During World War II, the US Navy required a weapon effective against surface ships, such as the German Bismarck class battleships. Although Missile and TV technology existed, the size of the primitive guidance systems available rendered automatic guidance impractical. To solve this problem, Skinner initiated Project Pigeon, which was intended to provide a simple and effective guidance system. Skinner trained pigeons through operant conditioning to peck a camera obscura screen showing incoming targets on individual screens. This system divided the nose cone of a missile into three compartments, with a pigeon placed in each. Within the ship, the three lenses projected an image of distant objects onto a screen in front of each bird. Thus, when the missile was launched from an aircraft within sight of an enemy ship, an image of the ship would appear on the screen. The screen was hinged, which connected the screens to the bomb’s guidance system. This was done through four small rubber pneumatic tubes that were attached to each side of the frame, which directed a constant airflow to a pneumatic pickup system that controlled the thrusters of the bomb. Resulting in the missile being guided towards the targeted ship, through just the peck coming from the pigeon.
I’ll see your pigeon-guided missile and raise you the chicken-heated nuclear landmine : Blue Peacock
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It would be remiss of me not to contribute the USA’s other potential war winning weapon of WW2, the bat-bomb, invented by a dentist from Pennsylvania:
They have one of those in the unclassified collection at Aldermaston, it’s fascinating.
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Too bizarre for the Dewey system?