Just a bit of a follow-up on this subject. I took the advice of MarkGD and picked up the book "Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, 1941-1945" by Leo Marks. For those interested in reading about the history behind these one-time pads, and the S.O.E. codes in general, I highly recommend the book.
Leo Marks was the man at S.O.E. who developed the pads and other codes (he is shown above in my previous post holding one of his silk pads). He is also the author of the poem "The Life That I Have", which you may be familiar with from the film "Carve Her Name With Pride" about S.O.E. agent Violette Szabo.
I just finished reading the book, and could not put it down. It was an easy and enjoyable read, which surprised me because it was a bit technical at times, something my brain doesn't like these days. A great bit of history, and the author's sense of humor made it even better.
Mr. Marks developed two coding aides that were put on silk, the first one that was "numbers" based, he called a WOK (Worked-Out Key), and the second that was "letter" based, he called a LOP (Letter One-Time Pad). I believe the silk pad that is the subject of this thread is a LOP.
I am not positive what a WOK looks like, but I assume it is the numbered silk like those shown in my post above from the books "SOE Equipment Air Dropped in Europe 1940-1945" by Anders Thygesen & Michael Sode, and "Mémoire d'Ondes Les transmissions clandestines de la Résistance" by Eric Pierret. Also the example Mike B posted might be a WOK. Can anyone confirm this?
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