Projects Impossible: Japan Attacked with Explosives Bats
by Lack of long-range bombers, along with extraordinarily large distance between Japan and the United States have dropped the possibility that either country could plan large-scale air attacks at the beginning of World War II. But that does not mean you have tried.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States was eager for retaliation. A dentist in Irwin, Pennsylvania, White House submits a proposal to attack the Rising Sun Country using bats that were to carry a small explosive charge.
In a rather strange, not only this proposal was considered, but U.S. President Frank Delano Roosevelt himself has given his consent.
Putting into practice an unusual ideas
The doctor, called Lytle S. Adams, received support and funding to implement their project. They worked around the idea that bats tended to shelter in dark and damp places.
Moreover, bats in flight could sustain more than its own weight, so they could carry tiny incendiary devices.
In 1943, after a one year study, bat has been found suitable species for this plan. He was brought in Frederick Fieser, creator of napalm, incendiary devices to complete. They also had a built-in timer which detonated the explosive charge after a certain period.
Hypothetical bombing of Japan with incendiary bats
The plan, largely, was next. Bats were placed in special containers, which fit in every 1,000 copies. A B24 bomber could carry about 100 such containers.
1
“Cluster bats”
After the bombers arrived over the target, throwing loads. A mile before reaching the ground, the containers are selling, letting go hundreds of thousands of bats explosives.
They were to find their shelter in the roofs of Japanese houses. With the activation of individual automatic timers, it was just a matter of time until the city was full of incendiii.
The first experiments of the winged bombs
Initial tests have failed miserably. Not only that bats refused to take refuge in copies of Japanese houses, flying aimlessly in the air and lit up, making a spectacular play of lights, but some due process of inducing artificial hibernation to make their manipulation easier not simply woke up and bumped the ground.
However, Americans have persevered. During a preparation for a new test to the army base in Carlsbad, New Mexico, some bats have escaped and were nesting in an oil reservoir. There was a huge explosion, but even to prove that going on the right track.
2
Explosion at U.S. base Carlsbad, New Mexico
At the end of 1943 there is still a challenge, but this time on a larger scale, using a replica of a Japanese village. At the end of the test, observers have established that bats, due to their dispersion and the large number, were more efficient in their creation and spread of fire than conventional incendiary bombs.
The project would be completed in 1945, Admiral Ernest J. King, considering that it takes far too much, he decided to quit, generating more interest in the team of engineers and physicists from Los Alamos.
In other words, the choices that Americans were so extensive that they had a choice between atomic bomb and bomb bats.
Do not forget the neighbors across the Pacific
The Japanese launched in November 1944 to April 1945, 9,000 balloons filled with explosives, hoping that at least some of them will reach over U.S. soil.
Of course, it was a pretty bad idea. Of the thousands of balloons launched, only 300 have arrived over Canada and the United States, and of these only one has managed to make victims: a pregnant woman and five children, who were at the picnic.
Liked it
