Have a look at this link:
Parachute pour pigeon, Saint-Marcel
Have a look at this link:
Parachute pour pigeon, Saint-Marcel
All I see is a French pigeon with a white flag....Nothing unusual there.by HistoryMan
'I do not think we can hope for any better thing now.
We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. SCOTT.
Last Entry - For God's sake look after our people.'
In memory of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. South Pole Expedition, 30th March 1912.
You are correct it is made for pigeons,but the one in the pictures is missing the tube to put the pigeon inside of it.
Chris
I don't get that... Why wouldn't you just drop an entire cage with 4 or 5? Seems like a lot of hassle for one bird..
They did that as well
Strange things happened during the war
Well the reason is that this was done in several different scenarios.
Of course most military history buffs will know that since the Ancient Greeks times pigeons have been used to carry military communications from the front.
Taken out of context it didn't at first occur to me that this may be a pigeon carrier but now it is mentioned it makes perfect sense to me.
Much has been published about their use in the trenches of WWI (if you haven't seen it check out the Blackadder goes Forth episode about Speckled Jim and The Flanders Pigeon Murderer ).
However, we are talking about WWII here and pigeons were used even more widely. They were carried in bombers to send back emergency / distress messages, they were carried into action by both British and US paratroops to communicate easily and discretely from the DZ and they were dropped individually en-masse over occupied Europe on the speculative premise that they would be found by locals and released with messages attached, most people in that time would have recognised a carrier pigeon. Unfortunately many are thought to have perished in their containers without being found (sadly I suspect more than one ended up in a pie with food being at such a premium!). Of those found and released several were awarded the Dicken Medal (animal bravery award) when they arrived in UK. The Germans had a very interesting counter measure in place along the French coast, a kind of Jagdgeschwader p-) of hawks meant to hunt and kill the pigeons.
The pigeons were deployed in many different types of container from the simple cage with several birds through single bird cannisters strapped to a paratroopers chest to various designs of hard container attached to a small parachute as seen here.
So, there is much more to pigeons at war than most of us might at first think. I don't know a great deal about it but I am aware of the tactics used.
This is an inriguing item worthy of further research I am sure.
Regards
Mark
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature with no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
Here's an old related thread with more info regarding these containers therein.
WW2 Carrier Pigeon
'I do not think we can hope for any better thing now.
We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker of course, and the end cannot be far.
It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more. R. SCOTT.
Last Entry - For God's sake look after our people.'
In memory of Capt. Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson, Henry Bowers, Lawrence Oates and Edgar Evans. South Pole Expedition, 30th March 1912.
Actually it is a parachute style used by the highly secret General Tom Thumb Para Brigade.
They were dropped in early to infiltrate the Pegasus bridge. When the regular Para's attacked the bridge the tiny paratroopers used their FS knives to reach up and skewer the scrotums of the German guards and give them an instant circumcision rendering them incapable of continued combat. Honest.
Thank you all for the useful info
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