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Tuesday, August 23, 2022

IPS: The Indian Pigeon Service

 


A dear friend shared this documentary "War of the Birds" which includes some rather interesting stories on pigeons used in World War II. This led me to revisit something that I had come across in the past rather briefly. There was an Indian Pigeon Service which was part of the Signal Corps which was active towards the 1940s. Rather little has been written about them - although there was a manual that is unfortunately not available in online archives "Indian Pigeon Service. A manual of instruction on the use of homing pigeons in India and South East Asia. Booklet, Feb 1945 - published by the Chief of the General Staff, Delhi, Feb 1945"- and some letters have been reproduced here and here.

But this makes another bit even more surprising - there were attempts much earlier on introducing homing pigeons in the army and those early experiments were done in Bangalore by the 19th Hussars who set up something called the Assaye Flying Club, a report on which was made in the Lincolnshire Echo of 13 December 1894! 

Perhaps someone with access to army archives can find more.


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