I think there was discussion about this the other day.
SUICIDE PIGEONS May 21 2004
Cold War plan to surprise enemy with bird bombs
By Vanessa Allen
PIGEON suicide bombers were Britain's proposed surprise weapon in the Cold War, declassified secret documents revealed yesterday.
Spymasters discussed training flocks of homing pigeons to attack enemy targets with deadly biological weapons.
The plan which sounds more like an episode of the 70s cartoon where Dastardly and Muttley plotted to 'stop the pigeon' involved 1000 of the birds, each armed with two-ounce explosive capsules filled with a biological weapon such as anthrax.
The scheme was revealed yesterday in the latest MI5 files to be released to the National Archives in Kew, west London.
It was the brainchild of an RAF pigeon enthusiast Wing Commander WDL Rayner, who believed his 'revolutionary' theories could change the way wars were fought.
It won the backing of Sir Stewart Menzies, the wartime chief of MI6, and the Joint Intelligence Committee even set up a sub-committee at the end of World War II to discuss plans for 'pigeon warfare'.
The War Office intelligence section warned: 'It is clear that pigeon research will not stand still; if we do not experiment, other powers will.'
Rayner believed that homing pigeons could be trained to attack enemy targets.
In a report, he said: 'A thousand pigeons, each with a two ounce explosive capsule, landed at intervals on a specific target, might be a seriously inconvenient surprise.'
But his plans were defeated by MI5, the internal security service, and a row over who should pay for Rayner's research.
One senior MI5 officer, Lieutenant Colonel Tommy 'Tar' Robertson, wrote: 'Rayner has always been a menace in pigeon affairs.' Carrier pigeons were common in both World Wars.
And during the Cold War, the Army considered packing live chickens inside a nuclear bomb to keep it warm so it would not get too cool that it stopped working.
The plan was never put into practice but it proved that the British were ready to use fair means and 'fowl' as the Cold War hotted up.
Newly released documents also revealed yesterday that the heir to the Russian tsars was secretly found a job at the RA Lister engineering factory in Stafford in 1941.
King George VI pulled strings to help Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich amid fears that the Nazis might try to install the duke as a puppet ruler if they took over the Soviet Union.
However, the duke, who worked there under the alias W Mikhailov, 'apparently did not like hard work' and soon packed in the job.
He left for France where he was interned by the Nazis because he rejected fascism.
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