US stamp honors female codebreakers

A stamp has appeared in the USA honoring the women decipherers of World War II. On these stamps is printed a coded text. 

Deutsche Version

Women played an important role in Allied decipherment activities during World War II. Although the leading positions at Bletchley Park and Arlington Hall were occupied exclusively by men, there were numerous women at work in the less exposed positions. This was, of course, primarily because the country’s men were needed as soldiers, but this does not alter the fact that many of the women decipherers performed tasks vital to the war effort and were quite successful in doing so.

Numerous research papers and books have appeared in recent years, especially on the role of women in U.S. cryptanalysis, the so-called code girls. The best known is certainly the book “Code Girls” by Liza Mundy. The NSA’s cryptological museum near Washington also pays tribute to the Code Girls.

The Code Girls stamp

In honor of the Code Girls, the U.S. Postal Service has now issued a postage stamp. Tom Perera was kind enough to point this out to me.

Quelle/Source: U.S. Postal Service

Here you can see a single stamp:

Quelle/Source: U.S. Postal Service

Here is a picture of a first day cover:

Quelle/Source: U.S. Postal Service

The cryptograms

As you can see, there are some scrambled words on the stamp sheet and on the stamp itself. Also in the stamp of the first day cover there are some letters with unclear meaning. Can a reader decipher these cryptograms?

Spoiler: A simple Caesar cipher was used, and the key was even published on the back of the sheet:

Quelle/Source: U.S. Postal Service

The much more difficult task is to read the scrambled words on the stamp. Some of the writing is quite unclear. Can any reader say more about this?

In the U.S., you can buy the stamp at any post office or order it on the Internet. However, according to Tom Perera, the US Postal Service does not ship to Europe. So collectors will have to come up with something else.

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Further reading: New Agatha Christie stamps deliver hidden messages

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