2RHPZ
06-03-2005, 05:53 AM
I hardly decided where to post this article ... maybe it belongs to the Off topic, but then I guess it is still history, so here it is :)
Somebody almost set us up the BAT BOMB
27 May 2005
I just finished the book BAT BOMB by Jack Couffer (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0292707908/102-1878706-6941704?v=glance).
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.
Murdoc Online (http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/002367.html)
Somebody almost set us up the BAT BOMB
27 May 2005
I just finished the book BAT BOMB by Jack Couffer (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0292707908/102-1878706-6941704?v=glance).
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.
Murdoc Online (http://www.murdoconline.net/archives/002367.html)