Operation Columba—The Secret Pigeon Service by Gordon Corera

Corera succeeds in bringing a virtually unknown chapter of the war to life and pays tribute to the ordinary people who risked their lives to resist the Nazis. Gordon Corera About This Book The fascinating, untold story of how British intelligence secretly used homing pigeons as part of a clandestine espionage operation to gather information, communicate, and coordinate with members of the Resistance to defeat the Nazis in occupied Europe during World War II.

About the Book Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of MI14(d) and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time.

He vividly describes the rivalries and lack of coordination among British intelligence branches, the memorable “array of oddballs and professors” who made up MI14, the network of resistance members and trained agents in the occupied territories, and the German spies who penetrated their cells. Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Occupied Europe. Witty and meticulously researched, Corera’s narrative highlights the story of a small Belgian resistance cell led by Catholic priest Joseph Raskin, who provided Operation Columba with such superior intelligence that two agents were parachuted in to help him, contributing to dire consequences for the whole group. The messages the pigeons brought back, written on sheets of rice paper and folded into canisters clipped on their legs by ordinary men and women living under German occupation, provided valuable information on everything from German morale to troop movements. MI14 dropped more than 16,000 pigeons “in an arc” from Copenhagen to Bordeaux. Corera ( Intercept: The Secret History of Surveillance, Hacking and Digital Espionage), a security correspondent for BBC News, unearths the intriguing story of the homing pigeon service used by British intelligence during WWII to communicate with the Resistance in occupied Europe.

Operation Columba—The Secret Pigeon Service by Gordon Corera