Miltary use of animals WWII.

The Americans very successfully "armed" bats with incendiary charges since they can fly their own weight. Released some way from Japanese buildings at night, from a bomber even, they would at dawn or before avail themselves of the roof spaces for roosting, especially wooden tropical buildings and the typical Japanese house.

Pigeons were a used to guide a munition also. The birds were trained to peck at a ship picture to get food and when captively placed in the nose cone of a guided bomb they would do this against a projected image of the target on a crude touch screen that effectively recorded x any y axis commands for munition guidance and thus brought the image back to centre as the corrections took effect on the fins.

As far-fetched as it seems this was entirely successful against ships but a step too far for the JCS committee belief.


The Russians developed an anti-tank dog that was kept half-starved and trained to go under a tank for food; it had a fairly big charge fitted to it and a wooden trigger handle sticking up from its back that would be operated as the dog tried to go under the vehicle. They sometimes preferred and recognised the Russian tanks used in training and sometimes got frightened by the noise, but some 300 German tanks were destroyed or disabled and it was taken very seriously.


R.