

WWII pigeon message stumps GCHQ decoders - sp8
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20456782

======
johnmoore
You have to look at the facts the message was sent by Sjt W Stot.

You do a search and you find this.

<http://www.archieraf.co.uk/archie/1037zau.html>

And you will find that there was a sgt H H Stott and his crew position is w/op
Air Gunner so hence the sjt W Stot.

You will then find that On 27th April 1942, the crew of Halifax W1037 ZA-U
from 10 Squadron failed to return hence the need to send a message.

You will also find that on the birds ID NURP.40.TW.194 and NURP.37.OK.76 -
NURP” was the National Union of Racing Pigeons so it was british so this back
up the fact it was send by the RAF. The number 40 relates to 1940 but you
can't read to much into that if you see this website.

[http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-
Birds&...](http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-
Birds&OtherAnimals/+Doc-Birds&OtherAnimals-Birds/RoleOfPigeonsInWartime.html)

You will see pigeons with number 38 was used in 1941 and 1942 and a pigeon
with number 39 was used in 1945 and a pigeon with number 41 was used in 1942.

So this backs up the argument that the date would be between 1940 and 1945. So
the date of the crash in 1942 wouldn't be far off.

All you have to do is find the codes used by Halifax W1037 ZA-U from 10
Squadron. The RAF would have records once you get that you can decode the
message.

I thought the GCHQ had smart people working at it.

sgt H H Stott personal number is 1058698 take the first four numbers 1058 and
use that as the ciper.

So the first letter A is plus 1 the second letter is O plus O the four letter
is A and it is plus 5 which is G and the four letter K is plus 8 which is W
so.

The first row is as follows.

BOG WT NHF LD KVG JB GJD IK

Which so far I have translated as.

BOMBER ON GROUND WITH TROOPS NEED HELF FAST LITTLE DEFENCE k___ v____ G_____
J___ B____ G____ J____ D____ I___ K___

Need help solving the rest.

~~~
takluyver
On the other hand, 'W Stot' could well be different from 'H H Stott': it's a
short surname, and not particularly rare:

<http://www.192.com/atoz/people/surnames/stott/50/>

Also, the article mentions that spelling 'sergeant' with a j, as in the
abbreviation 'Sjt' was more common practice in the army, whereas the RAF would
probably have used a g.

~~~
andyjohnson0
@SuperChihuahua posted a link to
[http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2012/11/02/dead-pigeon-
sparks...](http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2012/11/02/dead-pigeon-sparks-
ww2-cipher-mystery). According to the author of that document it may have been
Sergeant William Leslie Stott (508080 in the RAF, died in 1945 aged 35, buried
in Chester’s Overleigh Cemetery) [1]. The spelling of "Sergeant" matches.

[1] [http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-
dead/casualty/2928300/STOTT,%20...](http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-
dead/casualty/2928300/STOTT,%20WILLIAM%20LESLIE)

------
andyjohnson0
According to this [1] article the message reads:

AOAKN HVPKD FNFJW YIDDC

RQXSR DJHFP GOVFN MIAPX

PABUZ WYYNP CMPNW HJRZH

NLXKG MEMKK ONOIB AKEEQ

WAOTA RBQRH DJOFM TPZEH

LKXGH RGGHT JRZCQ FNKTQ

KLDTS FQIRW AOAKN 27 1525/6

[1]
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9697929/Wante...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9697929/Wanted-
for-one-last-mission-call-for-Bletchley-Park-codebreakers-to-crack-the-D-Day-
pigeon-cipher.html)

~~~
mafiawl
Hi there :-)

I read the message slightly differently (I believe some of the supposed 'w's
are 'u's and one of your 'F' s is I believe a 'G'. As follows:

AOAKN HVPKD FNFJW YIDDC RQXSR DJHFP GOVFN MIAPX PABUZ WYYNP CMPNW HJRZH NLXKG
MEMKK ONOIB AKEEQ UAOTA RBQRH DJOFM TPZEH LKXGH RGGHT JRZCQ FNKTQ KLDTS GQIRW
AOAKN

Also do you know who 'Mason' is? Maybe the person who sent in the photo? Is
this a recruiting sergeant for GCHQ? :-))

Not being a code breaker myself what relevance does AOAKN have? Beginning and
end of message.

This pigeon was found in a chimney - what can we learn from that? What was the
procedure when a message was sent but not received? This can be solved :-)

~~~
DanBC
One time pads are mathematically provably secure. So, if it's a one time pad
then we may not be able to solve this. There are some possibilities. If
there's enough information with the pigeon and the message to find the
original other half of the pad the message may be decrypted.

------
FiloSottile
Wow. I have in my possession some really similar looking crypted pages form an
Italian partisan of the WWII (prepared and parachuted by the English forces).

It seems to me that the situations might be analog. How can I contact them? I
see that they are asking for help but I don't see contact info.

~~~
jgrahamc
I know some folks at GCHQ. Email me via my profile here and I will put you in
contact.

------
k3liutZu
If this were from 2012, the message would be in plaintext in some DB, and
probably easily crackable.

WW2 crypto FTW

~~~
Swizec
And if this were from 2012 said DB would be on an encrypted hard drive that
can only be unlocked by typing "password".

~~~
mtrimpe
Which would reveal a filesystem with the plausible looking content, while
having typed a _different_ password would have revealed the true contents of
the message.

~~~
dkurth
And the weight of the hard drive would clearly be the cause of the pigeon
getting pulled down into the chimney and unable to get out.

------
jgrahamc
It's very curious that the first and last groups are identical: AOAKN. That
would not be expected from a one time pad.

~~~
Nursie
1 in 11 million probability of the first and last blocks being the same by
pure random chance. I'd guess they must be some sort of pre-agreed message
sentinel, but even 1 in 11 million chances happen sometimes!

~~~
dkurth
Right -- as improbable as that sounds, it pales in comparison to the
likelihood of renovating your chimney and finding a pigeon with a coded
message from WWII!

------
phreeza
As suggested in the comments on the Telegraph article, it would would seem
likely that this message was encrypted with a one-time pad, making it
essentially unbreakable. Unless the key is found in some MoD vault (and
released to the public).

~~~
andyjohnson0
Probably correct. Another option is that the message was produced using a
cipher machine, which were in use by the allied forces at that time. If a
machine and records of the pre-arranged keys still exist then decryption might
be possible.

~~~
tomjen3
If we can find records of how that machine worked, then we should be able to
build a program to break the encryption.

------
thornalex
This message was sent by a homeland "Y Station", most likely from the RAF, to
a decoding facility downstream, in the SIGINT community. At Bletchley or
elsewhere. Y Stations were monitoring German military communications from the
UK. It is why what we can now read on paper is the verbatim retranscription of
a procedure that was heard on a radio receiver by a radio intelligence
operator, --ie the presence of the standard "checksum" and EOM signature
comprising the reiteration of the header group followed by the total number of
5-groups sent -- 27 in the instance. The origin time "1522" is the ZULU at
which the actual transmission started while the end of transmission time is
written after the checksum "1525/6". Taking pauses into account, this means
the morse code operator was transmitting the groups at 10wpm, a credible speed
for this type of operation. I hope this helps. Greetings from rainy Montreal
David Thorne-Alexander <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaumanor_Hall>

------
takluyver
By the signature, in the video clip, there's a box labelled 'Number of copies
sent', filled in with a number 2. So, assuming the other copy went on another
pigeon, it could well have already been received and deciphered back in WWII.

Here's the still from the video showing that and the signature:
<http://i.imgur.com/KTp15.png>

------
emmelaich
If you're interested in this you might be interested in a another unsolved
message. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taman_Shud_Case>

Also written up recently at [http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/riddle-on-the-
sands-20121119...](http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/riddle-on-the-
sands-20121119-29kwz.html)

Unfortunately the evidence is that decryption might depend on either a
unavailable first edition of the Enlgish translation of
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam> and/or information
from a person who died in 2007.

------
motters
While much has been published about the German Enigma system I've not seen
much about the British equivalents during WW2.

If this message was produced using a one time pad - which is practical for
short messages - then it may be very difficult to decypher.

------
SuperChihuahua
More reading here: [http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2012/11/02/dead-pigeon-
sparks...](http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2012/11/02/dead-pigeon-sparks-
ww2-cipher-mystery)

~~~
andyjohnson0
This has some good ideas and research, but the author seems fixed on the idea
that the message was produced by an SOE agent using a poem cypher. This seems
unlikely to me because the cyphertext is written on an official-looking form.
Blank message pads and quantities of homing pigeons are presumably not
something that an under-cover agent would want to carry around with them.

------
tuzemec
And I'm just reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. Amazing book.

~~~
ryanslade
Me too, really made the article stand out for me.

------
tomelders
Running low on #pigeons. Please send more #WWII

------
andyjohnson0
1525/6 could be a time and day. The Normandy landings took place on 6th June
1944.

~~~
uvdiv
Could be a page/offset in a one-time pad.

------
acron0
The article missed some of the message, which read:

IDKFA IDDQD IDCLIP IDCLEV

~~~
moresheth
IDSPISPOPD

------
joegrd
If you count you will find that there are 26 diferent codes. This tells me
that each 5 letter code represents a letter of the alphbet. This is not a
message but it is the code itself.

------
brucewaye1984
I still say this could be from the underground you have to stop and think .
The underground use many forms of code to talk to one another

