[Illustration by Malcolm Jones]

Amazingly, during the early years of the Second World War, Royal Air Force bombers were equipped with carrier pigeons. They were supposed to be the last resort if radio communications were lost.

In 1942, one of these birds actually helped rescue a downed crew member.

The pigeon, named Winkie, was aboard a badly damaged bomber returning from a mission to Norway. The plane went down in the North Sea. The crew sent a message that they were ditching, but didn’t send a position. As they bobbed in the frigid water they released Winkie.

Winkie made it home to her Dundee, Scotland, coop, oil-stained and exhausted after a 200-kilometre flight and her owner notified the local air base. Navigators plotted the time of the ditching and calculated the distance the bird could have flown. The lost aviators were retrieved.

The pigeon was awarded the Dickin Medal, which is given to animals for bravery or devotion to duty in combat.

Last fall, a bronze statue of Winkie was unveiled in Dundee.

In 1944, a young Canadian officer had just taken command of a motor torpedo boat and was heading for Greenock, Scotland, on the River Clyde to pick up supplies. All the while, he was looking for a potential target to practise on. What did he see coming down the river but the liner Queen Mary, all 80,000 tons of it. He couldn’t resist and rang up for full speed. But as he closed in on the troopship, he noticed men on its bridge aiming rifles at him. He decided in favour of discretion and sheered away.

An investigation was launched and in due course he was marched before a senior admiral. “I described what had happened, explaining that it had all been quite harmless,” he recalled years later.

When the questioning was done, the admiral dismissed his staff and the Queen Mary officers. He gestured to the Canadian to take a seat and offered him a cigarette.

“Really,” he said. “That was a bit naughty, wasn’t it?

“But in a way I really can’t blame you. She must have been an irresistible target. You’ll hear no more about it.”

And that was it. The two men chatted for a while and the admiral wished the young man good luck before parting.

The skipper survived the war and went on to greater fame back home in Canada. His name was Jack McClelland, and he eventually ran McClelland & Stewart, the publishing house that helped promote Canadian literature and the careers of authors such as Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton and Farley Mowat.

“We’ve run aground,” the astonished navigator shouted from the bridge, as thoughts of court martial popped into his head.

In the spring of 1945, when the Second World War had only weeks to run, HMCS New Glasgow left Londonderry to join a convoy off the coast of Scotland. It was to be its final escort assignment before returning to Canada for a refit and a long-awaited home leave. The frigate was steaming in bright moonlight and calm seas in company with three other ships.

Without warning, the ship lurched upward and to starboard, accompanied by a grating, grinding noise. “We’ve run aground,” the astonished navigator shouted from the bridge, as thoughts of court martial popped into his head.

The captain suggested they had hit an uncharted rock.

What they had struck was a German submarine, U-1003, which had been submerged and running on its snorkel. The impact damaged the sub badly and it lay on the bottom in 80 metres of water for two days, while the crew struggled to make repairs. In the end, the captain ordered the vessel to surface and the crew abandoned ship.

New Glasgow had some nasty hull gashes and a mangled propeller. After first aid at Londonderry, she was ordered to Rosyth, on the other side of Scotland, for a refit and was still in drydock when the war ended.

As far as we can tell, this was the only case during the war of two belligerent warships colliding accidentally.

Canadian-born actress Mary Pickford decided to help Canada’s war effort in the early 1940s by offering to raffle off one of her handbags to raise money to buy sports gear for the troops. Her gesture sadly ran afoul of a Toronto city bylaw, which capped the value of raffle items at $50. Pickford’s bejeweled purse was worth $1,500. An exception was sought.