November 27. 2012 6:00AM
Living in an age saturated with supercomputing power, we like to flatter ourselves that thereís very little we canít figure out. But an encoded message found on the carcass of a World War II- era pigeon is showing otherwise.
The skeletal remains of the bird were found in a chimney in an old home in the village of Bletchingley, England, near London, in 1982. But the message attached to the birdís leg was sent only last month to expert code breakers at the Government Communications Headquarters.
Word from GCH is the world will likely never know what the message was meant to convey.
The pigeon is known to history as 40TW194, but decoding the message itself would require a decryption key that would have been in the possession of sender and recipient, and intended for one-time use.
It seems all the computing power in the world isnít going to come up with this answer. But 40TW194 can rest in peace, because we know this for sure: Britain won the war.