Posted on 10/19/2020 10:04:12 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Operation Fantasia was the brainchild of OSS psychological warfare strategist Ed Salinger... “The foundation for the proposal,” Salinger wrote in a memo outlining his idea, “rests upon the fact that the modern Japanese is subject to superstitions, beliefs in evil spirits and unnatural manifestations which can be provoked and stimulated.”
Salinger’s plan: Catch live foxes in China and Australia, spray-paint them with glowing paint, and release them throughout Japanese villages.
This scheme presented a number of logistical hurdles. First, what kind of paint should be used? The United States Radium Corporation provided an answer in the form of its glow-in-the-dark paint, which contained radium.
To find out whether the faux-supernatural foxes would actually frighten the Japanese, the OSS decided to release 30 glowing foxes in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park to gauge the reactions of the locals. If the foxes spooked Americans, the logic went, certainly they would scare the Japanese even more.
On a summer night in 1945, OSS personnel released the foxes in the park, and the creatures scampered along the trails with promising results. The sight of the ghostly apparitions at first confused and then terrified passersby on their evening strolls. One citizen was so concerned that he notified the National Park Police...
(Excerpt) Read more at smithsonianmag.com ...
“They did Bats too................”
They attached incendiary devises to the bats with the idea that they would fly into attics.
The Russians attached mines to dogs and trained them to run under German tanks.
Animal right activists would be really be upset.
Forget foxes. It took two nukes to defeat Japan. We could have defeated them with a single bombing of USA politicians - far scarier and much more lethal than nukes.
No one knew it at the time but it was also highly toxic. Saw a documentary on the company named in the article. Most all the workers there were women and a large majority of them lived short lives and died of cancer.
Sounds like a typical DoD Charlie Foxtrot.
5.56mm
He wasn't trying to frighten Philistines. That prank was to burn their crops.
The kitsume of deception, fox with 9 tails
Radium Girls.
They would lick the radium paintbrush to moisten it and bring it to a finer point with their lips. They would also adorn themselves with radium paint for date night.
Don’t know who she is but that’s weird.
Young pup, the world existed before you were born. You might want to read about it before pontificating.
Back before the eviro-Mentalists took over, radium paint was routinely used on watch dials and alarm clocks. So they would glow in the dark.
https://raddoc1947.com/2016/07/17/radium-dial-company/
https://cumulis.epa.gov/supercpad/cursites/csitinfo.cfm?id=0401841
“Don’t know who she is...”
American actress that’s had limited success. Never climbed to top of the Hollywood heap....I imagine its hard to climb with toe thumbs.
Dam looks like her back is broken.
True. And it worked. :-)
Runs in my side of the family.
Brought to Texas about 1903 from Pennsylvania.
“Radium glows in the dark...”
Radiation, by itself, emitted by radioactive materials is not visible to the human eye. However, there are ways to “convert” this invisible energy to visible light. Many substances will emit visible light if “stimulated” by the ionizing radiation from radioactive material. These materials are known as “fluors” or “scintilators.” So, by mixing some radioactive material with such a fluor, you can make a substance that glows. This kind of material has been used in things like the faces of clocks, watches, and instruments on ships and airplanes to make them visible in the dark. But not foxes as they don’t contain the fluors (lumifluors) like polyphenyl hydrocarbons, oxazole and oxadiazole aryls in proper quantities.
Alpha and Beta radiation devices used by the military can detect it like the anpdr’s or pac 1S devices. But as it doesn’t glow it has to be hunted for. A majority of it is alpha and it generally is in the dust in the air or on the ground.
And if you are close enough to absorb gamma, you’re going to die fairly rapidly of radiation poisoning as you’ll get your 200 rads from being that close. But so would the foxes. And as their body mass is much smaller than a human, they would go quicker more like hours after saturation at best. And if the radiation doesn’t get them, the solutions used to transport the radiation will. Organic solutions are produced by dissolving an organic scintillator in a solvent. There were no non toxic solvents, only less than others so the 1940 foxes were in dire straits.
rwood
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