Who can solve this coded World War I carrier pigeon message?

In 1914, a German soldier sent a coded carrier pigeon message from Lötzen to Königsberg. The letter frequencies suggest a transposition cipher. Can a reader crack this message?

Deutsche Version

In 2012, a coded homing pigeon message from World War II made the news. A homeowner in Surrey had found this message – along with a pigeon skeleton – in his fireplace during renovation work. This cryptogram remains unsolved to this day and is now one of the most famous unsolved crypto mysteries around. I have already blogged about this story several times and have also addressed it in my lectures several times.

Quelle/Source: Wikimedia Commons

To my knowledge, this message was the only known encrypted carrier pigeon message ever.

Another carrier pigeon message

Thanks to blog reader Matthias Lohmeyer, I can present a second encrypted carrier pigeon message today. Here it is:

Quelle/Source: Lohmeyer

Matthias writes: “I found a small capsule in my great-grandfather’s estate with which messages were sent by carrier pigeon. Inside was still the original message dated July 30, 1914, the day Russia officially mobilized and one day before the German declaration of war.”

The message was sent from the commander of the Boyen fortress near Lötzen (Giżycko) in East Prussia to the governorate in Königsberg. This is a distance of a good 100 kilometers.

Matthias has made the following transcription:

Quelle/Source: Lohmeyer

Here is the transcribed ciphertext:

oeeme iicru drztf bsate
eimno sebte feasg nsair 
esria gethg ssnsn astbe
tbnue vetnz updru gheuu
lishg iefej nesci rgtgs
inets fnese gindz rcsrn
r

A transposition cipher

So the message consists of groups of five. I don’t know the meaning of the numbers on the right side.

Unfortunately, it is not clear which encryption method was used. However, it is known that rather poor methods were used at the beginning of World War I, and that the quality of cryptography increased as the war progressed. Encryption machines played a very minor role in World War I, and none at all in the beginning. Here is a frequency analysis made with Multi-Dec by Christian Baumann:

Quelle/Source: Baumann

The letter frequencies suggest a transposition cipher. Can a reader find out more? Matthias Lohmeyer and I would be pleased.

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Further reading: Ungelöste Verschlüsselungen aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (3)

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