Lectures of Opportunity: "'Doing their Bit': The British Employment of Military and Civil Defence Dogs in the Second World War"

About this lecture series

Lectures of Opportunity (LOOs) offer Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.

Synopsis

The Second World War marked a turning point in the history of the British military dog, as the wartime employment of canines by the British Armed Forces led to their continued use in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. During the Second World War, dogs were recruited from civilian owners and trained to guard physical structures, equipment, and personnel; locate metallic and non-metallic landmines; and search for casualties during the V1 and V2 attacks on London. This lecture considers how and why the British Armed Forces trained canines in the aforementioned roles, their performance in conjunction with human and technological methods, and the differences in their training and employment compared to military dogs trained in the United States.