Monday, Jul. 19, 2010
Bats
During World War II, the U.S. military considered sending bats to Japan. Of course, these weren't just any bats, these were incendiary-bomb-fitted bats. Kamikaze bats. The Army, the Navy and the Marine Corps conducted experiments in the 1940s to see if the flying mammals could be used to start millions of fires across Japan. The tests highlighted some unique problems with such an operation — for example, it turns out bats don't wake from hibernation on command. Fires were started, but burning down the testing grounds hadn't been part of the plan. Eventually, Project X-Ray (as the training program was dubbed) was canceled, and bat bombers, the brainchild of dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams, were never deployed overseas.