Salute!
heh heh, and pigeons were not the only critters considered to help the war effort. To wit, the "bat bombs".
Bats would be fitted with small incindiery payloads and release over the Japanese cities. The bats would land and roost in the eaves of buildings and then the payload would ignite and start a fire. Well, the system worked, but unfortunately at the test site in the U.S. !!! Early testing had an unplanned release of the bats and the suckers burned down one of the test sites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb
Gotta love it. And the pigeons were smart enuf to be trained to home in on certain types of boats, unlike the bats that simply picked a building that looked comfortable.
Gums sends...