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Comment by mothsonasloth | Hacker News Reader

The codename for his death is : "Operation Forth Bridge"

What does this mean?

In the pre internet days, when communication went through various manual means like telephone exchanges, there were codewords known by various people to announce royal deaths without it leaking. The death of the Queen for example has to be announced to all commonwealth country leaders at the exact same time, which means coordination, which means following certain plans, but limiting the information to make sure it's not leaked.

Of course with the internet means they code words are widely known (they were also named on The Crown) - and indeed trending on twitter, which is amusing given how some documentation still says they are super secret. The information can't be easily kept underwraps now as the chance of someone scooping it on twitter increases with the number of people aware of it and the time taken, I suspect there's only a few minutes between the palace announcing it to bbc/sky/itn and the embargo time - certainly BBC didn't have enough time to get Huw Edwards in for example (he's in now)

Other bridges includ(ed)

Menai (Charles - Price of Wales, Menai Bridge is from Bangor to Anglesey)

Tay (Queen Mother, near balmoral which I think was her ancestral home)

London (Queen, London being the captial)

Forth being the bridge at Edinburgh, so makes sense for the Duke of Edinburh)

Not sure if William has one, maybe it would be the River Cam.

Funnily enough, I just watched the episode from the Crown yesterday when the Queen explains to Philip that they all have bridge code names, and what his is.

Since the code words are related to what they reference in some way, I find it difficult to believe that they were ever intended for a serious purpose. Maybe they are useful for clarity of communication in some way, but certainly not for secrecy (which would probably require randomly selecting names from a word list).

"Secret" is a relative term, up until about 10 years ago I suspect very few had heard of it, I'd be interested in anything online before 2016 referring to them (there was big media coverage in 2017)

The specific details however aren't public knowlege, with various secrecy levels, and there are various different plans depending on the situation (what happens if the queen was on a plane that crashed for example, or what if Charles died in an avalanche in Austria), and plans of course are constantly changing (what happens if there's a massive pandemic which means people can't congregate in their millions to pay respects as they did with Diana, what happens if the news is leaked on twitter before coordinated official announcement)

Tangential but that's also a key difference between US and UK codenames for military operations. uK names are picked from a list of deliberately neutral words ( SHADER and NEWCOMBE being two currently active ).

"Operation Forth Bridge" is the name for the BBC's plan to cover the death of the Duke of Edinburgh. One of the weirdest things about any British royal death is the pre-planned over-reaction of the BBC. For example, programs like tonight's final of a cooking contest are being cancelled. When Diana died, all BBC news bulletins started being prefixed by "this is the BBC, from London" (from London is the bit they added, perhaps because they expected people from all over the Empire to be watching).

It is a unique codename for the plan to be enacted, in the event of a death of a senior royal. A long read but worth it -- illustrates the complexity and planning required.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens...

Operation London Bridge is the codename for the plan for what happens when the Queen dies.

Philip had the title of Duke of Edinburgh and the Forth Bridge is a large bridge near Edinburgh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge

Edinburgh sits on the south side of the Firth of Forth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firth_of_Forth

The Forth Bridge is a very long bridge that is permanently being painted. "Like painting the Forth Bridge" is a job that (feels like it) will never end.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/be+like+painting+the+Fo...

Thank you for this - the most interesting comment of everything I've read in this thread

I'm afraid this is an urban legend [1] (the painting, not the long bridge).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forth_Bridge#Maintenance

All members of the Royal family have Bridge names or landmarks in the UK as their codenames for their death.

QE is - Operation London Bridge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_London_Bridge

Churchill's death was anticipated with a codename too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hope_Not

The 'Forth Bridge' is a bridge in Scotland.

Usually when there are preperations for a future event to hide the markers of what it is there are code names.

Operations for preparing the necessary for the deaths of heads of state are typically named bridges.

The Queens death is (or was) Operation London Bridge.

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