OT - but OMG, did you know about the Bat Bombs in World War II?
jmlanzaf
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I was listing some flight covers on eBay. I've got a bunch of signed ones and this one is signed by Lytle S. Adams:
Now, it turns out Lytle S. Adams was a full-time dentist and part-time inventor. In 1937, his claim to fame was that he invented a device that allowed a moving plane to pick up a mail bag in 1931.
But the really interesting piece of the story is that during World War II, he invented the BAT BOMB!
Courtesy of historynet.com:
https://historynet.com/top-secret-wwii-bat-and-bird-bomber-program.htm
A dental surgeon from Irwin, Pa., is credited with the idea of using bats as bombers. And a behavioral psychologist, also a Pennsylvanian, showed how pigeons could guide bombs directly to surface targets. The two projects were not related, and the two men never met.
Dr. Lytle S. Adams was vacationing in the Southwest on December 7, 1941, when he heard the shocking news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Adams immediately headed home. He had just visited Carlsbad Caverns, N.M. — believed to house the world’s largest bat colony — where he had been fascinated by the bats that emerged nightly to feed on insects. Thinking about that impressive colony, the dentist asked himself: ‘Couldn’t those millions of bats be fitted with incendiary bombs and dropped from planes? What could be more devastating than such a firebomb attack?’ he recalled in a 1948 interview.
He stopped by Carlsbad on his way home and captured some Mexican free-tail bats, the most common species in North America. The free-tails, also known as guano bats, are small brown mammals capable of catching more than 1,000 mosquitoes or gnats in a night. Weighing about 9 grams, the free-tails can carry an external load more than twice their own weight.
Back home, Adams looked up everything he could find about the tiny mammals and discovered that although bats are frequently vilified by the public, they are not usually dangerous to humans. They aren’t blind, don’t get tangled up in one’s hair and don’t attack people. Although generally considered evil in Europe, they symbolize prosperity and happiness in China. The Navajo Indians believe them to be intermediaries between men and the gods. They range in size from the bumblebee bat of Thailand, which weighs less than a penny, to the mastiff bat, North America’s largest flying mammal with a 22-inch wingspread, and the giant flying fox bat with a 6-foot wingspan, found primarily in Indonesia.
Adams became convinced that bats could be used as bombers. On January 12, 1942, he sent a letter to the White House proposing that the government investigate this possibility. His suggestion was considered, along with hundreds of others from well-meaning citizens with war-winning ideas, but his was one of the few that reached the desk of the commander in chief.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt forwarded a memo to Colonel William J. Donovan, then coordinator of information, with a cryptic notation: ‘This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into.’ In fact, Adams had already made a name for himself as an inventor. In the 1920s and ’30s he launched a 15-year campaign to perfect an airmail pickup system (see ‘People and Planes’ in the March 2005 issue).
Donovan sent the proposal to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) of the National Inventors Council. After reviewing Adams’ idea, a memorandum titled ‘Use of Bats as Vectors of Incendiary Bombs’ was sent to the committee on April 16, 1942, by Donald R. Griffin, a special-research assistant. He described the proposal as using ‘very large numbers of bats, each carrying a small incendiary time bomb. The bats would be released at night from airplanes, preferably at high altitudes and the incendiaries would be timed to ignite after the bats had descended to low altitudes and taken shelter for the day. Since bats often roost in buildings, they could be released over settled areas with a good expectation that a large percentage would be roosting in buildings or other inflammable installations…when the incendiary material was ignited.’
Griffin summarized his memo by saying that, although ‘this proposal seems bizarre and visionary at first glance…extensive experience with experimental biology convinces the writer that if executed competently it would have every chance of success.’ He recommended an investigation ‘with all possible speed, accuracy and efficiency’ by the U.S. Army Air Forces. Bomb development was passed on to the Army Chemical Warfare Service.
Adams and a team of naturalists were immediately authorized to find bats for experimentation. The team visited a number of likely sites in Texas and New Mexico where the bats could be found in large quantities — mostly in caves, but also under bridges, in barns and in large piles of rubbish. ‘We visited a thousand caves and three thousand mines,’ Adams said. ‘Speed was so imperative that we generally drove all day and night, when we weren’t exploring caves. We slept in the cars, taking turns at driving. One car in our search team covered 350,000 miles.’
The team first investigated the mastiff bat, which they determined could carry a 1-pound stick of dynamite. But there was not a sufficient number of that variety available. The more common bat was the mule-eared or pallid species, which could carry 3 ounces. However, the naturalists concluded that the species was not sufficiently hardy for the work that needed to be done.
They finally settled on the Mexican free-tail bat for the project....
How weird is that?
Comments
Stamps forum?
But who would read it? LOL
It has a used 8 cent stamp on it - that's virtually currency...well, prior to cancellation.
I did say "Off Topic". I just think it is a really strange story.
Yes I have heard of it - great story.
As I understand it, they were set to deploy over Japan but the project was abruptly stopped in the summer of 1945. They did not know it at the time, but the US had another plan in mind...
I also recall that at one point when the plan was being tested, some armed bats got out and ended up burning down a lot of the buildings where the team was developing the bat bombs.
It is just mind-boggling that they were undertaking the most technologically advanced research of the period in the Manhattan Project and, at the same time, tying bombs to bats and pigeons. LMAO. Just weird. But I guess, you try everything in war.
It's too bad the Manhattan Project worked. The war ending with 1 million bats invading mainland Japan would have been far more interesting.
Jack Couffer worked on the bat project and wrote a book about it.
Bat Bomb: World War II's other Secret Weapon, published in 1992
One of the people working on the bat project was Air Force pilot Tim Holt, a well-known motion picture cowboy actor.
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I have heard of that. I read a lot about The Pacific part of WW2. Those Marines were tough. Navy was no slouch as well.
Very interesting story... We used to catch bats when I was a kid... made little cloth parachutes with a weight attached...toss them in the air in the evening...bat would swoop in and get tangled and pulled down...Put them in a gallon jar and take to school for science project or 'show and tell'... Cheers, RickO