The Game Room version of Sea Battle. Note the similar colors of the ships. Sea Battle was part of the first wave of titles featured in the Xbox 360 Game Room on March 24, 2010. The game is virtually the same visually, with the exception of Player 2's navy bearing a faint green tone, rather than orange. 3DS Arcade Custom / Edited DS / DSi Game Boy / GBC Game Boy Advance GameCube Genesis / 32X / SCD Master System Mobile Neo Geo / NGCD NES Nintendo 64 Nintendo Switch PC / Computer PlayStation PlayStation 2 PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 PlayStation Vita PSP SNES Wii Wii U Xbox 360 Other Systems.

Birds have been message-carriers longer than humans have been recording time. Of course, their amazing success in protecting and delivering these messages led to the thought: “How can we use them to help in our petty human conflicts?”

It’s like when you’re watching Braveheart and you see a horse get speared by some Scottish guy trying to get the best of some English guy. What did the horse ever do to deserve it?

In any case, pigeons are particularly successful in long-distance message delivery — with a lot less risk involved than a battle horse. Their earliest known military use was by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago. The United States Army established a pigeon service in 1917.

Here are 15 cool facts about war pigeons:

1. Pigeons were still vital in WWII

War pigeons were standard in the Great War, but the following two decades showed a lot of technological advancement. Even though WWII soldiers had the means to communicate by wire and radio, they still used pigeons to deliver vital messages. Why?

Radio messages had the potential to be intercepted behind enemy lines
In emergency situations, radio comm could be disabled or otherwise not possible
Difficult terrain made certain posts unsuitable for wire or radio communication
For fast deliverance of cross-continental news, pigeons were still the best option

2. The Normandy landings were first reported by a pigeon

Gustav the pigeon brought the first word of the Normandy landings to the British. He was a grizzle-colored cock pigeon in the RAF, known by his service number NPS.42.31066. He was trained by pigeon handler Fred Jackson and given to the National Pigeon Service for use in the war.

For his valorous delivery of the Normandy news, Gustav was awarded the Dickin Medal, also known as the animals’ Victoria Cross. 32 war pigeons were given this medal in WWII.

3. Naturally, they all had kick-ass names

Even though each pigeon was designated by their service number, many of them were also given names. A handful include: Lady Astor, Holy Ghost, Pepperhead, and Commando.

What would you name your pigeon?

4. They had an astounding 90% delivery success rate

Of the 54,000 carrier pigeons that the Army used in WWII, they got the message delivered 90% of the time. In fact, the Army didn’t even bother coding their messages because they were so reliable. Around 1% of pigeon-carried messages were coded.

5. Pigeons were paratroopers, too

Sometimes dropped in special containers with their own parachutes, and sometimes strapped to the chests of Army paratroopers, war pigeons were especially useful in airborne operations.

The main reason for airborne missions was to quickly and efficiently drop behind enemy lines, which made achieving the objective that much easier. Pigeons were also quick and dependable; if everything went wrong and all else failed, at least word of the failure and potentially useful information could be returned home.

The birds were fastened to soldiers’ chests by a special vest that could be moved to their backs once they landed. It looked a lot like a sling and was actually made by a bra company. One paratrooper pigeon named Thunderbird made 10 jumps; he received a pair of miniature wings from Ft. Benning after his service.

6. 1941 headlines read: “Cheer Up, Men, Birds Also May Be Drafted”

News stories like this spread across the nation and raised morale among troops. The Army was buying civilian-trained pigeons for $5 a pop, and also taking them on loan or donation. Additionally, they were recruiting special soldiers as pigeon masters to handle the birds.

After they’d built up a solid base of carrier pigeons, the Army started their own breeding program for the strongest birds possible.

7. WWII pigeons could fly triple the distance of WWI birds

The Army’s breeding program was successful in that its birds were much more fit for combat. The average pigeon in World War I could fly only 200 miles at a time; the average World War II pigeon could easily manage 400, and sometimes 600 miles.

They also flew faster. They could reach up to 60 miles an hour, though they averaged 35 to 40 on longer flights. What’s more – on these long flights it was typical for a pigeon to lose one-fifth of its body weight. This is why the Army used younger, more fit birds, around one to four years old.

Fun fact: pigeons can live up to 15 years! They are smart and generally healthy birds with only one known predator, the coastal peregrine falcon. In urban populations, however, it is much more common for them to die after 3-5 years.

8. A war pigeon could be deployed at a mere 8 weeks old

The training process is simple, and goes as follows:

At 4 weeks old, the chick is taken from its nest and placed in a mobile loft
The loft is moved daily, and the bird is allowed to fly three times a day to regain its bearings
By week 8 the pigeon can fly for 60 miles, and knows its surroundings perfectly

From there, it is trained to fly farther and faster, and can reliably be used as a messenger.

9. Carrier pigeons’ greatest motivator? Sex

Handlers tried just about everything to make a pigeon’s flight faster. The first trick in the book was to withhold food. A hungry pigeon will fly faster in order to eat. Pretty basic stuff.

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However, one fascinating motivator for war pigeons was their mating instincts. Pigeons tend to mate for life – although there are exceptions – and male pigeons especially are jealous little birds.

A handler would spark this jealousy by introducing a new male to the loft right before the mated male left on his flight. In turn, the mated male would perform his task much quicker than before, to ensure that his lady didn’t have time for any funny business.

10. They directly saved pilot lives

This fascinating statistic was released by the RAF during the war: one of every seven crewman who survived a flight failure owed his life to a carrier pigeon. This led to the United States placing war pigeons on pretty much every American bomber.

The really neat things about pigeons on bombers was that they needed no special flight equipment. The average man at 20,000 feet had to wear an oxygen mask and a heated suit to withstand the altitude. Pigeons, however, could function perfectly normal, even at 35,000 feet.

Even though the Army had designed special drop boxes for pigeons, it was discovered that they could be released from planes in thin, paper-like bags and survive just the same. A slit was cut into a bag, the pigeon placed headfirst, and then thrown from high altitudes at 375 miles per hour. The bird would emerge from the bag and fly down to a better altitude before returning home.

11. How do the pigeons always find their way home?

It’s a bit of a mystery to us useless humans how a bird can magically know its way home from almost anywhere on earth. So how do they do it?

Through research using artificial lighting, it was discovered that pigeons do in fact use the sun’s position to direct themselves. On overcast days, however, they are able to tune in to the earth’s electro-magnetic fields for orientation.

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