In 1982, the skeleton of a
carrier pigeon was found inside a home chimney in
Bletchingley, Surrey, in the southeast United Kingdom. Inside a red canister (see above) attached to one of its legs was an encrypted message handwritten on a Pigeon Service form. The message was addressed to "XO2," which is thought by some to be
RAF Bomber Command, alternatively corresponds to a signals routing code "forward to second recipient", - the recipients being identified in the code text - and is signed "W Stot Sjt." probably Sergeant William Stott. It is believed to have been sent from France on 6 June 1944 during the World War II
D-day invasion. The message consists of 27 five-letter groups, with the first and last group identical. As of February 2019, the message has not been deciphered. Britain's
GCHQ, the successor to
Bletchley Park has asked for any information the public might have about the message. The cipher text reads: The form indicates that two copies of the message were sent. Additional notations, in a colour different from the code groups and signature, are "NURP 40 TW 194" and "NURP 37 OK(or DK) 76." These identify the specific birds used. NURP stands for "National Union of Racing Pigeons." The pigeon whose remains were found is apparently 40 TW 194. 40 and 37 refer to the year the pigeons were hatched. The code DK and TW are believed to refer to Dorking and Twickenham. — the usual reading of the group is "FNFJU", while the hand has a very square U, the W is quite distinct. However,
Michael Smith, a former British army intelligence operator and advisor to Bletchley Park, dismissed Young's purported decryption as "nonsense", explaining "a World War One code … wouldn’t have been used because it would have been well known to the Germans and insecure." The
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has stated "without access to the original code books, details of any additional encryption, or any context around the message, it will be impossible to decode. Similarly it means that any proposed solutions sent to GCHQ will, without such material, be impossible to prove correct." Some sources have suggested the code was a
one-time pad. ==References==