The Rest Is History - 216. Pigeons

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

‘If it became necessary immediately to discard every line and method of communications used on the front, except one, and it were left to me to select that one method, I should unhesitatingly choose the pigeons’, wrote Major General Fowler, Chief of Signals and Communications of the British Army, after the First World War. On today's podcast Tom and Dominic are joined by Gordon Corera, the BBC's Security Correspondent and author of 'Operation Columba: The Secret Pigeon Service', to discuss the often under-appreciated role of pigeons throughout the course of history. Join The Rest Is History Club for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. Hello, welcome to The Rest is History. For more than 200 episodes, we've covered everything from the foundations of ancient Babylon to the origins of the war in Ukraine. But no topic has excited

more interest, enthusiasm and curiosity among the great Britishish public than today's one of the truly great questions of history what has been the importance the influence and the impact of the pigeon tom holland i'm so i'm so excited about this episode you know i i think it was january was it i raised it um. I suggested doing it. Seems like years ago, frankly, Tom. Yeah, Dominic. So you, I think it's fair to say, have treated initially this subject with levity. You did not regard it as a fit subject for historical inquiry. That is an outrageous claim, Tom, and one I absolutely reject. Well, Dominic, I don't actually have the evidence to prove it.

You have the documentary evidence to prove the documentary evidence to prove it i i'm sure they're the old tweet or something out there with you sneering at it as a subject but but but we have both agreed haven't we that actually the relationship of humans to animals to creatures is a really fascinating one so we've talked about doing um horses yeah and and dogs of course have been a constant theme of our early episodes yes killed weren't they yes i mean that job for a while which is a shame but today we're gonna have dead pigeons and so the reason i thought that actually um together with horses and dogs pigeons are probably um the most interesting animals to look at in terms of how humans have understood them the uses that humans have put them to yeah and also i kind

of perhaps the the darkest theme of all um the way in which humans have um impacted and eaten them yeah well have have have shot and wiped them out as well yeah so extinction is also a part of the history of humanity's relationship to animals however so the reason why i thought we should do pigeons yeah it's because i went to an Advent service last year. And there I found myself sitting next to Gordon Carrera, the BBC security correspondent, author of many fantastic books on history of security services, all that kind of stuff. Presenter of TV programs on MI5, all that kind of stuff but he told me that he had written a book which i had missed called operation columba the secret pigeon service the untold story of world war ii resistance in europe that as it suggests has pigeons absolutely at its heart and gordon said you must do pigeons so gordon the time has come we are doing pigeons Should we welcome you with a sort of a pigeon style coup or something?

Well, thank you. I've never been called that before. I'm so grateful for coming on because I'm very excited about pigeons. I did sense that there might be some people out there who might think it wasn't a worthy subject for such a lofty, high-minded podcast. So I'm looking forward for the chance to kind of make the case for pigeons, in my mind, as the superheroes of history. Oh, that's a big claim. Who saved us in the past and may even save us in the future. That's the claim I'm going to make. So maybe you could start off. I mean, I notoriously know nothing and take no interest in science or the natural world at all. So for an absolute ignoramus like me, what is a pigeon?

Good question to start with. The first thing to say is that what we call a pigeon and what we think of as a pigeon around us is actually a dove. And basically doves have good PR, pigeons have bad PR. But the pigeon, the one we think of is the rock dove. And basically doves have good PR, pigeons have bad PR. But the pigeon, the one we think of is the rock dove. And there are other types of pigeons as well. And we might come to some of those, the kind of passenger pigeon and the wood pigeon and different types. But Columbolivia is the kind of famous pigeon. And what makes it really interesting and unusual is that it's very friendly with people. So first of all, rock dove, because it doesn't so much nest in trees, but it loves rocky ledges. So originally cliffs. But the fact that it was happy in cliffs meant

it was quite happy on rocky ledges. So people found that they could build what became dovecotes, you know, places where pigeons would quite happily come and live. And also eventually you get plenty of rocky ledges in cities. So that's why we see so many in the cities that they're intrinsically happy in a kind of human environment. They're also very friendly with people. They're not scared of us. You don't need to cage them. They'll come and eat out of your hand.

And that means they're easy to domesticate. So right from the earliest days of history, it's meant they've been able to have this very interesting relationship with humans because they're friendly with us. They can be bred very easily for whatever reason, ranging from food to sport to their superpower, which hopefully we'll come to in a bit. So Gordon, before we come on to that, the superpower and the uses that pigeons have been put to by humans, you've talked about how humanity's relationship with the pigeon is very,

very ancient. Could we just begin by looking at the, dare I say, sacral quality that the pigeon has had? Well, because they are absolutely woven into some of the foundational mythologies, so the Bible most obviously. So I guess probably the most famous episode in myth that pigeons have featured in is Noah and his ark. That's right. And the story, of course, is that the birds are sent out and the raven is sent out and doesn't come back. And the pigeon comes back with word that there's land. It's one example of where, one of the few examples where Game of Thrones is historically inaccurate, because of course, in Game of Thrones, they use ravens to communicate. In reality, it was pigeons which would get, it was would get sent out. And if you look at the Noah's Ark, it's the raven fails,

but the pigeon, the dove succeeds and brings back news. And it's the association of pigeons with peace and chastity, which comes very early. And this comes from people actually observing the mating rituals of the pigeons. And how one of the reasons is just how affectionate they are with each other. And the male pigeon really will woo the female pigeon very attentively. And then the view from classical times onwards was that they became very chaste. They were very loyal to each other. And so pigeons start to be seen as symbols of peace, of chastity, of fidelity. And you see that role as one part of their kind of spiritual role in the traditions and in many of the religious traditions around the world.

You see this in Christianity. You, of course, see the dove as the Holy Spirit descending from above. The Holy Spirit comes down as a dove. You also see them used as animal sacrifices in religion. But Gordon, a very stupid question to, again, reflect my natural history ignorance. So why are they called doves? So no one talks about it. I mean, if somebody said the Holy Spirit, the pigeon of the Holy Spirit, I mean, that sounds faintly comical.

But the dove, you know, sounds, we take it for granted. So why the branding? Well, the branding is just unfortunate branding to some extent. And I think the pigeon has just had a bad bad pr and uh you know there are differences and there are different types of doves but i would make the case that in many cases in history where they are talking about doves they're really talking about pigeons now that may not always be so your message to the church of england is you know amplify pigeons yeah big up the pigeons play down the doves yeah exactly and

and they and it's they become this symbol of uh peace as well as chastity um and um one of the interesting ways that's used is that they're kind of released and we still see them released you see the kind of doves or white pigeons released, famously at Olympic ceremonies. And this happens in ancient times. It's revived in the modern Olympics. One of the slight tragedies, though, comes in the Seoul Olympics in 1988. It flew into the flame, didn't it? I'm afraid so.

They didn't fly home, but they just settled on the nearest rocky ledge, which unfortunately was the Olympic flame, which then got turned on and then grilled the pigeons. So essentially in antiquity, there are the two themes. There's the homing pigeon. So as in Noah sending the dove out and it comes back. And then there's this idea of it being monogamous, of being a symbol of lifelong chastity and love. And you can see that both of those, I guess, would, I mean, there's lots of potential there for myth making. Yeah. And you see it in Egyptian mythology, in Greek mythology, you see it in the major modern religious traditions, all of them will use pigeons in different ways. So sometimes associated as well with fertility, again, because of their kind of the way they're bred and also sometimes a sacrifice. So substituted for human sacrifice, sometimes they will they will sacrifice pigeons almost precisely because they're seen as pure. And so it's making this

great sacrifice to kill a pigeon. Could I just mention two of my favourite classical writers? Here we go. We all knew this was coming. Okay, so first Herodotus, first great historian, Greek historian. I don't know if you've come across this, Gordon. There's a story Herodotus says that there were two black doves were sent flying from Thebes in Egypt. And one of them flew to Siwa, which would become the great oracle of Amun that Alexander the Great went to, of course, Dominic. And the other flew to Greece and to Dodona, which became the great oracle of Zeus in northern Greece. And Herodotus has a theory that these were not actually doves, but they were priestesses who'd been kidnapped as slaves and taken away. And he says, the reason for this is to people in Libya and in Greece,

the barbarous language of these Egyptian priestesses must have sounded like doves. And he says, how else to explain the obvious impossibility of a talking dove, the Sandbrookian tone of skepticism, right in the very beginnings of history. The claim of the Dodonians that the dove was black surely signifies that the woman was an Egyptian. So there's Herodotus getting to work on doves. And the other, my other favorite classical writer is Pliny the Elder, who, you know, in his natural history, he's looking at the totality of creation and animals are a crucial part of it and he loves pigeons and there's loads of great stuff about pigeons so he

um he says that they would pigeons live to be 30 and sometimes 40 is that true i don't know if that's true um he says that pigeons always lay a male and a female egg the male egg is laid first then the female egg a day later that pigeons um become great pals with peacocks which i think is a lovely idea is that right again i don't know i'm not entirely sure about all of these um and then and then he's i think his most clinching i mean his most fascinating point human teeth contain a kind of poison pliny writes for if you bare your teeth in front of a mirror you will dim its brightness similarly if you bare your teeth at a baby pigeon you will kill it i think those things are both just lies well i don't think they're lies i think possibly i mean possibly not entirely inaccurate but also gordon and coming now to the uses that humans have put pigeons to i know is your great theme um pliny talks about um the fascination

that people in rome have with homing pigeons and he says that they become incredibly valuable and he talks about how in 50 around 50 bc um a single pair of pigeons are sold for 400 denarii which is about twice the annual pay that a legionary is getting. So you're starting to see there that these birds can be incredibly valuable in civilizations and cultures where there is a kind of proper understanding of their homing abilities. So can we come to the homing ability? The way I always think about it, it really is a superpower, you know, because these are creatures which, like a kind of superhero,

they kind of live among us and look normal, and you don't realize that they have this tremendous power i still don't really understand it is that right and like any true kind of superhero story the science behind it is a bit wobbly i mean no one knows how it works but effectively if you imagine if you were taken you know blindfolded and put in the boot of a car and driven 500 miles away and then suddenly let out in a field and told to find your way home without a map, without a phone or anything. You'd be lost. You would have no idea where you were. A pigeon. You can do that. You could take a pigeon, you know, put it in a container, drive it to somewhere it has never been before release it open up the container and it will orient itself and just zoom home as fast as it can how what's its what's its range gordon its range is is hundreds of miles and the trick is with breeding that you can breed them to

go even further and faster and the the definitely definitely cases of at least 600 miles. 600 miles? 600 miles. Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? And the science behind it is still a bit of a mystery. It is a bit like they have an internal GPS in their head, which allows them to kind of geolocate themselves, you know, perhaps to do with the sun, perhaps to do with the Earth's magnetic field and say, I am here and that way is home and just fly home. And through selective breeding, which is the other aspect of that domestication, which makes it possible to do selective breeding so well with pigeons, you can improve that ability and train it. And the simple reason is pigeons, again, it goes to that kind of warm thing about pigeons. They just love home.

They just love food and they love home. And all they want to do is get home because that's where food is. And so all they can think about when they're released is, how do I get home? I'm the pigeon of the rest of this history. People realise that this is a tremendously useful power you know it's incredibly incredibly valuable so noah recognizes this uh there's a greek poet called anacreon who kind of uses the the dove as a metaphor for um the messages that he wants to send to his beloved and then the beloved will send messages back so that's all fine but with pliny you're starting to get this idea that this might actually i did i mean i don't know what he, is it a sport that he's writing about or is it, does it have military potential?

Because this is the kind of, in your book, this is the kind of the key use that it's put to is in war and in intelligence gathering. And so the earliest use we know about it is about at least kind of 5000 years ago. The Egyptians would use it to warn about flooding. So they take them up the Nile. And if the Nile was flooding, they'd release them. They'd fly home and warn people of that. But then the first time we start to see the kind of use of it militarily does seem to be that we know of, at least, is around the Roman period. Julius Caesar is thought to use them in Gaul to send messages between different parts of his army. At the siege of Medina, the Roman general Decimus Brutus sends messages out of the city by carrier pigeon, which results in reinforcements being sent in to kind of break the siege. So you start to see people realising these are valuable militarily

as well as in everyday life. So as well as sending messages about the results of the Olympics, which is thought to happen in classical times. You see this military use. A basic question, Gordon. I'm a Roman general. I have a pigeon. I want to send him to my lieutenant to ask for reinforcements or whatever. I mean, obviously, I tie the message to the pigeon's egg. How does the pigeon know

where to go? If I say, please go to the barracks of the Third Legion or whatever. I mean, how does the pigeon, how have they, they must have obviously done something, but what have they done? So all the pigeon will know is it goes to its home i mean in modern terms a loft but a home the home where it which it associates with its food so the trick is if you're training these pigeons you slowly release them further and further away but always have the food there for them to return to and then you slowly can extend the range but it will always associate that one home as food so it's difficult so what's hard is it's hard to use them in a very mobile way because they will always tend to go back to the same place right if they're on campaign you don't want the pigeon to

go back to rome yeah no but you can start training them from very young so within So within a couple of months, you could have one which is flying home. See, right, right, right. So you could have a kind of headquarters or a base to which they will fly and know that and then use that as your form of communication. So that kind of military use comes in then. And then you see it right through history. I mean, this use for kind of pigeon post. And it's not just in the Western world. You see it in China. There's a very active pigeon post between, I think, Baghdad and Cairo in the 12th century. Genghis Khan used pigeons to communicate over those long distances so it's used kind of throughout this period as the kind of one of the standard means of communication effectively one other logistical question let's talk about the speed so if i'm in baghdad and i want to send a message to cairo obviously that's going to take i know they they probably have tremendous roads in the abbasid

caliphate tom you'll know more about this than me. Obviously, the Persians had their famous kind of highways and stuff. But can the pigeon dramatically outpace a team of horsemen or something? Would you say, Gordon? 60 miles an hour is a good speed for a pigeon can do. That is pretty dramatic. Which is pretty good, you know, and for a sustained period. They don't like to fly at night, and they kind of tend to take particular routes. But, you know, you can… But a pigeon could fly for six hours?

Yeah. At 60 miles an hour? Yeah, exactly. So they can cover hundreds of miles in a day, in a day's flight. Yeah, that's incredible. So particularly, you know, you can imagine it's particularly if you're cut off. So that, you know, if you're in a campaign or you're somewhere which is remote, and the territory between you is, you know, held by an opponent or dangerous or difficult,

if you can allow a pigeon to take that journey rather than trying to do it on horseback or foot. It's much easier. Yeah. So this is something that people are doing throughout history and it carries on into the modern period. So in modern periods of modern warfare. Yeah. And back to the kind of modern period, if you hit the 19th century, to Dominic's question about speed, 1850, the birth of the Reuters news agency comes with a pigeon. So Julius Reuters in Belgium flies pigeons to carry news and stock prices between Brussels and Germany because it's faster than any other means. So you can see even in that period, you know, the telegraph is slowly emerging, but the pigeon is still pretty useful. And that's where kind of Reuters comes from. You also start to the 19th century, I think, is almost where it becomes in the kind of popular consciousness.

Before then, it's military commanders. It's often aristocrats who are the aristocracy breed pigeons, often for sport and for show kind of in India and in other places as well. They enter the popular consciousness a bit more in that late 19th century period. The siege of Paris is very important because Paris under siege 1870, a couple of million messages are thought to come out through pigeons. And pigeons are often taken in on hot air balloons, weirdly, and delivered. People will fill in their messages, release the pigeons, and they fly out. And it allows people to know what's going on.

So that also is a period where you see people understand the kind of value of it. And they become something people are kind of talking about. And pigeon racing starts to emerge as a sport particularly in belgium but in other countries as well in that late 19th century period and then you get to the kind of 20th century when they are really important in wartime gordon could i just mention um on the discord uh which um we have for the uh rest of history members uh there's a message from andrew h who says i'm a sub-editor at reuters so i have to tell you that our founder Baron Julius Reuter used pigeons to deliver stock market prices in 1850 so just

backing up what you said there very good also my favorite historical Reuters sub-editing fact that there's a spelling mistake on the Baron's grave in West Norwood Cemetery and a small plaque nearby correcting the typo so that has nothing to do with pigeons but I just thought I'd I'd mention that because it's a sweet fact so so we come to we come to the first world war and i guess the most famous pigeon in the first world war is speckled jim we've had a number of questions so for those who haven't seen it this is blackadder goes forth um uh comedy show set in the uh. And Edmund Blackadder, played by Rowan Atkinson, shoots a pigeon,

which is owned by Stephen Fry, a.k.a. General Melchett, who is unbelievably upset by this and gets him sentenced to be shot by a firing squad for it. And we have a question from Michael Taylor.

Was shooting pigeons such as Speckled Jim truly a capital offence in the trenches? Well, the pigeons were certainly shot and snipers would go after them. Now, whether it was a capital offence in the trenches, I'm not sure. I could imagine quite a few people like Blackadder would have, if you're hungry, a pigeon is a very tempting thing,

which is what Blackadder does, unfortunately. It's a speckled gin, which it turns out is General Melchett's prize, famous, favourite pigeon. But actually, I'm not sure people would have shot them so easily because they really did rely on them. And they used them in the First World War in a fascinating way. And one of my favourite quotes, which I'll just briefly read, which I think if I could read it in a general metal chip voice, I would, but it's, if it became necessarily immediately to discard every line and method of communications used on the front except one, and if it were left to me to select that one method, I should unhesitatingly choose the pigeons. This is Major General Fowler, Chief of Signals and Communications in the British Army.

When the battle rages and everything gives way to barrage and machine gun fire, to say nothing of gas attacks and bombings, it is to the pigeon that we go for sucker. There must have been particular heroic pigeons, but am I right in thinking, is there one that stands out for you? Oh, there is for me. This is one of my favourites, Cher Ami. So this is the US Army's 77th Division, becomes known as the Lost Battalion. It becomes trapped effectively behind enemy lines in a forest. And then its own side begins to shell it because they don't know they're there. I know. And so they think we've got to get a message out to our own side to say, to stop this. They've got three pigeons. First pigeon, they write a message saying, you know, we're here.

Stop the shelling. For heaven's sake, stop it. First pigeon, they write a message saying, you know, we're here. Stop the shelling, for heaven's sake, stop it. First pigeon, they release into the air, shot by a German sniper. Second pigeon, another message, released into the air, shot by a German. Third pigeon, last pigeon, their last hope effectively of survival, Cher Ami, released into the air, shot, but it flies on. Cher Ami keeps going despite being terribly wounded, terribly wounded, makes it back to base in about half an hour or so. With the message, the shelling stopped and the lost battalion is saved. And Jeremy is lauded as this great prigion, Croix de Guerre from the war. It loses its leg and is blinded, but survives the journey home

and is then, when it dies soon afterwards, stuffed. And you can see it in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. Oh, I thought you were going to say it gets a kind of military funeral and buried with full honours. I didn't think it would be stuffed. So there is a question from Al Akfar who asks, what medals have pigeons received? So you've got the Croix de Guerre. Yeah, Croix de Guerre.

And then in the Second World War, which we can come to, the Dickin Medal, which is, you know, very important. So, Gordon, I think we should take a break here because, Gordon, the Second World world war that really is the kind of the gateway for you wasn't it into your fascination with pigeons that's my gateway drug your gateway drug and this is this was the subject of your your great book operation columba so let's take a break now and when we come back maybe you could tell us the story of operation columba i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news

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if you want ad free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com that's That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. The BBC's Gordon Carrera is manfully succeeding in his great enterprise of persuading me and the listening public of the Western world that nothing has mattered more in human history than the humble pigeon or rock dove, as I learned, I should now think of it.

So Gordon, we had the First World War and the tremendous story of Cher Ami, but really your interest began with the Second World War with Operation Columba. Because obviously we think of the Second World War as radar Columba. Because obviously, we think of the Second World War as radar, suburb U-boats, a very technologically advanced conflict. But pigeons played an underappreciated role in the Second World War, didn't they? Absolutely. And thousands of them. And one of the interesting things, it was part of the People's War as well, because pigeons have become a big sport. There were about 70,000 pigeon lofts by the time you get to the start of the Second World War.

Homing pigeons who were being used for sport, real part of working class culture, actually, at that time. It's really interesting, kind of partly lost, but not entirely. It's still there. But, you know, it's referred to at the time as the kind of as the poor man's racehorse. You know, if you might have wanted to, you know, you might have dreamt of breeding a horse and being able to race it and win some money. Well, you couldn't afford to do that if you're a working class, but you could breed those pigeons in your loft. So it's become a huge sport. And at the start of the war, there is this decision to kind of tap into this. And it's because of a particular intelligence requirement. Europe has been occupied, the kind of traditional intelligence networks for MI6, for instance, have collapsed at the start of the war. And as a result, they're desperate to understand what is going on inside occupied France, the Low Countries, and to get a feel for what's happening. And so this intelligence operation is proposed,

and it comes out through a very obscure branch of British intelligence. You've heard of mi5 you've heard of mi6 this is mi14 subsection d which runs the special continental pigeon service and they decide that what you can do is drop pigeons effectively randomly behind enemy lines by flying over it through the RAF who are flying and dropping in special agents. You drop pigeons in canisters and attached to the canisters is a note saying, this is a pigeon from Britain. And they often put a copy of a resistance newspaper, sometimes the Daily Mail with it to prove it had come from Britain. Dominic Tom, What a choice.

And a questionnaire. And the questionnaire was, what are the Germans doing in your area? What are the German troop deployments? Have they been on the move? What's German morale like? What's the food situation? Even what's the reception of the BBC? Because they were kind of interested in knowing that.

A series of kind of questions for people to gather intelligence from ordinary people in occupied Europe. And they relied on these pigeons being effectively donated by ordinary pigeon fanciers in Britain, who would give their pigeons to the army and to MI-14D, and who would then drop them through the RAF and then wait and see what they got back on return flights. What do they get back? Well, they get back this, you know, and I found this file in the National Archives, which full of these pink slips and reading them is really powerful because they're just from ordinary people in rural France, particularly also Belgium, the Netherlands. And they range from people going, you know, not much, not much to see here, but please come and liberate us soon to to talk about the food supply to rich intelligence about what's going on in their area. There's one particular message which I kind of got obsessed

by, which was message 37, which came from Belgium and had this amazing amount of detail. And if you imagine it had to be fitted on a piece of paper about the size of a large postage stamp, which could then go into a tube and fit around a pigeon's leg. And yet it produced about a dozen pages of intelligence because someone had written in the most tiny way. It was actually a Catholic priest who'd learnt calligraphy while a missionary in China to write in huge detail intelligence about German deployments and where German headquarters were. And in the archives, you know, this message gets shown to Churchill and Churchill is shown that message personally. And, you know, in a way, I found that fascinating because Churchill himself wouldn't, you know, he didn't need to know that specific piece of intelligence. You know, that's not his job. So why was he shown it? Well, the answer was it embodied that spirit of resistance, which Churchill so believed in and so wanted to foster in Europe. And this was a sign that there were people there in occupied Europe who were willing to risk their lives by sending messages back to Britain through a pigeon with intelligence because they wanted to resist. So it was this powerful bond was created through the pigeon

between Britain and people in occupied Europe, particularly in that early stage of the war. But also, Gordon, presumably because it kind of shows the can-do spirit, the innovative qualities that Churchill was really into, wasn't it? I mean, he was kind of obsessed with coming up with weird wh he likes a wheeze, doesn't he? He likes a wheeze and a clever intelligence operation. And what's interesting is even the kind of scientific bods in British intelligence. So R.V. Jones, who's the famous figure involved in MI6 and the Air Ministry, realises he can use these pigeons. So he asks for a question on this questionnaire about,

have you seen any kind of strange structures with rotating features? And what he's looking for are German radar stations. And he realises that people will spot something strange. They won't know what it is, but they're so unusual that they will be able to identify these radar stations, often hidden in rural locations, which is the kind of places these pigeons normally get dropped. And a number of German radar stations are spotted purely

thanks to Operation Columba and then destroyed, which protects RAF planes. And the same, actually, with V1 and V2 launch sites. Again, you know, these very modern weapons of war are spotted, thanks to intelligence, which is brought back through the pigeons. And Gordon, are the Germans doing the same? Are they using pigeons? Yes. So they actually, in true German style, are far more organised about their pigeon use than the kind of slightly haphazard British volunteer operation. But one of the fun stories of the war is, so early on, there's this worry that

British Columba pigeons and other pigeons being used in the war are going to be killed by peregrine falcons on the coast. and so they decide that to protect the intelligence coming in from the birds they're gonna have to kill the peregrine falcons and so mi5 sets up one of the few units i've ever discovered which does have a license to kill which is the falcon destruction unit and its job which is the falcon destruction unit is five guys who go around in a big american packard car with a with a caravan on the back and go around the cliffs of britain killing falcons basically and their job is to protect the pigeons unfortunately one falls off a cliff to his death but it's so it's it's a kind of tragic comic story but then in in that piece of kind of absurdity

which could only be kind of the British, you know, wartime intelligence service, they then suddenly get worried at MI5 that actually the Germans might be sending pigeons out of Britain, and that they might be using pigeons for undercover agents in Britain to send back intelligence for Germany. So they suddenly realise, particularly they spot some pigeons flying. Nazi pigeons. Nazi pigeons flying fast over the Silly Isles towards Europe. And they're like, Nazi pigeons, we've got to stop them. So in a...

How do you identify a Nazi pigeon? I've got swastikas. Just to be clear. They're doing salutes while they're flying. That's a good question. So in one of those fantastic wartime reversals from having a Falcon destruction unit, they then decide they need a Falcon unit to hunt Nazi pigeons and set one up and get someone who has got a Peregrine Falcon trained to hunt Nazi pigeons.

And this team from MI5 goes onto the Scilly Isles in the summer and they sit on the golf course of the Scilly Isles with a falcon on their wrist, as you might have seen, ready to hunt pigeons. And they kill pigeons. But the only pigeons they kill are plucky British pigeons. So they never find a Nazi pigeon? Not a single Nazi pigeon. There must be some way they could have done a coup or test

to see if their coup had got a German accent, a German-accented pigeon. No swastikas on the pigeon, no friend or foe identifier on the pigeon. So it's not the most successful wartime operation, it's fair to say, but emblematic of the realities of war. And Gordon, does this division of MI5 still exist? We wouldn't know, would we, Tom? If it was, Tom. I think it was B13C of MI5.

It might secretly still be going on. It might still be, yeah. But there are other heroic pigeons, aren't there? So there's a pigeon, I believe, called Winky ah yes he's a great hero of the second world war yeah because they also use them on the rf gives pigeons to planes particularly going over the sea in case they crash in case they ditch um and the radios don't work or there's a problem then you release a pigeon with your coordinates and And Winky is a very famous case because the plane tries to radio where it is, it ditches. Winky actually gets free without a message, flies home, but covered in oil from the ditching.

And so the loft owner and the RAF work out that this is a pigeon from the plane that ditched. And they work out, based on the speed with which it flew, roughly where that plane might be and then locate the plane and save the crew in their dinghy. That's a good story. Does Winky get a medal? Winky is one of those who is heavily decorated. And I think he's giving a big dinner at the RAA. He's winking. He's winking.

And that's why he's called Winky. But the thought is he's actually so exhausted still. He's never recovered from his flight. That's why he's winking. If I was a pigeon, I'd be very suspicious of being invited to a dinner at an RAA. Wouldn't you? I'd be very angry. I'd want to see the menu before.

I'm afraid that's what happens to lots of the Columba pigeons. You know, they're dropped in the French countryside and hungry French, French farmers roast them with peas. Oh, that's broad. A pigeon pitches up with a copy of the Daily Mail. And the first thing the French do is eat it.

Confirming all your darker suspicions. So Gordon, after the Second World War, do pigeons continue to have any role in intelligence or not? Well, so after the war, there is this, again, when I went through the National Archives, the things you find at Kew, but was a file about the Joint Intelligence Committee subcommittee on pigeons, whose minutes I read studiously, in which there is quite a serious debate about, you know, whether pigeons, whether a pigeon research capability should be kept. And they look at things, for instance, about whether pigeons have a role in the atomic age. So could they fly through, you know, kind of clouds of radioactivity and still, would that affect their ability? The signs are in Britain that they stop after the Second World War. But

fascinatingly, in the US, I was lucky enough, I was interviewing for the BBC, the director of the CIA a few years ago, and I have a museum in the CIA of kind of artifacts. And I was fascinated to see one of the artifacts they have is a stuffed pigeon with a tiny camera on its chest. And it turns out what they did was drop these pigeons over the Soviet Union or the Eastern Bloc. And the camera had a kind of automatic shutter. so it would just snap pictures as it flew back from where it was to its home. One of the things, until recently, there was a sign when you looked this up on the CIA website, it said, details of spy pigeon missions are still classified. Oh, fantastic. That's great. Which I love. So one kind of issue I just wanted to raise

is we kind of reached the modern era, which, you know, I know this is a history podcast, but a kind of current national security concern that I have, which is what I call the pigeon gap. And Dominic will be familiar about the missile gap. The missile gap. I've never heard of the pigeon gap. Which Kennedy obviously campaigned.

My concern about the pigeon gap came when I read this article that the Chinese People's Liberation Army in recent years was training 10,000 carrier pigeons. And the reason was that they were concerned that in the event of some kind of cyber attack, which took out their communications, they could then rely on pigeons. And it got me worried and wondering, you know, whether we are pigeon prepared as a nation, or is there? And is there a pigeon gap? And while we pigeon ready? Well, so, you know, I'm fortunate in my position. I've been able to raise this with what you might euphemistically call senior security officials.

And all I've got when I've raised the pigeon gap, they're kind of blank stares. You know, blank stares. You astound me, Gordon. Blank stares. When you bring up the issue of pigeons with tea or whatever. Blank stares. And so, you know, it worries me. I feel a bit like a kind of Churchillian voice in the wilderness.

You are, clearly. Warning about German disarmament. And so I do have this kind of hope by appearing on your podcast that people may listen. We need a network of military aviaries all across the country. If anyone from MI5 is listening to this, you know what you've got to do. Yeah, because it goes back to my point, you know, pigeons, you know, superheroes of history, you know, saved us from the kind of flood

through the Second World War, but they may, you know, in the event of some awful cyber attack and, you know, a kind of solar storm taking out all our communications, you know, we may rely on those pigeons flying free in our skies, you know, once more. And then people remember that, you know, perhaps it was this podcast that you know kind of turned the tide well if in

any way we can play a humble role in saving britain that'd be great um i mean gordon on the topic of china i did see just when i was um doing some cursory research, that in November 2020, a racing pigeon sold for almost $2 million in China. So they're obviously very, very pigeon friendly in China. Absolutely. And so pigeon racing and pigeon breeding is still there and actually stronger perhaps in Asia, still quite strong in the Middle East, stronger in Asia. It's slightly... Well, they have it in Delhi, don't they willie dalrymple wrote uh wonderful stuff about the the pigeon races in in yeah and if you go around the middle east you can still see quite a bit of it in in countries there but yeah i mean you know the the the breeding of those pigeons to to to kind of a bit like racehorses to kind of

breed the best pigeons and this this you know this goes back to where we started this kind of domesticated nature the selective breeding is partly what makes pigeons interesting. It's why actually Darwin spends quite a bit of time in Origin and Species talking about pigeons, because of their ability to selectively breed them. And he kind of draws this analogy between artificial selection and natural selection. And so still the kind of breeding the fastest pigeon or the best pigeon or breeding the most beautiful pigeon. So there's always been this thing about pigeon fancying, where you breed these kind of beautiful looking birds. And that was something in Roman times.

And also, still today, you will see these kind of ornate looking pigeons, which are being bred for their looks, and which again, are hugely valued. So Gordon, we've looked at the kind of the cultural uses of the pigeon, the way that it's kind of in full mythology and so on. And we've looked at the uses that humans over the span of history have put pigeons to. One final theme, which conveys kind of deeper truths about the relationship of humans to the animal kingdom, is that possibly the most shocking and notorious mass extinction featured a pigeon, specifically the passenger pigeon.

So that's a terrible story. So just tell us a bit about that. Well, I mean, the passenger pigeons were, I mean, they were slightly different from our Columbia, Libya, our homing pigeon, but they lived in huge colonies. In the billions. In the billions. And I mean, people would say, I mean, particularly in North America,

and they moved in these huge flocks, and people would say it would sound like Niagara Falls, you know, when they moved, you know, and you'd almost feel the earth shake, because they were so enormous. Could I just read from John james audubon who you know the great ornithologist american ornithologist writing in 1813 and he describes um standing underneath the passenger pigeons going past the air was literally filled with pigeons the light of noonday was obscured as by an eclipse the dung fell in spots not unlike melting flakes of snow and the continued buzz of wings had a tendency to lull my senses to repose and he talks about um the pigeons were still passing in undiminished numbers and continued to do so for three days in succession i mean it's kind of absolutely stunning spectacle the sun

blocked out for three days at a time by these passing flocks of pigeons yeah and their breeding garlands kind of covered hundreds of square miles but but basically they got they get shot for sport particularly and this is the same time as the buffalo being wiped out so it's kind of 1870 to 1890 by they're gone by i think the first world war certainly um but around the turn of the century you know billions are just killed like that and they're gone like the dodo yeah i was about to say the dodo so the dodo is a distant relative of the pigeon isn't it is that right yes a distant cousin i think a distant yeah distant cousin i mean and um i mean obviously pigeons themselves as in the what we recognize to be pigeons i mean

the issue that a lot of people have with pigeons is not that there are too few but there are too many so ken livingston was a notorious pigeon ofa-foe. Rats with wings. Rats with wings. So just on the rats with wings issue, is that a gross calumny, Gordon, on pigeons? Because there is, I mean, a lot of listeners to this will say, you know, I've seen them scavenging in Trafalgar Square. Pigeons are very bad fellows.

Do you think pigeons have been maligned? Oh, I absolutely think they're maligned and you know they are they you know they have this reputation somehow being you know it's interesting isn't it because in in ancient times you were hearing they were seen as kind of chaste and beautiful and now gods symbols of the gods and now we see them as the kind of dirty things you know in in trafalgar square and we've you know, people have been trying to get rid of them. And I think it's a tragedy because, you know, these are our friends who are there because, you know,

they've come with us into the cities. As we built these cities, you know, these pigeons, which most of the feral pigeons you see in the cities are actually the descendants of the ones we raised in the dovecots and the domesticated pigeons, and who've come with us in the cities and who have, as I said, saved us on many occasions. And yet we look down on them now. And so I do feel for pigeons and I feel they get a bad rap.

That's been incredibly moving throughout the entire... Gordon, can I ask you one last question? Do you have a favourite cinematic pigeon? Oh, there's a few good ones, aren't there? I mean, what was that? There was that great cartoon. Is it Valiant? Is that the one I'm thinking of?

I can't remember now. But I don't have a particular favourite. Do you, Dominic? I do, yeah. I ask because I do, so I can finally contribute something meaningful to this pigeon-based discussion. So in Moonraker, when James Bond's gondola comes out

into St. Mark's Square and transforms into a kind of car and people are sort of machine gunning him from behind and he goes across St. Mark's Square in this gondola, a pigeon does a double take um it's very it's a very yes I remember that yeah very it's a very humorous moment for those people who may be listening with some and there was also uh catch the pigeon wasn't there where Dick Dastardly and Muttley Dastardly yes yes the pigeon in uh in their flying machines yeah well Gordon it's been it's been an absolute treat absolutely worth

the the way an education hasn't it tom it's been a genuine education it really has well for me anyway and maybe not for you you're already it you were already converted in a file yeah i hope i made my case so thank you you did you made your case and you're brilliant and uh you may have saved britain as well well that's if you can close that pigeon gap, you will have performed a miraculous service. So the book is Operation Columba. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, the Secret Pigeon Service is the other title. The Secret Pigeon Service.

And tons of stories of pigeon-based derring-do. Leaves the reader in absolute no doubt that it was the pigeon that won the Second World War and saved Europe from Nazism. So hurrah for the pigeons. And hurrah for you, Gordon, for coming on the show and braving the scepticism of some people. I don't know who they were.

I don't know who they were. Thank you. So next week, the rest is history. We'll have an episode on crows and an episode on the starling. So much to come. Bye-bye. All right. Bye-bye.

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