A Pigeon Found Dead In A Chimney In 1982 Carried An Encrypted World War II Message

During the war, a volunteer organization known as the National Pigeon Service (NPS) was formed in the UK. The NPS provided over 250,000 birds for use in carrying messages, used when other forms of communication like radio were inappropriate, insecure, or unavailable. Their services were pretty vital. Of the over 60 animals presented with a Dickin Medal, the highest honor an animal can receive while serving in a military conflict, 32 were awarded to pigeons. 

For example, on February 23, 1942, a Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber was hit by enemy fire whilst returning to the UK from Norway and crashed into the freezing sea. Unable to radio their position for rescue, the crew turned to a carrier pigeon named Winkie for their chance to survive. Winkie flew 193 kilometers (120 miles) back to her loft. 

Though Winkie was not actually carrying a message, the bird was pivotal to the crew's survival. When Winkie arrived back home, covered in oil, the owner contacted the RAF, who were able to estimate the plane's position by figuring out how long it would have taken the pigeon to make her journey, factoring in wind speed and the oil slowing down Winkie's flight. The crew were quickly found and rescued, and Winkie was awarded a Dickin medal for "delivering a message under exceptional difficulties".

Carrier pigeons were also dispatched in less dramatic circumstances, sometimes delivering encrypted messages designed only to be read by a recipient with the relevant cipher for decoding them. 

"During the war, the methods used to encode messages naturally needed to be as secure as possible and various methods were used," The UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) explains. "The senders would often have specialist codebooks in which each code group of four or five letters had a meaning relevant to a specific operation, allowing much information to be sent in a short message. For added security, the code groups could then themselves be encrypted using, for example, a one-time pad."

While useful for keeping messages concealed, it makes deciphering the message a little tricky when you find the skeletal remains of a carrier pigeon blocking up your chimney. In 1982, a pigeon was found in these circumstances, and carrying the following message:

AOAKN HVPKD FNFJU YIDDCRQXSR DJHFP GOVFN MIAPXPABUZ WYYNP CMPNW HJRZHNLXKG MEMKK ONOIB AKEEQUAOTA RBQRH DJOFM TPZEHLKXGH RGGHT JRZCQ FNKTQKLDTS GQIRU AOAKN 27 1525/6

If that means anything to you, you need to contact GCHQ as soon as is convenient, as so far nobody has been able to decipher the code. 

"The message Mr Martin found must be highly top secret," Colin Hill, curator of the Pigeons at War exhibit at Bletchley Park, told Pigeon Racing UK & Ireland.

"The aluminium ring found on the bird’s leg tells us it was born in 1940 and we know it’s an Allied Forces pigeon because of the red capsule it was carrying – but that’s all we know."

According to Hill, the bird may have been flying back from Nazi-occupied parts of Europe when it rested on a chimney, and died. 

While we know very little about what the message contains, there are a few clues as to who it came from. The message is signed "Sjt W Stot", a shortening of "searjent" which was an old spelling of sergeant. Meanwhile the pigeon's name, NURP.40.TW.194 or NURP.37.OK.76 (both written on the message), shows a little about the bird itself. NURP is an abbreviation of the National Union of Racing Pigeons, while 40 and 37 refer to the year the bird was registered, the final letters indicate where the bird is from, and the final numbers identify the individual bird. It is not clear which pigeon was found dead in the chimney.

There have been people who have claimed to have deciphered the message. In 2012, amateur Canadian codebreaker Gord Young said that he had cracked it within 17 minutes. According to Young, the message was largely just acronyms, and read as follows (as reported by Wired):

"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."

According to Young, the message's author was Sergeant William Stott of the Lancashire Fusiliers, who died whilst on duty in Normandy, reporting on Nazi positions. 

"Essentially, Stott was taught by a WWI trainer; a former Artillery observer-spotter. You can deduce this from the spelling of Serjeant which dates deep in Brits military and as late as WWI," Young said at the time, per BBC News. "Seeing that spelling almost automatically tells you that the acronyms are going to be similar to those of WWI."

While that may sound plausible, it was quickly dismissed by GCHQ and other experts, with Michael Smith, historical advisor to Bletchley Park, dismissing it as "nonsense".

"The idea that a World War One code would have been used during the second world war is just silly, frankly,” Smith told the BBC's Today program, per the Independent.  “It wouldn’t have been used because it would have been well known to the Germans and insecure."

"Mr Young has essentially taken the string of 27 five letter groups and decided on the basis of this World War 1 code that individual letters stand for something. So for example, HVP is ‘have Panzers’. This is nonsense and it just isn’t the case that this message has been decoded."

Instead, GCHQ believes the message was sent using a one-time pad as a cipher. Without that, the message has remained undeciphered to this day.

"GCHQ followed with interest media reporting on possible solutions to the encoded message. Hundreds of these proposed solutions have been carefully examined by our expert cryptanalysts at GCHQ. So far none have proved credible," GCHQ explains, adding that, "without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, it will remain impossible to decrypt.