Be afraid BE VERY AFRAID!!

[HostileAmerican]

BRITISH SUICIDE PIGEON WEAPON
(1942)


British spy chiefs secretly considered training pigeons to fly into German targets carrying explosives or biological weapons, it has been revealed.

British intelligence set up a "pigeon committee" at the end of World War II to ensure expertise gained in the use of the birds to carry messages was not lost.

Documents now released to the National Archives reveal that the War Office intelligence section, MI14, warned: "Pigeon research will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will."

Among MI14's proposals was the training of pigeons carrying explosives to fly into German searchlights.

Meanwhile, pigeon enthusiast Wing Commander WDL Rayner suggested a "bacteriological warfare agent" could be combined with the explosive.

"A thousand pigeons each with a two ounce explosive capsule, landed at intervals on a specific target, might be a seriously inconvenient surprise," Mr Rayner wrote.

He believed his "revolutionary" ideas could change the way wars were fought, and had the tentative backing of wartime MI6 chief Sir Stewart Menzies.

However the internal security service MI5 branded Rayner a "menace in pigeon affairs".

MI5's Lieutenant Colonel Tommy Robertson wrote: "I thought that some time ago it had been made clear that Rayner should finish writing his manual and then have nothing further to do with this committee officially."

Rayner's plan for a 400-pigeon loft where tests would be carried out was abandoned due to wrangling among the intelligence agencies over funding.

[WelshManDan]

Lol, us Brits are some crazy bastards

[WartyX]

Homing pigeons were probably one of the most sensible ideas we had 

[WelshManDan]

Oh, Homing Pigeons yes, but I thought this was Suicide Pigeons, seems we took it one step further as always lol

[Flippis]

And I thought russians were nuts when employing dogs as anti-tank satchel charges. Go fish, Tommy wins again.

RAF's day and nighttime bombings would be conducted by flocks of pigeons.

[HostileAmerican]

Anti-tank dogs, or Hundminen as they were known by the Germans, were dogs taught to carry explosives under tanks and armoured vehicles where they would detonate and inflict the most damage upon the vehicle.
The most concerted effort to use dogs as anti-tank weapons came during World War II when the Soviet Union used them against German tanks. When training the dogs, the Soviets kept them hungry in order to teach them to find food beneath tanks. On the battlefield a dog was fitted with an explosives-packed box and then released before oncoming German tanks. When the dog dove under a tank, a wooden lever sticking up from the top of the box was tripped which detonated the charge. Because the chassis was the most vulnerable area of these vehicles, it was hoped the explosion would gut the vehicle.
Among the plan's failings was the Soviet use of their own diesel tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks, which had petrol engines. On the battlefield this resulted in the dogs tending to seek food under and thus destroying the Russian tanks with which they were familiar instead of the strange German tanks. This was not always an issue, however, as the dogs were sometimes spooked by the noise and vibration of the tank engines and fled the field immediately upon release.
Despite these problems the anti-tank dogs were said to have been successful at the Battle of Kursk, the Soviets claiming 12 German tanks destroyed by 16 dogs. As such the Germans were compelled to take measures against them. An armored vehicle's top-mounted machine gun proved ineffective due to the relatively small size of the attackers, the fact that they were low to the ground, their speed and the difficulty in spotting them. Consequently orders were dispatched that commanded every German soldier to shoot any dogs seen on sight as they might be rabid. Eventually the Germans found tank-mounted flame-throwers to be much more successful in warding off the attacks.

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

There is a dog called Chips who was with the U.S Army 3rd division, he was the 1st dog to be sent overseas. He was in Germany when he broke away from his handler and attacked a german pillbox. He seized one man and forced 4 more to surrender!

or read about Voytek, the war bear, used in WW2. 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-510452/The-hero-bear-went-war-loved-smoke-beer.html

[HostileAmerican]

One particular pigeon called Commando, was given the Dicken medal for bravery in 1945. He carried out 90 trips to German occupied France.
There is a statue in London, honouring animal war heroes .



But the best one that i have found was: Incendiary monkeys

Probably the cruelest involvement of animals in human battles was the use of monkeys as incendiary devices. In a battle between rebels of the Yanzhou province and the Chinese Imperial Army, monkeys were clothed in straw, dipped in oil and set on fire. They were then set loose into the enemy's camp, thereby setting the tents on fire, and driving the whole camp into chaos.


                                                                     

and i have also found out that sharks are now (trying or being used) in the military. For their 6th scene.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0302-03.htm


Project Orcon was a WWII-era effort to find a non-jammable guidance system for missiles; pigeons were one of the things they tried. Loaded into a missile, the pigeons were to tap on the image of the target to correct the missile's trajectory.

Trainee pigeons were started out in the primary trainer pecking at slowly moving targets. They were rewarded with corn for each hit and quickly learned that good pecking meant more food. Eventually pigeons were able to track a target jumping back and forth at five inches per second for 80 seconds, without a break. Peck frequency turned out to be four per second, and more than 80 percent of the pecks were within a quarter inch of the target. The training conditions simulated missile-flight speeds of about 400 miles per hour.
                                           
                                           

[WelshManDan]

is it just me, or is Britain, the only nation in the world that would award a pigeon a medal. Lol

[WartyX]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami

Fear not, the Yanks gave an award to a pigeon in the First World War. Quite a remarkable story there.

[HostileAmerican]

Wow that was one tuff bird!

[HostileAmerican]

Cat Bombs:
To sink German ships


The earliest examples of cats being used in warfare dates back to the Ancient Egypt during a war against Persia. The Persians, fully aware of the reverance that Egyptians paid to their felines, rounded up as many cats as they could find and set them loose on the battlefield. When the Egyptians were faced with either harming the cats or surrendering, they chose the latter.

During World War I, cats were used in the trenches as an attempt to keep the rat population down and some cats were used as poison gas “detectors”.

The most creative way to use a cat as a weapon happened in World War II. The United States' OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA) needed a way to guide bombs to sink German ships. Somebody hit upon the inspiration that since cats have such a strong disdain of getting wet and always land on their feet that if you attached a cat to a bomb and drop it in the vicinity of a ship, the cat's instinct to avoid the water would force it to guide the bomb to the enemy's deck. It is unclear how the cat was supposed to actually guide a bomb attached to it as it fell from the sky but the plan never got past the testing stages since the cats had a bad habit of becoming unconscious mid-drop.




Not to be outdone by its predecessor, the CIA also attempted to use cats but this time as a bugging device during the Cold War. Although a disaster as a guided bomb, the CIA thought that a cat would make the perfect covert listening device in a project known as Operation Acoustic Kitty. They attempted to surgically alter the cat by placing a bugging device inside him and running an antenna through its tail. The project took five years and $15 million dollars before the first field test hit a slight snag when the bugged kitty was released near a Russian compound in Washington and was immediately hit by a car while crossing the street. The project was ended soon after.

[HostileAmerican]

Exploding rats were a weapon developed by the British army in World War II for use against Germany. Rat carcasses were filled with plastic explosives, with the idea that when the rats were shovelled along with coal into boilers, they would explode, causing significant damage. However, the first shipment of carcasses was intercepted by the Germans, and the plan was dropped. The Germans exhibited the rats at top military schools, and conducted searches for further exploding rats.