This was yet another attempt to use an animal to deliver explosives to an enemy target. It was first proposed by American psychologist B.F.Skinner, as a way to delivering a missile accurately against a target, by placing a pigeon inside the missile. An image of the target would be projected in front of it, and the pigeon would be trained to recognize it. It would then peck on one of four levers (up, down, left or right) until the target was dead centre of the screen. They were encouraged to do so by their training, where they were awarded with corn for keeping the target in the centre. They were surprising adept at this, (in training) being able to track a target which jumped 4 or 5 inches a second on the screen. The National Defense Research Committee committed $25,000 to this research, and the army modified several missiles for this purpose before it was decided that electronic guidance would be superior, and the project was scrapped. 



Pigeon Guided Missile

John C. Meyer shown here in his mustang  "Petie 3rd" was wing commander of 352nd Fighter Group know as "The Blue Nosed Bastards of Bodney". he was the forth leading ace in europe and the second leading ace in the p-51 mustang. he would later become the only pilot from WWII to become a four star general 

John C. Meyer

The United States Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) and the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAFs) were created to employ women pilots in roles that were traditionally occupied by men. The WASPs trained a total of 1074 pilots to fly planes between factories and air bases, freeing male pilots for combat and other military roles. They also flew cargo planes and towed target planes for target practice. Although civilian, they were trained to fly most of the military planes flown in WWII. Tragically, 38 WASP pilots were killed in training or active duty accidents, but did not receive military funerals. WAAFs, the British Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was composed of over 180,000 women at its peak. Women of the WAAF assumed flying roles in the Air Transport Auxiliary, as well as many non flying roles, including packing parachutes, radar and communications duties, as well as plotting and directing planes in the defensive Battle of Britain.

