Thursday, 13 November 2008
Bat Bombs away!
whilst chatting as we always do over a few drinks,
I happened to mention how nearly successful bat bombs were, which resulted in roars of laughter and cries of shame! well here is the short bit, it was desperate times for the United States after Pearl Harbour so when a dentist called Lytle S. Adams put forward a plan to attach timed incendiaries to bats he was not taken to seriously, especially as the smallest such device at that time weighed in at over a kilo.
But as with all good stories some one became interested in the idea, so much so that Louis F. Fieser, the inventor of napalm became involved, and he designed a device which weighed in at about 28 grams, soon a plan was hacthed, it was a bit complicated but essentially 40 bats were place in a frame which would open after being released from a aircraft, 15 or so of theses trays would open up like an accordion, the bats would wake up as they were kept cold to keep them in a state of hibernation, also the trays dropping would release a fine wire which would arm the incendiaries.
Eventually a trial was held, a mock Japanese village was built, mainly of wood as most cities in Japan were in those days, bats released, devices were armed and as predicted many flew into the Japanese mock village, however the designers forgot one important thing, bats will fly 10 or 15 miles, which was one of the benefits of the plan, multiple fires would be started all over the city, as indeed they were all over the testing facility a few miles away, rumour has it a visiting Generals car was also consumed in the base destroying fire, but before any more development could take place a more effective weapon was made to end the war.
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Hello Mr. Kemp,
Your com"bat" stories are very interesting. Are you aware of the inflatable airplane from Goodyear?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane
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