'All war is deception.'
Sun Tzu (544–496 BC)
Before e-mail, there was p-mail. As early as the late 1920s the Coast Guard experimented with pigeons for air-to-ground communication from Loening OL-5 observation amphibians, the service's first official aircraft. Despite the promise of stealth—no breaking of radio silence—and more loiter time on station while relaying information, the experiment failed. Over the years, further attempts followed. In this undated photograph from a much later period, a pilot receives his passenger before a training mission. As late as the early 1980s, the service was conducting experiments—in Project Sea Hunt—using the birds to detect men and equipment on the open sea. This, too, ended in failure.
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