Canadian may have cracked U.K. ‘pigeon-code mystery’
History buff used WW1 codebook to decipher message
ACanadian history buff has attracted international attention for proposing a possible solution to the so-called “pigeoncode mystery” that emerged last month in Britain. That’s when the remains of a Second World War carrier pigeon — along with the secret message it was transporting from a European battlefield nearly 70 years ago — were found in the chimney of a home in the Londonarea village of Bletchingley.
Canadian retiree Gord Young, a historical researcher from Peterborough, Ont., claims to have deciphered much of the message using a First World War codebook inherited from his great-uncle.
And he suspects he’s also identified the British paratrooper believed to have released the pigeon following the invasion of Normandy in June 1944, an attempt to send details about enemy positions and movements to Britain’s intelligence headquarters before the soldier was killed a few weeks later in northern France during the successful Allied advance against German forces.
“First of all, we have to understand that this guy was a hero,” Young told Postmedia News, suggesting the paratrooper identified in the message as “W. Stot Sjt.” was Sgt. William Stott, a 27-year-old soldier with the Lancashire Fusiliers who was killed in July 1944 and is buried at a Commonwealth war cemetery in France.
“I’m hoping that this (proposed solution) will get something going over there to look into this further,” Young added.
The pigeon’s bones and the coded note — still rolled up inside a small tube attached to one of the bird’s legs — were discovered in the 1980s when Bletchingley resident David Martin was renovating his home south of London.
The message was later given to Britain’s top codebreakers at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), but the intelligence agency recently acknowledged its officials were unable to decipher the antique message without the corresponding codebook, and appealed to the public last month for help.
As the story about the chimney pigeon drew global media coverage last month, Young — an editor with Lakefield Heritage Research, a Peterborough-area local history group — examined a published image of the coded message and compared it with encryptions from his greatuncle’s codebook.
Young found that much of the message could be convincingly worked out based on shorthand abbreviations adapted from those used in the First World War.
He also reasoned that the para-trooper had likely been trained by a First World War veteran who employed a code system based on his own battlefield experiences.
For example, Young interpreted the first phrase — AOAKN — as “artillery observer at K (section), Normandy,” and LKXGH as “Lieutenant knows extra guns (are) here.”
Two other phrases — DJHFP and RBQRH — are deciphered as “determined Jerry’s headquarters front posts” (with “Jerry” a common signifier for “Germans”) and “right battery (head) quarters right here.”
One numeric message found on the note — 27 1525/6 — was translated as “June 27 (1944), 1525 hours,” presumably the time when the pigeon had been released with the message.
And two other notations, “NURP 40” and “NURP 37,” are believed to
I’m at least trying to show that (the message) can be cracked
GORD YOUNG
indicate that two homing pigeons had been released with the same information from Normandy to ensure that if one went astray — as the Bletchingley bird clearly did — the second would deliver the message to communications contacts in Britain.
“They were saying it’s indecipherable, and that’s nonsense,” Young said in an interview.
“I’m not saying what I’ve got is totally accurate either, but I’m at least trying to show that it can be cracked. Somebody somewhere has got a World War II codebook like I’ve got a World War I codebook.”
A GCHQ spokesperson told Postmedia News “we stand by our press notice of 22 November 2012 in that without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, the message will remain impossible to decrypt.”
The spokesperson added that, “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.”
This week, following extensive weekend media coverage in the UK of Young’s proposed solution to the pigeon mystery, the GCHQ issued a statement saying that agency officials “have followed with interest media reporting on possible solutions to the encoded message found on a dead pigeon in Bletchingley,” but added that “hundreds of these proposed solutions have been carefully examined by the expert cryptanalysts at GCHQ” and “so far none have proved credible.”