Some nice WW2 pigeon pictures…
It’s been a bit quiet on the WW2 pigeon cipher front (the GCHQ Historian has been working hard to try to find some Typex rotor wiring diagrams for us, but so far without any luck, *sigh*), but I...
View Article“Pigeons in World War II” by W. H. Osman…
As part of my preparations for a talk on the ‘cipher pigeon’ that I’ll be giving at Westminster Under School in a couple of months’ time, I’ve been making sure that there aren’t any books I should have...
View ArticleNURP 40 TW 194’s pigeon club identified…?
A quick recap: a copy of the WW2 cipher was placed on the leg of two pigeons, one with ring NURP 40 TW 194 and the other with ring NURP 37 DK 76. But we haven’t been able to identify either of these...
View Article“War of the Birds” (2005)…
Here’s a lovely 50-minute film from 2005 for you about WWII pigeons (both English and German) called War of the Birds, made by Richard Cane for Atlantic Productions Ltd for Animal Planet. [IMDB page]...
View ArticleWestminster Under School Crypto Challenge
At a Westminster Under School Open Day not so long ago, I was delighted to find out from Miss Ellis (WUS’s Head of Mathematics) that after their final exams, Year 8 boys there spend time discovering...
View ArticleDidac Sánchez and the WW2 Cipher Pigeon…
Here in the UK, it all started with a story in 27th August 2015’s Daily Telegraph:- Didac Sánchez, a 22-year-old Spanish IT entrepreneur, says he has deciphered Second World War message following a...
View ArticleThe Secret History of Typex QQQQQ…
A few years ago, while giving a talk at Westminster Under School on the WW2 pigeon cipher, I mentioned that (a) Typex messages were sent in groups of five letters; and (b) when some German codebreakers...
View ArticleA solved pigeon cipher mystery (from 1952)…
Because Trove holds newspaper articles all the way up to 1954, you occasionally stumble across interesting stories from around the world picked up by Australian newspapers. And because I’ve been raking...
View ArticleIntroducing Virtual Typex…
I missed Virtual Typex‘s launch back in March 2020, but a Cipher Mysteries review is better late than never, eh? The short version: Virtual Typex is a gloriously techy bit of onscreen kit, that...
View ArticleTypex seen through code-breaking eyes…
Previous posts here have established (I believe) that the WW2 Pigeon Cipher was almost certainly encrypted using the British Typex cipher machine. So I think it would be a good idea to look at this...
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