Pamela Pigeon

Pamela Pigeon (1918–?) was a New Zealand-British cryptographer who was the first female commander in Britain's Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ.[1]

Biography

Pigeon's father, a surgeon, immigrated to New Zealand in 1902. She grew up in Wellington, New Zealand, where she attended Queen Margaret College and won awards for language and speech writing.[1]

It's not known when she emigrated to Britain. However, during World War II she worked as part of a secret intelligence unit located in Marston Montgomery, a remote base in Derbyshire set up in 1941 as an outpost of RAF Cheadle. In around 1943, she became the leader of a team of linguists who listened in on shortwave German naval and air force radio broadcasts to decode information on troop movements.[1] The team also worked "fingerprinting individual German radios," identifying them through the fact that "each crystal at the heart of a radio oscillated slightly differently."[2] Their work helped to sink the Bismarck, a crucial German battleship.[1] GCHQ historian Tony Comer identifies this as a key moment in the war.[3]

References
  1. Brunskill, Daniel; Bayer, Kurt (3 November 2019). "Pamela Pigeon: The Kiwi who became the UK's first female spy commander". NZ Herald. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  2. Sabbath, Dan (1 November 2019). "GCHQ marks 100 years by unveiling details of wartime spy work". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 November 2019.
  3. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/at-last-gchq-reveals-the-secret-wartime-history-of-homes-farms-and-sheds-k8z5862md
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