THE secret message carried by a Second World War spy pigeon which met its death inside a Surrey chimney is to remain a mystery.
Boffins at the heart of UK intelligence in GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) have said the 142-digit code found inside a capsule, strapped to a pigeon's skeleton and discovered in a Bletchingley fireplace 30 years ago, is unbreakable.
However, David Martin, the man who found the secret dispatch in his High Street chimney and sent it to GCHQ to decode last month, is sceptical.
"I suspect they have decoded it and don't want to say what it is," said Mr Martin, 74. "They obviously can decode it, if you think of all the work they do."
It is thought the pigeon, one of 250,000 employed during the war effort, died on the way back from occupied Europe seven decades ago.
The only direct correspondence Mr Martin has had with GCHQ is a letter he received on November 16. "They said they were still working on it," said Mr Martin. "They said 'you will appreciate it is not a priority' but they were working on it.
"They wrote quite enthusiastically, and now they are saying they can't decode it.
"I can believe they don't want to, because it is too much effort, and I would accept that, but the point that they can't is not true."
Mr Martin believes the message may reveal something that "doesn't reflect well" on the Allies.
In a statement released on Friday, a GCHQ spokesman said the message could not be decoded without access to the original cryptographic material.
The GCHQ code-breakers were set an intriguing challenge following the discovery of a carrier pigeon skeleton by David Martin in the chimney of his house in Bletchingley, Surrey. The message – hand-written on a small sheet of paper headed "Pigeon Service" – was found in a small red canister still attached to the pigeon's leg."
"Unfortunately, much of the vital information that would indicate the context of the message is missing," he said. "It is undated, and the meaning of the destination – given as "X02" – is unknown. Similarly, while the sender's signature appears to say "Sjt W Stot", nothing is known of this individual or their unit.
"During the war, the methods used to encode messages naturally needed to be as secure as possible and various methods were used. The senders would often have specialist codebooks in which each code group of four or five letters had a meaning relevant to a specific operation, allowing much information to be sent in a short message. For added security, the code groups could then be encrypted using, for example, a one-time pad.
He added: "The message found at Bletchingley had 27 five-letter code groups, and the GCHQ experts believe its contents are consistent with this method. This means that without access to the relevant codebooks and details of any additional encryption used, it will be impossible to decipher."
The man who may have inspired James Bond told David Martin the secret message he found in his chimney would never be decoded. Mr Martin showed the piece of paper to Wilfrid 'Biffy' Dunderdale MBE, a friend and neighbour who lived in Bletchingley until his death in 1990. Charming Mr Dunderdale worked for MI6 for almost 40 years. He was intelligence head in Paris until 1940, where he showed a penchant for fast cars and pretty women, according to a history of the service. He was friends with Ian Fleming, Bond's creator, and has been called the 'real' 007. According to Mr Martin, when Biffy was presented with the message found attached to the dead pigeon, he suspected it may have something to do with the work of secret agents in France, and that the authorities would not want to reveal its true meaning. "He knew it was related to that, and he said it would not be decoded," said Mr Martin. Some 250,000 pigeons were seconded during the Second World War. They were used by all arms of the services as well as the Special Operations Executive (SOE). They carried a wide variety of messages, flying the gauntlet of enemy hawk patrols and soldiers taking potshots at them to bring vital information back to Britain from mainland Europe. Each pigeon in service was given an identity number. Two such numbers, NURP.40.TW.194 and NURP.37.OK.76, have been identified on the Bletchingley message. Either of these could be the identity of the pigeon in the chimney. The curator of the Pigeon Museum at Bletchley Park is trying to trace these numbers, and if they are identified and their wartime service established, it could help to decode the message, as could identifying 'Sjt W Stot' and 'X02'. A GCHQ spokesman said: "Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was undecipherable both then and now."