Your book of useless knowledge, as @silverd510 likes to call me, is back with yet another useless and hilarious fact...Well, hillarious in a sad kind of way.
So, imagine this. It's World War II and scientists are trying out all kinds of unconventional ideas.. You may have heard of some, like the huge railway gun by the nazis called Schwerer Gustav or the silly looking Panjandrum by the Brits.
But the one I want to talk about was wayyyyy more... unconventional!
Enter Project Pigeon!
This was a project let by Burrhus Frederic Skinnier, a psychologist, to develop a pigeon-guided missile š¢š
Yes you read that right, Skinner based on his previous work on training pigeons aimed to develop guided missile using pigeons! The final goal was for the pigeons to use their pecks to steer the missile. Something like a kamikaze pilot but more... humane! :p
They were trained by being shown an image of the target and each time the pigeons pecked the image some seed would be dispensed. As long as the target remained in the center of the screen, the screen would not move, but if the bomb began to go off track, the image would move towards the edge of the screen. The pigeons would follow the image, pecking at it, which would move the screen on its pivots. source
Although the project did achieve some success in training the pigeons, it was ultimately cancelled because it was taking valuable resources from other projects that seemed more promising.
It was revived by the Navy in 1948 as "Project Orcon" only to be cancelled in 1953 thanks to the emergence of electronic guidance systems. Something that pigeons were probably happy to hear š
Here's some original footage I found from the Orcon project that will give you a better idea of how the pigeon bomb was supposed to work:
And that's the quick run down of project pigeon!
And if you think that is crazy... Just wait a couple more days because I have something even crazier š
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