Princess

The flight that turned rumor into fact

Crete, 1944 — the sea below stretched unbroken for hundreds of miles. Princess, 42WD593, rose from a covert station carrying information vital to Allied command. No other pigeon had made the distance — five hundred miles of open water, no rest, no land. She reached her RAF loft in Alexandria, feathers crusted with salt, the capsule still sealed. The intelligence she carried turned rumor into fact. May 1946 — they called it one of the finest performances in the war record of the Pigeon Service. The handlers said only: she came home from the impossible.