Pigeon guided missiles?!

(Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(robert arndt) writes:
"James Hart" wrote in message ...
robert arndt wrote:
"Ian" wrote in message
...
"Jim Doyle" wrote in message
...
I found this earlier today, it may not be new to yourselves - but
the thought of some pigeon tapping away frantically inside a
speeding missile had me in stiches!

http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m.../article.jhtml

Hope it tickles something,

Jim Doyle

Thanks for the story. Here's another one concerning Britain's use of
Falcons to combat the Nazi Pigeon menace during the pre-invasion plans
for Operation Sea Lion.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_r...ies/263333.stm

The article does not, however, tell of the continued development of
the Nazi pigeon. The German Army and SS used specially trained pigeons
to target troops
and perform recon with special cameras developed by Zeiss.
I'll try to find that info as well somewhere in an "animals at war"
site.

Rob

p.s. You are aware of the CIA exploding pigeons, right? Supposedly
they and the exploding dogs were successfully used against terrorists
in the '80s. The exploding pigeon was used with a pinpoint laser
designator while the dog was just introduced into the area and
detonated when convenient.

As opposed to the exploding cat of course, it would explode when
inconvenient.
No doubt someone will be along shortly with tales of the not particularly
succesful anti tank dogs and the anti shipping torpedo dolphins.

Uh, the Russian AT dogs were a failure because they usually went for
Russian tanks which used gasoline. Since the dogs were taught to crawl
under Russian tanks in training they smelled the gasoline from the
engines. German tanks used diesel so the Pavlov training the Russians
used turned against them. Only a few German tanks were ever destroyed
this way but 22 Russian tanks were lost to their own dogs!'

The only problem with that is that the vast majority of Soviet tanks,
especially after about August, 1941, were (Wait for it!) Diesel
powered. (BT-8, T-34 & derivatives, T-60 & derivatives, KV-whatever -
they also got the Lion's Share of Diesel Shermans).

The German tanks didn't use Diesels. They use Heavy Oil spark
ignition (Otto Cycle) engines. In many ways, the worst of both
worlds. The only Diesels thay used in Armored Vehicles, other than
some prototypes, such as teh E100 hull, were the Tatra engines used in
some Armored Cars and the vehicles derived from the Czech Pz 38(t).

Quite right. Why this was I don't know because on a tank it's quite a
safety issue to have gasoline intstead of diesel/kerosene.

However I do believe the Russian suicide dog experiment was a
practicable as well as propaganda debacle.

German gasoline use in tanks may again relate to the Germans adjusting
their engine types to suit their syn fuel supplies, perhaps to make
use of byproduct low grade gasoline not suitable for aviation use but
even that is a little odd since FT synthesis actualy produces quite
good diesel.

The cetane rating are actualy insanely high, around 85 which meant
that the mixture ignited easily but burned slowly. Normaly high
cetane rating is desirable but the rating were so high that in this
case the burn was too slowly and efficieny suffered so they had to
blend the fischer trospch diesel with diesel from their coal
hydrogenation plants to get a perfect mixture.

The Germans have generally been leaders in development and employment
of diesel engines and the precision injections systems and their Jumo
series aircraft engines were highly regarded as were their u-boat and
marine diesels.

The power to weight ratio of the Maybach tank engine (700hp but 620hp
after fans etc subtracted) of the Tiger and Panther, despite its mass,
was quite good but the power to weight ratio of the T34 was superb,
20hp/ton as opposed to 13.5 hp/ton for the Panther and the Germans had
trouble matching its acceleration. There was hope of getting 800hp
out of the Maybach by employement of fuel injection and a series of
gas trubines the GT101( direct drive), GT102(Indirect drive), GT103 (
GT102 with heat recovery) based on a downscaled BMW003 combustion
chamber was in developemnt to overcome Germanies fuel quality issues
and improve power to weight ratios.

The germans often ran out of diesel becuase gasoline had emphasis. A
diesel substite was often made with 95% gasoline and 5% lubricating
oil.

In many cases note that German synthesis technology improved markedly
as the war progressed and decisions they made early on often lost
validity as the tech progressed.