A bit of history
Ran across an interesting bit of WW history on Military.com. Think of communications we no longer use which can’t be spoofed, MIJI’ed, monitored. Carrier pigeons.
Seems the Navy started a carrier pigeon program as far back as 1891, and officially established the U.S. Naval Pigeon Messenger Service in 1896. If you think about it, it’s a relatively quick means of somewhat limited commo – basically one way, and it’s not like you are going to strap an encyclopedia to a bird’s ankle, but sending relatively short urgent messages back to base? Hard to hit a bird, especially when you have to figure out WHICH bird?
When the United States declared war on Spain in 1898, Navy messenger pigeons carried official communications from ships to shore along the Atlantic seaboard. But wireless telegraph technology soon made the birds obsolete. By 1902, all new Navy ships had some form of radio equipment, and the service auctioned off its pigeons.
The Navy brought them back in WWI, and handlers had to go to a 6-12 month school to learn their birds. But after the war, once again expanding radio communications rendered the bird commo obsolete. Now skip ahead to WWII:
Pigeons were routinely taken aboard airships conducting stateside antisubmarine patrols. Every airship carried six pigeons in crates.
The birds solved a tactical problem for the Navy. Navy K-class blimps excelled at hunting submarines because they could hover for hours over suspected contacts and observe for any movement. But radio transmissions from the airships would alert U-Boats who would then dive and escape before the destroyers arrived.
Instead of relying on radio transmissions, the Navy used the pigeons to carry messages in black plastic capsules attached to their legs for routine communications, and red capsules for emergencies. Upon receiving a message from an airship warning a submarine was in the area, Navy destroyers could close in for the kill.
According to the article the birds logged over 37,000 patrols and 378,237 hours. Pretty impressive numbers!
Pigeons played a vital role in ensuring any U-Boats were detected and intercepted before they could strike the convoys. In fact, the U-Boats would find themselves under attack by escorts before they even realized they had been compromised—completely oblivious that it was because of an animal as unexpected as a pigeon.
More impressive numbers:
According to the U.S. Naval Institute, not one ship in a convoy escorted by blimps was lost to enemy submarine attack.
Not one. U-boats sank something like 15,000,000 TONS of shipping in the war… but not one from a convoy protected by blimps and pigeons.
For those of you interested in DEI ‘firsts’ the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES – never knew the actual definition before), starting 1943, could become pigeon handlers. They remained on shore, though, not out on the blimps.
We even had specialized breeding programs to breed better birds.
That selective breeding program paid off. While WWI pigeons could fly about 200 miles in one flight, WWII birds could easily double that distance, with some traveling 600 miles. Over short distances, the birds could approach 60 miles per hour, though 35 to 40 miles per hour was typical cruising speed. Military.com
They say that over 95% of the pigeon messages successfully delivered as intended. (I’m not sure that percentage isn’t higher than many cell phones I have owned?)
Eventually better communications made the birds obsolete and they were phased out in 1961.
Not one ship.
Category: None
Impressive!!
Reliability of carrier pigeons depends on where you are. When there are predators (hawks and eagles, etc) the attrition rate goes up considerably.
I have a buddy that used to race homing pigeons in the midwest. Same basic thing but without the message attached. The attrition rate was quite high there because of predators taking birds returning home.
Of course they were traveling quite long distances so that was probably a factor as well. Shorter runs would naturally have a higher success rate.
So the perp in jail goes to take a dump in the cells toilet bowl and looks down and sees a bird floating on top of the water and the bird says, don’t get alarmed, I’m no stool Pigeon.
I remember seeing blimps when I was a kid.
One of them was an early warning radar over Cape Cod.
And feeding pigeons on the Boston Common.
There were even street vendors selling peanuts to feed to them.
Imagine that, selling peanuts to pigeons so they can feed
them to pigeons.
Not to anthropomorphize; but this site has a number of records of birds who performed their messenger service in what one might regard as a “heroic” manner as well as lots of information on carrier pigeons.
https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-incredible-carrier-pigeons-of-the-first-world-war
Typical example:
Seems to me that a U boat on the surface should have been able to spot a blimp “hovering for hours” overhead.
More likely submerged subs coming up thinking they are safe. I am guessing a sharp-eyed blimp spotter could probably see the outline of the sub before it got to periscope depth?
WW2 German subs pretty much stayed within hull length of the surface. With the right daylight and bottom, you can see them.