THE SECRET PIGEON SERVICE

Secret spymasters. Daring espionage. The story of how homing pigeons helped liberate Western Europe in the Second World War is a remarkable tale of resistance

- Gordon Corera

Farmers in Nazi-occupied Western Europe woke up to something strange in their fields in the spring of 1941. A metal canister fixed to a three-and-a-half-foot parachute had fallen from the skies.

An attached note explained that this strange gift had been sent by British intelligence. There was a questionnaire asking for information about German troop movements and life under occupation. But how could such dangerous information get back to British spymasters?

The answer was inside the canister. Cooing away was a British homing pigeon (Columba livia domestica). All you had to do was place your message in a tiny canister - the size of a pen top - and attach it to the pigeon's leg. Then by releasing the pigeon into the air, the bird would do what a homing pigeon does and engage its remarkable superpower to find its way back home.

This seemingly bizarre operation was being run by a tiny team back in British intelligence. Everyone has heard of MI5 and MI6. But what about MI 14(d)? They were the group tasked with gathering information on the Nazi occupation and they were behind what was called 'Operation Columba' - the Secret Pigeon Service.

When they started in 1941, the situation was desperate. The previous year the Nazi war machine had rolled through Western Europe, threatening even an invasion of Britain. There were few MI6 intelligence networks left, the code-breaking of Bletchley Park had yet to kick in and intelligence was hard to come by.

"The RAF squadron dropped more than 16,000 pigeons in an are from Copenhagen to Bordeaux"