Do you remember the interesting find of the body of a WWII carrier pigeon in a chimney recently, still with its 70 year-old message from Sergeant Stott, intact? (Earlier post here)
I, and probably many others, have been waiting to find out what the code breakers would make of this message in the hopes that there would soon be an amazing secret revealed to the world.
Today the follow-up report caught my eye in the news (ABC news) and I eagerly clicked on the link to see what I had missed…… only to find that I had missed nothing…. bugger.
The code breakers had no luck deciphering it and concluded that the code must have been a one time only code or a specialist code. Aaarrgghhh!
Oh well, perhaps this is a mystery waiting for someone to look through the right files in the right office to find that mislaid code book.
Buried words and Bushwa. 
I didn’t think they’d tell us! But now they’re stumped they’ve released the code so one day the answers may be in the public domain!
Actually, after they admitted they were stuck I thought “there is probably some ten-year-old out there who will be all over it”.
I wonder if their mum will call the authorities when the kid says they’ve solved it or just tell the kid to go back to their video games and be quiet? 😉
Hehe! I hope she goes with the former. Shame on her from depriving the world of a genius. 😉
Hope it ends up at Benchley Park with the Enigma machine and all the other secret things from the code-breakers … 🙂
It certainly deserves to be displayed as an interesting bit of war memorabilia, what are the chances of such a message ever being found so many years later, especially one with a cryptic message like that!
Extraordinary, really, though wouldn’t it be fantastic to know the stories of all the messages pigeons have carried over the centuries 🙂
This story started me thinking about all the other carrier pigeons as well. I wonder how many of them were lost while on duty, and if any of the lost messages could have changed the tide of war had they been received?
Amazing to think that pigeons were the height of secret message sending technology then, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s amazing! Such a short time ago, and yet they were still using the same methods princes and merchants had been using for centuries … there are sure to have been some terrible losses that changed the course of history.
The art of carrier pigeoning (not sure what the term is for a pigeon master 😉 ) is lost now we have the high tech devices we all rely on today.
Imagine if some sort of disaster befell those technologies. and the time comes we need reliable long distance message deliveries without them?…..
*insert misty lens effect here* I will have to go with alien nano-bots attacking the cables and exchanges in my imaginary future war….. I am sure there is some old bloke out there who still knows the secrets and will save the world. (Perhaps that part will be played by Bruce Willis when they make the movie) 😉
Oh my dear, don’t despair! There’s a thriving hobbyist community of pidgin masters all over the world, apparently so you could take your pick as to suitable heroes 🙂
Glad to hear it, although your use of the term pidgin masters makes me think of a secret club with its own mysterious language! 😉
Don’t laugh – I’m sure there is! There’re all sorts of words to describe the birds, I think, so there’ll be words for what they do! 🙂
Rats! I seen this last night the disappointment must’ve been all over my face. Maybe an amateur code breaker will decode it and announce it to the world. I’m pretty sure there are such people.
I was really disappointed too. I really thought that it would be able to be deciphered and was quite surprised that it wasn’t.
I expect that there are many of those amateur code breakers around the world who are now obsessed with being the one to break it. What a challenge!
Possibly the message was sent by a Baldrick prototype, with a cunning plan that shoud the message be intercepted, no-one would be able to decipher it… including the recipient 😉
Oh. My. God. Baldrick and his famously cunning plans. How could I have not thought of this!!? 😀
What a pity. 😦 I guess this really is a case of the cipher being topical.
I can imagine that breaking this code kept quite a few people awake for many a night before they finally admitted defeat. Hopefully it will be deciphered at some point (and we hear about it). :I
I’ve read some books on ciphers – just fiction, not heavy stuff – and if the code relies on say, being in possession of a certain book, then breaking it so long afterwards would be like looking for one particular piece of straw in a haystack. 😦
The fact that the message was sent over a distance means that there had to be at least two copies of the cipher though. I can only hope that somewhere, in a dark and dusty file box, one of them survived the war and is just waiting to be revealed.
It is definitely haystack stuff but stranger things have happened!
With our without a real solution to the mystery, it’s an opportunity for a fiction writer.
What a responsibility rests on that message to be an interesting one now! Too bad if it was “Send more toilet paper” or “birdseed running dangerously low” 😉
You’re right, I think that an author could really make something out of such an interesting nugget. Hmmm… perhaps it read “I’m sleeping with your wife”, what amazing stories could be behind that small message!
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