A dead pigeon found in a chimney carried a message from World War II

In 1982, David Martin, a resident of a house in Bletchingley, UK, came across the skeletal remains of a carrier pigeon while inspecting his chimney. Attached to the bird was a red capsule containing a coded message believed to date back to World War II.

During the war, a voluntary organization called the National Pigeon Service or NPS was formed in Great Britain. This organization provided more than 250,000 birds to carry messages; Messages sent in situations where other forms of communication, such as radio, were inappropriate, unsafe, or unavailable. The services of these pigeons played a vital role. Of the more than 60 animals that have been awarded the Dickin Medal, the highest honor awarded to an animal while serving in a military conflict, 32 have been awarded to pigeons.

For example, in February 1942, a Royal Air Force (RAF) bomber was hit by enemy fire while returning from Norway to Britain and crashed into the frozen sea. Unable to radio their position for rescue, the crew turned to a carrier pigeon named Winky for survival. Winky traveled a distance of 193 km and returned to his nest.

Although Winkie did not actually carry a written message, she played a crucial role in saving the crew. When the oil-covered bird arrived home, its owner contacted the RAF. Air forces were able to estimate the approximate position of the plane by estimating the duration of the pigeon’s flight, taking into account the wind speed and the reduction in speed due to oil pollution. The crew was quickly found and rescued, and Winkie was awarded the Dickin Medal for delivering the message in extremely difficult conditions.

Carrier pigeons were also used in less exciting situations, sometimes carrying coded messages that could only be deciphered by the recipient with the appropriate code.

The British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) says: “During the war, the methods used to encrypt messages had to be as secure as possible and a variety of methods were used. Senders often had specialized codebooks in which each group of four or five letters had a meaning related to a specific operation and allowed the transmission of a large amount of information in the form of a short message. For added security, these code groups could also be re-encrypted using a method such as a one-time pad.”

As effective as these methods are for keeping messages hidden, when you find the skeleton of a carrier pigeon clogging up your chimney, deciphering the message won’t be so easy. In 1982, a pigeon was discovered 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 this string means anything to you, you need to contact GCHQ as soon as possible, as no one has yet been able to decipher it definitively. Colin Hill, curator of the Pigeons at War exhibition, said: “The message Mr Martin found must have been top secret. “The aluminum ring on the bird’s leg indicates that it was born in 1940, and because it was carrying a red capsule, we know that it belonged to the Allied Forces, but our information is limited to that.”

According to Hill, the bird was probably returning from Nazi-occupied Europe when it landed on a chimney, rested and died there.