Plan for kamikaze (germ warfare) pigeons to bomb Russia (UK)

21 May 2004


In 1946 the Soviet Union was racing to catch up with the United States in developing an atom bomb. In Britain, the military was working on a secret and terrible weapon of its own: germ warfare suicide pigeons.

Security service documents released today at the National Archives in Kew, west London, show that the War Office was concerned about the future of Britain's force of homing pigeons used in the Second World War to carry messages from secret agents.

The answer was to establish the Ad Hoc Committee on Carrier Pigeons to oversee work on a new generation of military birds to meet the challenge of a war with Moscow.

In files marked "Secret - UK eyes only", the committee's main plan was to build on a study by an American academic who suggested that pigeons could be trained to fly to a place they had never been to before because of they way their homing instinct was linked to the earth's magnetic field.

more...........

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=523335

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RAF planned kamikaze anthrax pigeon squadron

Owen Bowcott
Friday May 21, 2004
The Guardian

Military officials considered sending flocks of homing pigeons armed with biological warfare agents against enemy targets, a secret report for British intelligence chiefs said.

The plan, developed by an enthusiastic wing commander immediately after the second world war, is revealed in MI5 files released today. There were also plans to train birds carrying explosives to fly into enemy searchlights.

By the end of the war conventional uses of pigeons had been rendered obsolete by radio and telephone, and the armed forces told Whitehall's Joint Intelligence Committee they would no longer pay for bird lofts. The re-evaluation is documented in three files labelled "Pigeon Policy", which record inter-departmental disputes over budgets.

To keep the birds on hand just in case, the military decided to maintain a loft in peace time. MI6 offered £150 a year to a civilian who would look after some 100 pigeons.

more................

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1221363,00.html

that's just crazy

...Vs. Mutant Ninja Turtles. Deathmatch at eleven.

I'm reminded of the Russian Bomb Dogs. Another briliant idea...
http://www.stupid.ca/features/2002-11-12/strangetrue.html & Scroll down to #4...

You could't make this stuff up.

HOMING pigeons?

It seems there are a few problems with that scheme which really should be addressed.

I see a load of boffins and top brass standing in a field and unleashing the U.K's latest weapon followed by.....

Brigadier General Ponsonby Smythe - "Excuse me Jones? They appear to be coming back."

Jones - " Run away, run away"