"I just finished the book BAT BOMB by Jack Couffer. It’s the personal account of a member of Project X-Ray, the super-secret World War II effort to use bats as incendiary device carriers in the war against Japan. Seems to me, as outrageous as it sounds, that it could have worked. The basic idea was that a bomb-like canister filled with bats would be dropped from high altitude over the target area. The bats would be in a sort of hibernation, but as the bomb fell (slowed by a parachute) they would warm up and awaken. At the appropriate altitude, the bomb would open and over one thousand bats, each carrying a tiny time-delay napalm incendiary device, would flutter away and roost in various nooks and crannies, many of them in extremely flammable wooden Japanese buildings. The napalm devices would go off more or less simultaneously, and thousands of little fires would start at the same time. Many of them would grow into large fires, and the ability of the Japanese firefighters to contain them would quickly be overwhelmed. Yes, it sounds outrageous. I’d heard of this idea before (though many people seem to the think the idea was simply to release bats in order to scare the Japanese, not to burn them out) but I never took it terribly seriously. But, while I’ll agree it sounds outlandish, reading the book by a member of the team that worked to develop it has convinced me that they might have been on to something. In fact, one afternoon while demonstrating the napalm devices, several bats woke too early in the lab, flew off, and ended up burning down the brand-new but uninhabited Carlsbad Auxiliary Army Air Base in New Mexico. Really." from http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/002367.html
lol - that would be rather interesting to see! I doubt the Japanese would be scared of bats though - I'm sure Japan has plenty of bats itself? Still, I assume this little experiment also resulted in the death of the bats? (The Napalm being carried by them and all).
This crazy idea went so far as to actually be successfully tested on a mock Japanese town in the Utah desert. The bats functioned as expected and burned the entire mock up town to the ground. That was enough to convience the USAAF to go ahead with an operational development and deployment. The nuclear bomb put an effective end to the bat bomb however before it was deployed.
Had to bump this thread, just for it's "truth is stranger than fiction" element. I had wandered into a brief mention of it in another thread.
I believe FDR actually was the deciding authority who gave the green light. As for the bat bomb test, prototype efforts were in full swing to cradle the bats from high altitude in the bomber to deployment altitude. In one such test, a few were fitted with the incendiary devices to see if the bats and device could survive the bomb drop and deployment. Sure enough, a few bats survived and promptly flew under the eaves of the base buildings. yes, the incendiary devices work too...several building were ablaze and a couple were damaged severely. A full test was then ordered (see comments above)
I actualy think the bat bomb was reasonable, but it's DEFINITLY an unique and abstract idea. Would have had a pretty good effect on Japan at that time.
there was a strangest WWII weapon thread quite a while back, but this was my favorite "weird" weapon! I didn't even know it was a book! I'll have to pick that one up!
Since the US had millions of bats av available in the caves, it makes sense that if the bat bomb idea was accepted, then all of Japan would be in flames. Kind of odd, but still, very effective.
