Snail mail, perhaps, but still smarter 70 years later!

David Martin, 74, made a fascinating discovery of something as old as himself when he recently opened an unused fireplace during renovations at his home in Surrey, England. Among what were the clear remains of what appeared to be a pigeon, there was this intriguing little red canister attached to the bird's leg. 

It became evident that the remains were of a dead carrier pigeon, of which the British forces used around 250,000 during WWII to relay important information to and from the battlegrounds. It is believed that this particular pigeon was on its way back from Normandy, probably en route to General Montgomery whose headquarters were not far away. The bird is thought to have stopped to rest on the chimney and perhaps become incapacitated by fumes, falling to it's death in the chimney. 

The message was apparently sent by an airman sergeant and was destined for "X02" which it seems was the code for British bomber command in Buckinghamshire, England. The message contains a series (27) of five letter (or number) combinations, along with some unique identifiers. It has since been forwarded to Bletchley Park's codebreaking headquarters and has also been examined by analysts at the British Intelligence Agency. 

Remarkably, even the sharpest minds of 2012 appear to be incapable of deciphering this code from 70 years ago! But it might not be that surprising because the whole idea in the first place was to effectively render such codes "unbreakable". Teasing out the actual message would require the appropriate codebooks and knowledge of the "one-time pad" encryption system, wherein only the sender and the recipient would have the key needed to read the message.

In all likelihood both the necessary codebooks and the one-time pad were destroyed after a certain period which means that we may never learn what was in this message that might shed some light onto a very historic moment in history. But it's late arrival at close to its destination serves as a reminder of earlier times and what remarkable jobs the oft-maligned pigeon did for us all (not just the British) during a very delicate time in this world. 

It also makes me smile that with all of our computers and technological advances since then, the experts and spies of Britain are today unable to decode something that was sent 70 years ago - so good luck to anyone who was trying to decode such messages back then! You can be sure the message contains something that was critical to the times in which it was sent and there is a huge desire by all involved to know what it said. 

I hope that some codebreaker, somewhere, does manage to crack it, if only to complete the incredible journey of this one faithful carrier pigeon and all the others who served so well alongside it. I daresay that I know of a certain former four star general and ex-CIA Director who might wish he had been smart enough to use such "technology" in recent communications, rather than the supposedly more efficient current version: email! ;) - Kevin Mc