing Cmdr. Lea Rayner, proposed using the birds to fly with a minicargo of explosives — an idea that was never adopted.

“A thousand pigeons, each with a two-ounce explosive capsule, landed at intervals on a specific target,” Wing Commander Rayner wrote, “might be a seriously inconvenient surprise.” Not least, of course, to the pigeons.

Edited November 3, 2012 by Hugh

[IrishGunner]

Looking forward to breaking the code.

[Hugh]

Here's the update, courtesy of redOrbit. Amateur Historian Cracks Lost WWI Carrier Pigeon Code

December 17, 2012

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Image Credit: Photos.com

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

A World War II message found in a fireplace attached to the remains of a dead carrier pigeon is believed to have been decrypted.

A Canadian World War II enthusiast says that he has deciphered the

message after realizing that a code book held the key to the encryption.

Gord Young, editor for the history group Lakefield Heritage Research,

says the 1944 note uses a simple World War I code to give information

about German troop positions in the area around Normandy, France.

The 74-year-old David Martin first uncovered the message when he was

renovating the chimney of his house in the village of Bletchingley in

Surrey, England.

During his renovation, he found the remains of a dead pigeon, along

with a leg that had a red canister still attached. Once he cracked open

the canister, he found a thin piece of paper with the words “Pigeon of

Service,” along with handwritten encrypted codes.

According to the BBC, Britain’s top code breakers at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) obtained the message at the beginning of November but were unsuccessful at cracking the code.

The British agency told BBC that they were convinced the message was impossible to decrypt, but did confirm that they would take a look at Young’s solution.

“We stand by our statement of 22 November 2012 that without access to

the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used,

the message will remain impossible to decrypt,” a GCHQ spokesman told

BBC.

“Similarly it is also impossible to verify any proposed solutions,

but those put forward without reference to the original cryptographic

material are unlikely to be correct.”

Young, however, said that the code is not complex, and that people who are trying to decrypt it are “over thinking.”

The code, according to Young’s account, belonged to 27-year-old Sgt

William Scott, who was placed in Normandy to report on German positions.

Scott was killed a few weeks later and buried in a Normandy war

cemetery.

Around 250,000 carrier pigeons were used during World War II, and

Young said that Scott would’ve sent out two pigeons to ensure that the

information made it through enemy lines and arrived back in England.

He hinted that it was pretty obvious that the peculiar spellings and

heavy use of acronyms indicate that Scott was trained during World War

I.

“You will see the World War I artillery acronyms are shorter, but,

that is because, you have to remember, that, the primitive

radio-transmitters that sent the Morse code were run by batteries, and,

those didn’t last much more than a half-hour tops, probably less,” Young

told BBC.

According to Young, the decrypted message reads:

“Artillery observer at ‘K’ Sector, Normandy. Requested

headquarters supplement report. Panzer attack – blitz. West Artillery

Observer Tracking Attack.

“Lt Knows extra guns are here. Know where local dispatch station

is. Determined where Jerry’s headquarters front posts. Right battery

headquarters right here.

“Found headquarters infantry right here. Final note, confirming,

found Jerry’s whereabouts. Go over field notes. Counter measures against

Panzers not working.

“Jerry’s right battery central headquarters here. Artillery observer at ‘K’ sector Normandy. Mortar, infantry attack panzers.

“Hit Jerry’s Right or Reserve Battery Here. Already know

electrical engineers headquarters. Troops, panzers, batteries,

engineers, here. Final note known to headquarters.”

Young said that more deciphering is required still, but that extra

bits of code could have been inserted into the text to confuse the

enemy.