http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxl0XM_P3SQ&rel=0
Found: A fascinating bit of trivia from World War II — the skeleton of a carrier pigeon with its message capsule and message intact. The 70-year-old message has been turned over to authorities for decoding and we can only wonder what it might say. “Send beef wellington for ten”? “Nazis to bomb 10 Downing at 06:00”? “Next week’s menu for Company C”? “Hitler rumored to be dead”? “Christmas list for Pvt. Ryan”?
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This is just so cool…
I’m dying to know what the message says …
Me too… If it does have any if your options I’ll owe u a million pound. 🙂
🙂
An interesting reminder from “The Great War”. It was the last war to seriously affect virtually every American family, something that is unlikely to ever happen again. In fact, now that I think about it, there were only two others in that category, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.
I will be interested to see if they can decode the message, but will not be surprised if they can’t. Code-breaking in those days was an industry. Reminds me of Rachel Maddow’s book, “Drift”wherein she describes how government scientists and engineers lost the recipe for an important component of the W76 warhead for Trident submarine missiles. It had something to do with an exotic material code-named “Fogbank” that affected the explosive efficiency of the hydrogen in the bombs. When they went to refurbish the aging warheads they realized that all the 1970’s original creators of Fogbank were, well, gone, and try as they might, they couldn’t reinvent it. Maddow doesn’t say how the situation was resolved, but I assume all those Tridents prowling the deeps out there are still loaded for bear, Or Iranians. Or whatever.
If only the “war to end all war” had, but this pigeon served during WWII. And still the wars keep coming …
I share your doubt the message will be decoded. It seems safe to assume that a lot of the devices used during the war to decode such messages, as well as the people who knew how to use them, are gone.
Fascinating story about Fogbank. I hadn’t heard about that. Figures a former submariner would know.
Ah, I did know that WWI was often called that, “The Great War” but I think of WWII that way because it was just that, much greater in its effect on American than WWI.