A message sent by carrier pigeon 70 years ago to Allied officials in England during World War II has finally been received.
Not surprisingly, the messenger had long since expired, having died in an English chimney during the war.
The bird was found when David Martin in Bletchingly, Surrey, was renovating his fireplace.
Martin told the BBC that he began “pulling it down, pulling it down … then the pigeon bones began appearing one by one by one. Down came the leg with the red capsule on with a message inside.”
The message, from a Sgt. W. Stott, was sent in code, so as yet no one has been able to determine its contents. The capsule, still attached to the pigeon’s tarsus, is shown above.
Theories suggest the bird was making its way from behind enemy lines, perhaps from Nazi-occupied France, heading toward Bletchley Park, which was Britain’s main decryption center during World War II.
Coded message found attached to a carrier pigeon dispatched during World War II.
Others say the bird likely got lost, disoriented in bad weather or was simply exhausted after its trip across the English Channel and landed in the Martin’s chimney, reported ABC News.
Modern-day code breakers are working to decipher the message, the BBC reported.
Colin Hill from the Bletchley Park pigeon exhibition told BBC, “I thought no way on earth can I work this one out.”
More than 250,000 carrier pigeons were used in World War II. They were called the National Pigeon Service and were relied on heavily to transport secret messages, according to the BBC.
The United Kingdom maintained its “Air Ministry Pigeon Section” during World War II and for a short time afterward, according to War History Online.
“A Pigeon Policy Committee made decisions about the uses of pigeons in military contexts,” the site reported. “The head of the section, Lea Rayner, reported in 1945 that pigeons could be trained to deliver small explosives or bioweapons to precise targets. The ideas were not taken up by the committee, and in 1948 the UK military stated that pigeons were of no further use.”
However, the British security service MI5 still had concerns about the use of pigeons by enemy forces, War History Online added.
“Until 1950, they arranged for 100 birds to be maintained by a civilian pigeon fancier in order to prepare countermeasures.”
The Cotton Boll Conspiracy 
I am dying to know what the message was. Hopefully they do publicize it when it is decoded and don’t still consider it a secret after all this time.
I’m curious, as well. From what I gathered from the BBC story, most messages sent by pigeon were written in longhand, rather than code, so it would seem that this was of special significance.
Let’s hope it’s not something mundane like: “Tell Churchill the Germans just finished off the last bottle of Lafite-Rothschild from 1929.”
I read the same thing and wondered what was so important. “Running out of pigeons. Send more” ?
How about: “Send some smarter pigeons?”
🙂 poor pigeon.
I did a post about this on Saturday and added an aricle about a farmer who was trying out the idea of carrier bees in 1900. A few flaws with that idea I think, better to stick with the pigeons!
Carrier bees? I definitely have to go read your post.
If I understand right, bees usually don’t travel more that a couple of miles from their hives to gather nectar. How would you train them to a specific location, likely much farther away? And wouldn’t the carrier pigeons have eaten the carrier bees?
All good questions, and ones that I think the farmer probably didn’t really think about before sharing his idea 🙂
J.G. also asked about the poor bee when the glued on message was removed, I doubt that could end well…
No, bees don’t tend to hold up well under any kind of stress, do they. And they don’t take well to being poked and prodded, if I remember right from my childhood.
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