Two more coded carrier pigeon messages from the First World War

After my readers solved a carrier pigeon message four weeks ago, today there are two more cryptograms of this kind. They are also encrypted with the ÜBCHI method and are unsolved so far.

Deutsche Version

After I knew for a long time only one coded carrier pigeon message (it originates from the Second World War), I could present a second one in August. It originates from the First World War and was made available to me thankfully by Matthias Lohmeyer.

Quelle/Source: Lohmeyer

Message solved

Blog reader Max Bärtl saw that the message had been encrypted using the ÜBCHI method and found the solution rather quickly. The plaintext he found is as follows:

Feind bei Possessern in der Nacht zum dreissigsten zum Angriff vorgegangen beschiesst Feste seit Tagesanbruch bis jetzt nur geringe [V]erluste

Normally ÜBCHI provides for a double column transposition, but in this case transposition was done only once. According to Gerd Hechfischer, the numbers on the right side are the numbers of the five carrier pigeons that transported the message. Rossignol then found out the key word: FRESH HAFF.

There were also some interesting comments from Thomas Bosbach and Kerberos. So, once again, my readers did a great job.

Two more carrier pigeon news

After this success, Matthias Lohmeyer provided me with two more carrier pigeon news, dating from the same time. He found these in the Federal Archives as well. Here is the first of the two messages:

Quelle/Source: Lohmeyer

This message consists of 79 letters, which can be recognized by the marking “chi 79” at the beginning. The second message is a bit more extensive:

Quelle/Source: Lohmeyer

As far as I can see, there are two encrypted parts in this second message, consisting of 148 and 149 letters respectively, while the rest is in plain text.

Possible solutions

Presumably, these two messages were also encrypted using the ÜBCHI method. Whether a single or double column transposition was applied, I do not know.

Can a reader decipher these two messages? I also welcome information on the historical background.

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