Project X-Ray

December 7, 1941, the "day of infamy" when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the day Dr. Lytle Adams of Pennsylvania began plotting a "bat crazy" revenge for our WWII adversaries...it is almost incomprehensible that FDR personally endorsed this "research".

The idea...attach tiny napalm firebombs to one million bats and release them over Japan.

"Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped...Japan could be devastated, yet with small loss of life."

 

Adams took his idea to the National Research Defense Committee, which was in charge of coordinating and researching "war projects."  As if we don't have enough insane and inhumane ways to kill other human beings, our government spent $2 million ($31.6M today) on this "complex" system!!!

Here is the plan they developed...aka Project X-Ray.

1. Collect 1 million Mexican free-tailed bats from the American Southwest.
2. Force the bats into hibernation by transporting them in ice filled containers.
3. Drop the bats from high altitude in cardboard containers.
4. Release the bats automatically in midair.
5. The bats would awaken and go hide in every nook and cranny of Japan.
6. Watch hundreds of Japanese cities burn...

Fortunately and unfortunately, after 30 test demonstrations and an accidental escape of several bats (that destroyed a general's car and an airplane hangar...see photograph above) the project was cancelled...allowing the United States to pour all of its' resources into the development of the atomic bomb.

"I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of men. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Someday science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide, by blowing up the world."

                                                      - Henry Adams, April 11, 1862