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Pigeon guided bombs, LOL

silent tone

Golden Member
Just watching the history channel. During WWII they tried training pigeons to steer the flaps on bombs to particular targets. An average of 10% of regular bombs hit near their targets. Apparently pigeons have really good vision and lab tests were good. No field tests were conducted though.

Pigeons were tried in a pilot program in the coast guard for search and rescue. 3 of them were put in a clear plastic pan below the helicopter and would hit a button when they saw day-glow orange. There were no rescue operations during the program, but tests found the victim twice as often than a human only crew. Unfortunately funds were diverted to Reagans 'war on drugs' and the pigeons were dropped. Sigh, more casualties of the drug war.
 
Yeah, B. F. Skinner was the guy that trained them. Pretty neat that they could do it. It really would have been something if they had actually used them.
 
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