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Veteran Expediter
What could possible be so secret now? 
British intelligence agents are working on deciphering a coded message that has remained a secret for nearly 70 years -- attached to the leg of a hero World War II carrier pigeon.
Found in the chimney of 17th-century home in Bletchingley, Surrey, the bird's skeleton was found in 1982 when the home's current owner David Martin decided to restore the fireplace.
"I started finding bits of a dead pigeon. We thought it might be a racing pigeon until we spotted a red capsule," Martin told reporters.
The small red cylinder contained a mysterious cigarette paper-sized encrypted message.
Unseen for three decades, the message "is deemed so sensitive, that codebreakers at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) are now frantically trying to decipher it," Bletchley Park, a center where during World War Two top secret codebreaking work was carried out on behalf of the Allies, said in a news release.
Experts realized the bird was named 40TW194 from the aluminum ring found on its leg (the first two numerals indicate the pigeon's year of birth).
Almost certainly, the carrier pigeon was dispatched from Nazi-occupied France on June 6 1944, during the D-Day Invasions.
Because of Churchill's radio blackout, homing pigeons were taken on the D-Day invasion and released by Allied Forces to inform military generals back on English shores how the operation was going.
The military pigeons were dropped behind enemy lines from bombers, whereupon resistance fighters picked them up, before releasing them homeward bound with top secret messages.
The brave birds played a very active role in World War II (the RAF trained 250,000 birds, forming the National Pigeon Service) and, between 1943 and 1949, 32 were awarded the Dickin Medal, Britain's highest possible decoration for valor given to animals.
More and Pics
Coded WWII Message Found on Pigeon Remains : Discovery News
British intelligence agents are working on deciphering a coded message that has remained a secret for nearly 70 years -- attached to the leg of a hero World War II carrier pigeon.
Found in the chimney of 17th-century home in Bletchingley, Surrey, the bird's skeleton was found in 1982 when the home's current owner David Martin decided to restore the fireplace.
"I started finding bits of a dead pigeon. We thought it might be a racing pigeon until we spotted a red capsule," Martin told reporters.
The small red cylinder contained a mysterious cigarette paper-sized encrypted message.
Unseen for three decades, the message "is deemed so sensitive, that codebreakers at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) are now frantically trying to decipher it," Bletchley Park, a center where during World War Two top secret codebreaking work was carried out on behalf of the Allies, said in a news release.
Experts realized the bird was named 40TW194 from the aluminum ring found on its leg (the first two numerals indicate the pigeon's year of birth).
Almost certainly, the carrier pigeon was dispatched from Nazi-occupied France on June 6 1944, during the D-Day Invasions.
Because of Churchill's radio blackout, homing pigeons were taken on the D-Day invasion and released by Allied Forces to inform military generals back on English shores how the operation was going.
The military pigeons were dropped behind enemy lines from bombers, whereupon resistance fighters picked them up, before releasing them homeward bound with top secret messages.
The brave birds played a very active role in World War II (the RAF trained 250,000 birds, forming the National Pigeon Service) and, between 1943 and 1949, 32 were awarded the Dickin Medal, Britain's highest possible decoration for valor given to animals.
More and Pics
Coded WWII Message Found on Pigeon Remains : Discovery News
