Project Pigeon
| Active | 1940-1944; revived 1948-1953 as Project ORCON |
|---|---|
| Funding | US$25,000 (NDRC) |
| Guidance | 1 to 3 pigeons |
| Reason for cancellation | Nobody could keep a straight face |
Project Pigeon was a United States military programme during the Second World War to develop a pigeon-guided missile.
It worked. That was the problem.
Concept[edit]
The psychologist B. F. Skinner proposed guiding a glide bomb with pigeons trained by operant conditioning. A bird in the nose of the weapon viewed the target through a lens projecting onto a screen, and pecked at the image; the screen was mounted so that pecks off-centre tilted it, and the tilt drove the control surfaces.[1]
Three pigeons were used in the later design, on a majority-vote principle, so that one distracted bird could be outvoted by its colleagues.[1]
Performance[edit]
The pigeons were accurate, fast to train, cheap, unbothered by G-forces, and continued pecking under conditions that included vibration, noise and sudden pressure changes.[1] The National Defense Research Committee provided $25,000 and, after a demonstration, cancelled the programme in October 1944 on the grounds that it would delay more promising work.
Skinner's own summary of the difficulty was not technical:
Our problem was no one would take us seriously.
The Navy revived the idea from 1948 to 1953 as Project ORCON, short for "organic control", and shelved it again when electronic guidance became reliable enough.[1]
Context: other decorated birds[edit]
Pigeon military service was not unusual. Cher Ami, a homing pigeon of the US Army Signal Corps, delivered a message in October 1918 that helped locate the surrounded Lost Battalion, having been shot through the breast and losing a leg in the process, and was awarded the French Croix de Guerre.[2]
Of the 75 Dickin Medals awarded for animal gallantry, 32 have gone to pigeons, against 38 to dogs, 4 to horses and 1 to a cat.[3] Pigeons therefore hold more decorations for gallantry than every horse and cat in the history of the award, combined, several times over.