No one knows for sure who was the first to use the habit of pigeons returning to their nest to deliver messages. I have come across versions both about the ancient Greeks and about the ancient Persians. In any case, mankind has been using pigeon mail for many centuries, and during this time, many interesting stories have accumulated related to the feathered "Pechkin". Some of them are in this post.
They say that one of the first who thought of using pigeons for communication during hostilities was Caesar. During the Gallic War, he thus maintained contact with supporters in Rome and coordinated his actions with them. But nevertheless, the pigeon mail did not play a serious role then.
Another thing is the emir of Aleppo since 1146 Nur ad-Din Zangiwho successfully fought the crusaders. He was well aware of how important accurate and timely information received for the conduct of hostilities. And he bet on pigeon mail. It should be noted that the carrier pigeon is not some special breed; pigeons of different colors were selected for this role, paying attention to their physical parameters (the strongest and healthiest birds). So, Nur ad-Din Zangi began to buy such pigeons wherever possible for a high price, for a couple of pigeons his people gave 1000 denarii. And throughout the territory of modern Egypt and Syria, a network of "pigeon towers" was built. As a result, the first (but not the last) pigeon postal service was created. And thanks to her, the detachments of Nur ad-Din Zangi and his successors won battles more than once, finding themselves in the right place at the right time. For example,in 1249, thanks to pigeons, the Egyptian sultan learned that the French had captured the port of Damietta and managed to organize a quick counterattack before reinforcements approached the French detachment.
The Crusaders quickly appreciated the possibilities of pigeon mail and transferred it to European soil. True, here she remained a private initiative for a long time: many sent letters with pigeons to each other, but analogs of “pigeon mail” had to wait a long time. Exactly before the Franco-Prussian war.
In 1870, the Prussian army laid siege to Paris. To establish communication between the besieged capital and the rest of the country, the French organized a special "pigeon post office": birds were taken out of the city in balloons, and then they returned on their own with letters. On November 4, 1870, the post office issued a special decree, the first article of which said: “Everyone has the right, while living on the territory of the republic, to communicate with Paris with the help of pigeons of the post and telegraph administration, with the payment of 50 centimes per word, levied upon departure, and within, specified in the order of the head of the department ". When sending, some employees of the "Pigeon Post" rewrote messages in a greatly reduced form, and after delivery, others - were engaged in decoding them before transferring them to the addressee. In total, with the help of pigeons, about 150 thousand state letters and more than a million private letters were delivered during the siege .
The Germans did not calmly look at what was happening and tried to organize a hunt for feathered postmen with the help of falcons. But, as you know, there is something for every cunning nut. The French began to attach small whistles to the tail of the pigeons, which made loud sounds during flight, scaring the falcon away from the prey.
Maybe the Germans would have come up with something else (some falcon earplugs, for example), but the war is over. After her, grateful Parisians threw themselves on the monument to the carrier pigeon in Place Mayo.
Well, the French army did not begin to dissolve the "pigeon mail", on the contrary, it started training specialists in this type of communication. A special manual on military pigeon breeding was even published.
However, pigeons were also remembered in the armies of other countries. In most of them, private societies of pigeon sports lovers (carrier pigeons are also called sports pigeons) were obliged in the event of a war to transfer their birds to the needs of the army. As a result, in the year of the First World War, several thousand birds were involved in the warring parties. The most famous was the English carrier pigeon number 888 , which delivered several hundred messages and died while performing a particularly important combat mission. He was even posthumously awarded the rank of colonel in the British army. And they buried them with official honors in accordance with this rite.
Another monument to carrier pigeons (more precisely to the dove) appeared in England after the Second World War. Then in the British army there were even more pigeons than in the First World War. One pair ended up on a submarine, which, after an attack by German aircraft, was forced to go to the bottom. There was no chance of rescue without outside help, as well as the ability to transmit an SOS radio signal. Then the captain remembered the birds. Notes with a request for help and an indication of the coordinates of the submarine were attached to their paws, the birds were placed in a special capsule and sent through a torpedo tube to the surface. The male died somewhere along the way, and the female flew to the base and help came. For this they erected a monument to her, and even awarded a medal.
Another British pigeon named Commandowas awarded a medal for his participation in secret intelligence work. The British supplied their pigeons with fake identification rings and, with the help of human agents, infiltrated them into the German pigeon mail. Then the birds returned home with secret German reports. So the Commando went this way three times, and the information he brought turned out to be very valuable.
There were awards for military carrier pigeons in other countries.
It is clear that pigeons were used not only for military purposes, but also for quite peaceful purposes.
For example, stock brokers. The story of how Rothschild got rich thanks to the fact that he learned about the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo a couple of days earlier than his competitors is widely known. It was the pigeon mail that rescued him. Pigeons in the 19th century were often used by journalists to quickly transfer reports from the scene to the press. And in 1896, official and regular postal lines opened between Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, and the Barrier Reef Islands. True, soon, radio and telephony significantly reduced the demand for pigeons in a peaceful life.
In our country, the first regular postal pigeon communication was organized by Prince Golitsyn in 1854.The 90-verst route ran between his estate in Moscow and his estate in the village of Sima. In 1887, a military pigeon post was established in the Russian Empire. Its first subdivision was the St. Petersburg station of carrier pigeons under the aeronautical command of the military department for communication with Moscow. Then a number of large stations of permanent pigeon communication of several military districts were opened (mainly on the southern and western borders).
The Soviet government continued this tradition: under Osoaviakhim, a unified pigeon sports center was created... In the late 1920s, the idea was voiced to transfer all pigeon breeding in the country under the control of the Red Army, but they did not give it a go (and, probably, correctly). But with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, a “pigeon mobilization” was carried out in the country, seizing several thousand birds from the population. Pigeons were used both in regular troops and for communication between partisan detachments. Where it was impossible for some reason to extend a communication line, a bird came to the rescue.
And yet, World War II was the last armed conflict where pigeon mail was used en masse. Further, the development of technology has done its job. But the pigeons-postmen have not completely left our lives. It is often used in some kind of promotions. For example, in 1996, following the ancient example of the Greeks, Slovakia sent out its “Golubegrams” in honor of the Atlanta Olympics. They were provided with commemorative stamps. But in Holland, pigeons save lives to this day - they deliver test tubes with donor blood to hospitals. It turned out to be faster and cheaper than delivery by car.
And finally - some "tactical and technical" characteristics of feathered postmen. At the end of the 20th century, an experiment was conducted in the Baltics: who will deliver the letter to the addressee faster - an airplane, ground mail or a dove? And the pigeon coped with the task first. Which, however, is not surprising. Pigeons with letters fly up to 1000 km, the flight takes place at an altitude of 400 m and can last up to 12 hours without rest. In the USSR in 1929, a record was set: one of the birds flew 537 kilometers in 6 hours 8 minutes, thus developing an average speed of 86 kilometers per hour .
But thanks to what they unmistakably find their way home, despite the distances of hundreds of kilometers, it has not yet been reliably established. There are two main versions: 1) equipping the beak of pigeons with a magnetic-receptor system - orientation occurs due to capturing changes in the earth's magnetic field and 2) orientation due to auditory perception of vibrations, vibrations in the spectrum of low-frequency sound waves. Which of them is correct (and maybe both) is still to be found out.