Pigeons in a Pelican

B. F. Skinner opens by calling Project Pigeon the history of a 'crackpot idea, born on the wrong side of the tracks intellectually speaking, but eventually vindicated in a sort of middle class respectability.' The idea was to put living birds inside a missile and let them steer it by what they saw.

He describes a research program during World War II called Project Pigeon and a peacetime continuation at the Naval Research Laboratory called ORCON, from the words organic control. Both had been declassified when he wrote. The piece is a first-person account of the work by the man who proposed it, published in 1960.

His case for the bird rests on cost and size. He calls it almost certainly cheaper and more compact, and especially good at responding to patterns. He says the lower organism is used because it is readily expendable, and he adds that the kamikaze did very well. The article runs ten pages.