War secrets of the birdman of Worcester Park come home to roost

There are no history books that chronicle his ingenious triumphs against the Nazis.

Even the thousands of soldiers whose lives he saved cannot vouch for his existence.

For 70 years, only a few select British secret service agents knew the instrumental and wonderfully eccentric role that Jack, now aged 92, played in the Second World War. He supplied carrier pigeons for intelligence operations.

The scale of his influence behind enemy lines emerged earlier this month when eight oil paintings depicting long-distance pigeons fetched £10,600 at auction, five times their estimate.

The champion birds, a Bonhams spokesman announced eagerly, were direct ancestors of those Jack had stuffed into jackets or cardboard boxes for numerous Navy operations.

The retired theatre props manager, who apparently built the cybermen for Dr Who and the set for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, was first known for the quality of his homing pigeons - not least the six durable pairs he acquired from Jules Janssen, the doyen of Belgian breeders.

But it was only in 1939 they reached an audience far beyond London rooftops.

Jack says: "I remember one Sunday, when the story got round war was about to break out, discussing with other fanciers whether pigeons would be used.

"The background is that London buses were converted into lofts, and pigeons were kept in the trenches in the First World War.

"They flew miles with messages to tell whether troops wanted reinforcements or were retreating. "But I assumed carrier pigeons would be useless against the wireless radio.

"Then, one of my fancier friends said don't be so sure, a message transmitted by radio can be intercepted, it's not secure. The one thing about a pigeon, Jack, it can't bloody talk can it'."

The words were prescient. Winged messengers, having relayed news of Caesar's conquest of Gaul and Wellington's victory at Waterloo, were finally set to have their wings clipped.

Then, British military commanders realised the Germans would ruthlessly track radio operators. At once, pigeon racing was stopped and peregrine falcons the length of Britain were culled, so feathered fighting machines could arrive home unhindered.

Soon, Jack was approached by William Raynor, head of the Air Ministry pigeon section, to provide his fuel-efficient fowl as an early-warning system across the coast.

Wing Commander Raynor hit the headlines three years ago when de-classified secret service files showed he had devised a secret kamikaze pigeon plan for the Cold War.

While scientists were striving to build the atom bomb, Wing Commander Raynor considered training pigeons to disperse minuscule biological warfare agents over the enemy.

He drew heavily on research by American scientists, which claimed the birds' homing qualities were linked to the magnetic lines of force of the Earth, meaning they could be programmed to fly in a designated direction.

None of this Jack knew when MI5 asked him to provide his specially-bred Belgium birds for active service.

They were to be based at four secret lofts near Dover, called the XX lofts, and trained to form a unit known as MI14, codenamed operation Columbia.

Jack says: "We had inside connections with the French Resistance movement.

"We waited till all-night fisherman were out catching lobsters, and put two or three pigeons in a wicker basket.

A torpdeo boat went out in the darkness, quickly passed it over, and the birds were smuggled inland on bicycles or in jackets."

Resistance fighters then strapped metal cannisters to the animals' legs that could carry a 36in sheet of paper. Dodging bullets and falconers, the pigeon warriors travelled 250 miles to bring back encrypted messages, written in microdots, for decoding at Bletchley Park, where Jack had set up new lofts.

Some of the deliveries included information for the D-Day landings in 1944, and film of V1 flying bombs being built in German weapons factories.

Later, Jack supplied the House of Commons Pigeons Service, transporting his birds in cardboad boxes to St James's Park Underground station in London.

By the end of the war, an estimated 20,000 conscripted pigeons had been killed, many ingloriously, having being parachuted out of bombers.

There are stories of members of the Belgian pigeon service, tears rolling down their cheeks, shooting birds rather than let them fall into Nazi hands.

Jack, who only retired from pigeon breeding two years ago, says such a fate never befell his unsung heroes. "They must have saved thousands of lives. I didn't lose a single one, they were so well trained.

"After the war, one thing I would like to have done is join a pigeon racing team - I couldn't because of my theatre business. But the rewards of what I did in the war were far better, just knowing my birds were being used like that."