This week’s entry: Bat bomb
What it’s about: Holy ordinance, Batman! During World War II, American scientists raced to develop crucial technology that would win the war: The B-29 bomber. Radar. The atomic bomb. And, a somewhat less crucial technology, the bat bomb: a bomb canister that contained live bats, each of which would carry an incendiary device and (in theory) start devastating fires across Japanese cities.
Biggest controversy: The part where we tried to defeat Imperial Japan with an army of bats. The idea came from a dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams. An acquaintance of Eleanor Roosevelt, he wrote to the White House a month after Pearl Harbor suggesting the idea, which came to him during a trip to Carlsbad Caverns. Adams was “intrigued by the strength of bats” and believed they could carry an incendiary device, which could do serious damage to Japan’s largely wooden architecture.
With FDR’s approval, Adams led up an Air Force project to develop a bat bomb. His team for some wonderful reason consisted of a movie star (more on that later), an unnamed former gangster, an also unnamed former hotel manager, and chemist Louis Fieser, who developed the first synthetic vitamin K and cortisone, and more relevant to the war effort, napalm.
Their eventual prototype was a bomb-shaped metal canister with separate compartments for 1,040 Mexican free-tailed bats. The bomb would be dropped and then at 4,000 feet deploy a parachute, then open to release the bats. The bats would naturally roost in the eaves of buildings, but each one had a 15- to 18-gram payload of napalm (slightly heavier than the weight of the bat itself) on a timer. After several unsuccessful attempts at strapping the bombs to the bats, Adams’ team ended up gluing the devices directly to the bats.
Strangest fact: The only target destroyed by bat bombs was an American air base. Adams’ team made several tests of their bat bomb, but at Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base in New Mexico, napalm-armed bats were accidentally released, roosted under a fuel tank, and set the base on fire. The project was then passed to the Navy and then the Marines and was renamed Project X-Ray.
Thing we were happiest to learn: America didn’t end up incinerating thousands of bats for the war effort. The Marines were surprisingly enthused about the bat bomb, believing the countless small fires the bats would start would be harder to fight and would spread more quickly than a smaller number of large fires caused by conventional bombing. But by mid-1944, with $2 million already spent on the project and at least another year until the bats would be combat-ready, the project was canceled. As for Fieser’s invention, the U.S. dropped napalm on Berlin and Tokyo without any animal intermediaries.
Thing we were unhappiest to learn: In a letter to FDR, Lytle S. Adams insisted that we need not worry about the morals of incinerating countless bats, as the bat is the “lowest form of animal life” and “reasons for its creation have remained unexplained.” At least, until Adams provided an explanation: God made bats to carry out Adams’ bat scheme. Or as he put it, they were created “by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life.” Reader, He works in mysterious ways.
Roosevelt insisted, “This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into.” Sure, FDR was a four-term president who got us out of the Depression, led the Allies to victory in WWII, built the bulk of this country’s infrastructure and the most prosperous middle class any country has ever had, but those five words—“this man is not a nut”—seriously call his judgment and place in history into question.
Best link to elsewhere on Wikipedia: The movie star on Adams’ team was Tim Holt, who starred in countless Westerns, as well as The Magnificent Ambersons and The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Orson Welles, who cast him as the lead in Ambersons, called him “one of the most interesting actors that’s ever been in American movies.” When he enlisted in the Air Force, RKO had him film six Westerns in quick succession before he was shipped out. His deployment was delayed long enough for him to star in a propaganda film called Hitler’s Children. Apart from his involvement with the bat bomb, Holt flew combat missions in the Pacific until the last day of the war, earning him the Distinguished Flying Cross. He returned to the screen, playing opposite Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine, and Humphrey Bogart in Sierra Madre, before settling into a steady stream of formulaic Westerns, often playing a hero named Tim Holt, and with Richard Martin as his sidekick in 25 films.
Further down the Wormhole: One of the more remarkable parts of the bat bomb story is that, with war raging around the world, one could turn a bat-related scheme into reality simply by sending a letter to the White House. The seat of presidential power since 1800, it’s the most recognizable among countless iconic Washington, D.C. landmarks, including museums, monuments, and the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, which has been under ceremonial military guard continuously since July 2, 1937. The tomb is a symbolic resting place for soldiers lost in the two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, whose bodies were never recovered. More recent wars aren’t represented at the tomb, because they had no unknown casualties, owing to advances in body identification. Body identification is the use of forensic science to identify a deceased person, which is essential in both honoring fallen soldiers and solving murders. Despite this, Wikipedia lists countless “unidentified decedents” who died and were never identified. One such unfortunate is immortalized in one of the rare Wikipedia pages whose title is a question: Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? We’ll look for answers next week.
107 Comments
“This man is not a nut”“Dear Mr. President. There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am NOT a crackpot.”
Dirtside’ll be deep in the cold, cold ground before he recognises Missourah.
How scary is it that I agree with Grandpa?
ordinance = some kind of legislation
0rdnance = things that go BOOM!For example, “The new ordinance regarding unexpended ordnance did not apply to inflammable liquids such as ethylbenzene and cyclohexane.”
Will their big budget blockbuster be a BAT-BOMB?
Will Bat-Fans care that Bat-Man is also Mr. Mom?
Tune in tomorrow, to learn the rest!
Same Bat-Time! Same Bat-Channel!
At least they tried glue and not staples. But then they were explosives and not antlers.
That is one deep cut Scrooged reference in an early-June article!
It’s a TOASTER!
The oddball warfare between the US and Japan doesn’t get enough attention in WWII books. The strangest thing was probably Japan’s balloon bombs which killed a few Americans but the story was covered up at the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
Remember that time they tried to spread the plague to the US via giant submarines that could carry planes? Good times.
That’s why America loves sequels. Now where under attack by biological warfare from China.
Seems like they should’ve just sent Superman to kill Hitler and been done with it.
Um…vision test, I guess.
TALK PAGE HIGHLIGHTSOld conversion“You can strap a bomb to the bat, and you can have the bat go off, but you can’t persuade the bat to jump out of a B-17 at 10,000 feet…” —CollabiI’ll assume that this has nothing to do with any of Batman’s weapons. —Damian Yerrick 04:19, 21 October 2005 (UTC)Opening Sentence“The bat bomb is a badly-written Wikipedia article plagued with misinformation and stylistic errors.” I don’t say this often, but LOL.April Fools Day FA?This article would make an excellent April Fool’s Day FA. Not because it is a creative work of fiction like the George Washington (inventor) article of 2007, but because it is real and nobody will believe it is so. The article just needs to be brought up to FA status, which could take some work. Westralian 09:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)“but because it is real and nobody will believe it is so”… uh, you might wanna double-check George Washington (inventor) :)—Pharos 02:36, 6 April 2007 (UTC)Duly noted lol, still my point stands. Westralian 07:06, 24 June 2007 (UTC)Richard de SouthchurchHow does Richard de Southchurch relate to Bat bomb?—Jacob.jose (talk) 01:48, 28 October 2008 (UTC)Removed reference. —Jacob.jose (talk) 01:50, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
You should be able to delete posts if you can edit them.
Thank you!
I’m beginning to think this country is full of idiots!
Thank god for a declining birth rate!
You could write a book on just incredibly stupid weapon designs for world war 2 that didn’t get made. Pigeon torpedoes? Giant battleship tanks? Death rays? Wind guns? Space gun??? The list is endless and quite amusing.
I kind of miss that we used to have imagination
We still do; it’s just classified.
There are probably still men staring at goats to this day.
Quit judging me!
True and I think a lot of the advancements we take for granted today were rooted in some of the those crazy ideas, whereas the if the target application was not sound, the science behind it toward other applications certainly were.
It’s kind of ironic that the thing that ended the war was the invention of the most dangerous and destructive thing ever made.
The cat bomb is my favorite. Before they had the technology for guided missiles, some genius realized that you could drop a bomb above a ship with a cat strapped to it and since cats hate water it would use an attached rudder to steer the bomb towards the ship. This was supposedly tested at least once. A movie should be made about the “special projects” branch of the wartime OSS. It was a fascinating blend of geniuses, nuts, and con men.
It should be a dark comedy. Like the actual used Russian dog bombs. Just put some grenades on a dog and teach them to run into Panzers. Unfortunately most got scared and ran back to the Russian tanks they were trained with, the results were predictably not good.
I’m not sure a movie would work, but a mini-series would work. Cover 2 or 3 of these per episode.
It’s called ‘My Tank Is Fight!’ by Zack Parsons.
Though one of the most famous sources of weird weaponry was probably part of an elaborate ruse to confuse the Nazis. People often cite Hobart’s Funnies and the Panjandrum, but many of these were tested publicly and clearly designed to help breach walls and fixed defences. To the Nazis this was a clear sign that the Allies planned to attack the Atlantic Wall and they beefed up their defences there, when their actual target was the beaches at Normandy.
Oh I’m aware of what basically amounted to Allied trolling vehicles that were never meant to be made. Honestly why isn’t there a film about the fake intelligence war right before Normandy? The one where they made dummy tanks and fake files all to convince Germany not to fortify Normandy?
The fake tanks ruse shows up briefly in the movie Eye of the Needle.
You could write a book on just incredibly stupid weapon designs for world war 2 that didn’t get made.IIRC, the book Fantastic Fads & Fabulous Flops had an entry on “pykrete”, developed by a British official named Pyke. He proposed building massive aircraft carriers using . . wait for it . . . ice! Cheaper and easier to produce than steel, the ice would be maintained by on-board refrigeration systems. AND to make the ice much stronger and resistant to melting, Pyke proposed a mix of water and wood pulp . . . which he called ‘pykrete’! Humble guy, that Pyke. How is there not a movie about him?
Forgotten Fads & Fabulous Flops , sorry.
I know that I saw some kind of hour-long documentary about that. Having a giant iceberg immune to torpedo attack and launching aircraft from it would be an awesome plot for Das Boat II: Dry Ice.
I think my favorite oddball U.S. weapon idea was the “gay bomb” proposed during the Cold War — a chemical weapon with an aphrodisiac so powerful, once exposed to it, Soviet soldiers would be compelled to start humping each other, allowing NATO troops to just walk up and mow them down as the Red Army is balls-deep in each other.And this Adams dude is some MyPillow guy-level nuts. Bats were put on this earth because God destined him to have the idea of using them to deliver fiery death to Imperial Japan? It would have been easier for God to not create bats and just stop the fucking war from happening And I hate to be “that guy,” but it’s “ordnance,” not “ordinance.” The former means bombs and ammo, the latter means a law or regulation, usually passed at the local gov’t level.
https://youtu.be/53j7TWv_8iQ
Gay bomb? That’s just dumb. Everyone knows a Nude Bomb would work better.
Would you believe a nude bomb combined with a gay bomb?
Should have mixed the gay bomb with the bat bomb to create a flaming bat bomb!!
Soy bomb or GTFO.
I’ll bet a million bucks some dude suggested that they try it out with a room full of women.
I see now you beat me to the vocab correction.
Though, to address the gay bomb idea, it was just started as a general aphrodisiac weapon, to get the enemy horny, and then someone thought “but what if we could get them horny FOR EACH OTHER?”
I’m thinking it was suggested by some closeted general fantasizing about hot Slavic cock.
I’m thinking it was suggested by some closeted general fantasizing about hot Slavic cock.Dear Stars & Stripes: I never thought those letters were true . . . until it happened to me.
Gay bombs and bat bombs are a waste of money, we should be looking at weaponising the brown note. Can’t fight if you’re pooping!
I would bet a nonzero sum of money that various governments have already poured research dollars into the quest for the holy brown note.
Can’t fight if you’re pooping! Clearly you haven’t accounted for the brave men and women of America’s finest: the Battlin’ Brown Trouser Brigade!
If you’re going to be that guy, then you should point out that The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is not a Washington, D. C. landmark (it’s in Arlington, Virginia), and that it is not “a symbolic resting place for soldiers lost in the two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam, whose bodies were never recovered,” but an actual resting place for the bodies of soldiers who were killed in action but whose remains were not identified.
This man is not a nut.
but at Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base in New Mexico,
napalm-armed bats were accidentally released, roosted under a fuel tank,
and set the base on fire.
Hot damn that’s hilarious. All of it. From Adams’ seeming life grudge against the little critters, to the image they wouldn’t stop squirming to strap on the bombs. (The glue was probably the hotel manager’s idea- that’s using your noggin!) I like imagining this project’s tests were nothing but accidents
I am going to go out on a limb and say that Orson Welles might have somewhat overrated Tim Holt in the pantheon of American actors
My favorite detail is that he starred in so many movies as…Tim Holt.
For some reason that was a trend with the B westerns of that era. Gene Autrey and Roy Rogers always played characters with their same name too
Roy Rogers was basically a replacement for Autrey once he asked for too much money. The studio just grabbed some guy named Leonard Sly of the Sons of the Pioneer and said your name is now Roy Rogers, go make cowboy movies.
He made good roast beef, though.
on IMDb, they have the nuance to write that Tim Holt played Tim Holt, not that Tim Holt played himself.
Tim Holt! *Raises both fists into the air*
The pinnacle of his career was THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD.
In the end, what that monster challenged the most was… our assumptions about monsters. I think we all learned a lot about ourselves that day.
Mike. I just want to tell you that your weekly column is worth getting up in the morning for. Honestly, if you are this batshit hilarious and observant in your every day life, I see great things ahead. Great things!
The batbomb inventor guy makes Kevin Conroy’s alt earth Batman from Crisis on Infinite Earths look like a paragon of morality and mental health
Despite having been a nerdy and friendless comic geek who read Crisis when it came out, I confess t0 being mystified by that reference. Kudos to you, Evil Lincoln.
Live action adaptations . . . how quaint!Now I’m curious where they adapted this from. The brutally harsh exo-Batman was from Kingdome Come, I assume.
The speech about Clark was word-for-word from Dark Knight Returns.
Hey, let’s not dis movie stars’ contribution to the war effort.
Two words: Hedy Lamar
(and no one better respond, ‘That’s Hedley!’ because I’m sick to death of that joke)
It’s 1874. You can sue her!
They lose me after the bunker scene.
I want to know what Christopher Lee was up to.
That’s “Lamarr”!
Mongo like candy!
She’s often confused with Hedy Lamark, champion of the acquired character inheritance theory called Lamarkism. It had something to do with German actresses cutting the tails off rats, or somesuch.
This wasn’t necessarily the MOST insane idea, considering how many (possibly apocryphal) stories there are from history that go something like:City holds out against besieging army. City asks for surrender terms that will protect themselves from sacking and other recriminations. Army commander agrees to leniency, in exchange for a “payment”/offering of various small creatures (birds, stray dogs and cats, rats, etc.). Confused city leaders agree and present said creatures. Army takes creatures, attaches flammable materials to each, lights the materials and releases them. Creatures return to their various hiding spaces/nests in the city, setting buildings aflame and causing the city defenses to fall apart, or focus on firefighting as the army storms the city.I mean, the details are pretty goddamn bonkers. But the basic idea is at least worth considering.
you mean the canonically recognized life of Saint Olga of Kiev?
That one, definitely (Thank you Our Fake History). Also pretty sure I’ve heard it referenced with Genghis Khan.
I think anti-tank dogs was the most insane idea, combining cruelty with unreliability. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog
the bat bomb is full of bomb bats so it’s really more of a bomb bat bomb
It’s such an overblown idea, it’s really bomb bat bombast.
looking ahead to next week’s topic, australia just dug up a famous unidentified man to get some dna to try to solve his famous case! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-57166662
its always funny to remember that australia, despite being a continent and a large landmass, until quite recently had a total population that would only just fill a large city, to the point where a single unusual death can be national news for nearly 100 years and not just a dateline re-run for people with insomnia
Pretty sure the number of westerns Tim Holt starred in can be counted.
The hell? I wrote “Pretty sure the number of westerns Tim Holt starred in can be counted” but it posted as “Tim Holt Pretty sure the number of westerns starred in can be counted.” Fucking Kinja.
And there’s Tim Holt at the beginning again!
The number of westerns starring Tim Holt can be counted.
There we go. What dafug.
You got Kinja’d.
Including his magnum opus, “Shootout on Aleph-Null Hill”?
Tim Holt’s wikipedia page says he made 46 westerns for RKO
They really churned them out back then. I remember a documentary about the early days of television in Philly. They would just air anything. One of the most popular shows was a daily(!), two hour(!) “Western” shot right outside the studio (you could see cars going by on City Line Avenue in the background) and featuring the station’s news crew as actors. There was essentially no script. The guys would just stand around talking about horses.
This has happened to me a few times. I can’t explain it either.
bats should have been used against the Nazis. keeping them cleaning up guano until the Allies can overrun Berlin.
“but those five words—“this man is not a nut””
That’s six words.
Just what a nut would say!
“Ordnance” not “Ordinance.” Ordinances are passed against the use of ordnance.
ordinance[ awr-dn-uhns ]nounan authoritative rule or law; a decree or command.a public injunction or regulation:a city ordinance against excessive horn blowing.something believed to have been ordained, as by a deity or destiny.ordnance[ awrd-nuhns ]
nouncannon or artillery.military weapons with their equipment, ammunition, etc.the branch of an army that procures, stores, and issues, weapons, munitions, and combat vehicles and maintains arsenals for their development and testing.
We had nothing on the Nazis, who may have – on Hitler’s insistence – investigated radar-like systems based on the theory that the earth was INSIDE a larger mass.Japan actually built and launched the absurd Fu-Go devil’s tongue jelly balloons, which carried explosives via the jet stream to the continental US and which Japanese propaganda promised would devastate America moral (at the time firebombing was destroying whole Japanese cities).Only one balloon bomb managed to kill anyone: a pregnant woman and two children.Japanese propaganda listed the casualties in the thousands, of course.There was concern, of course, esp. of forest fires being ignited.Humanity is not something to brag being a member of.
Fu-Go balloon bomb – Wikipedia
I’m gonna use the Bat Bomb as an excuse to post this:
In a letter to FDR, Lytle S. Adams insisted that we need not worry about the morals of incinerating countless bats, as the bat is the “lowest form of animal life” and “reasons for its creation have remained unexplained.” At least, until Adams provided an explanation: God made bats to carry out Adams’ bat scheme. Or as he put it, they were created “by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life.”In case we needed another reason to keep our fucking superstitions out of politics (we don’t), like the founders of the nation explicitly intended, there’s this batshit explanation for bats.
Though it may seem silly in retrospect, let’s remember that the bat program began in very dark days for the Allies in early 1942, and during most of the time when it was conducted, the US still had very little ability to conduct a militarily effective strike on the Japanese home islands.
The ultimately victorious bombing strategy, involving hundreds of B-29s based in the Marianas and conducting low-altitude incendiary raids by night, wasn’t even possible until fall 1944 and wouldn’t entirely come together until March 1945. Casting about for unorthodox ideas that just might work, and might be deployed more easily, was a sensible thing to do.