The FReeper Foxhole Remembers the WWII Bat and Bird Bomber Program - July 20th, 2005

Aviation History Magazine | May 2005 | C.V. Glines

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

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Top Secret WWII Bat and Bird Bomber Program

At the outset of World War II, innovative plans were laid to send some talented fliers to the front lines.

The United States was engaged in a number of secret aviation projects during World War II. Two of them, not revealed to the public for many years, involved American fliers that were being trained to attack enemy forces and die in the process, kamikaze style. However, these fliers were not humans but common bats and pigeons, drafted to make surprise bombing raids on enemy forces.

A dental surgeon from Irwin, Pa., is credited with the idea of using bats as bombers. And a behavioral psychologist, also a Pennsylvanian, showed how pigeons could guide bombs directly to surface targets. The two projects were not related, and the two men never met.

Dr. Lytle S. Adams was vacationing in the Southwest on December 7, 1941, when he heard the shocking news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Adams immediately headed home. He had just visited Carlsbad Caverns, N.M. -- believed to house the world's largest bat colony -- where he had been fascinated by the bats that emerged nightly to feed on insects. Thinking about that impressive colony, the dentist asked himself: "Couldn't those millions of bats be fitted with incendiary bombs and dropped from planes? What could be more devastating than such a firebomb attack?" he recalled in a 1948 interview.

He stopped by Carlsbad on his way home and captured some Mexican free-tail bats, the most common species in North America. The free-tails, also known as guano bats, are small brown mammals capable of catching more than 1,000 mosquitoes or gnats in a night. Weighing about 9 grams, the free-tails can carry an external load more than twice their own weight.



Back home, Adams looked up everything he could find about the tiny mammals and discovered that although bats are frequently vilified by the public, they are not usually dangerous to humans. They aren't blind, don't get tangled up in one's hair and don't attack people. Although generally considered evil in Europe, they symbolize prosperity and happiness in China. The Navajo Indians believe them to be intermediaries between men and the gods. They range in size from the bumblebee bat of Thailand, which weighs less than a penny, to the mastiff bat, North America's largest flying mammal with a 22-inch wingspread, and the giant flying fox bat with a 6-foot wingspan, found primarily in Indonesia.

Adams became convinced that bats could be used as bombers. On January 12, 1942, he sent a letter to the White House proposing that the government investigate this possibility. His suggestion was considered, along with hundreds of others from well-meaning citizens with war-winning ideas, but his was one of the few that reached the desk of the commander in chief.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt forwarded a memo to Colonel William J. Donovan, then coordinator of information, with a cryptic notation: "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into." In fact, Adams had already made a name for himself as an inventor. In the 1920s and '30s he launched a 15-year campaign to perfect an airmail pickup system.


William J. Donovan

Donovan sent the proposal to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) of the National Inventors Council. After reviewing Adams' idea, a memorandum titled "Use of Bats as Vectors of Incendiary Bombs" was sent to the committee on April 16, 1942, by Donald R. Griffin, a special-research assistant. He described the proposal as using "very large numbers of bats, each carrying a small incendiary time bomb. The bats would be released at night from airplanes, preferably at high altitudes and the incendiaries would be timed to ignite after the bats had descended to low altitudes and taken shelter for the day. Since bats often roost in buildings, they could be released over settled areas with a good expectation that a large percentage would be roosting in buildings or other inflammable installations…when the incendiary material was ignited."

Griffin summarized his memo by saying that, although "this proposal seems bizarre and visionary at first glance…extensive experience with experimental biology convinces the writer that if executed competently it would have every chance of success." He recommended an investigation "with all possible speed, accuracy and efficiency" by the U.S. Army Air Forces. Bomb development was passed on to the Army Chemical Warfare Service.



Adams and a team of naturalists were immediately authorized to find bats for experimentation. The team visited a number of likely sites in Texas and New Mexico where the bats could be found in large quantities -- mostly in caves, but also under bridges, in barns and in large piles of rubbish. "We visited a thousand caves and three thousand mines," Adams said. "Speed was so imperative that we generally drove all day and night, when we weren't exploring caves. We slept in the cars, taking turns at driving. One car in our search team covered 350,000 miles."

The team first investigated the mastiff bat, which they determined could carry a 1-pound stick of dynamite. But there was not a sufficient number of that variety available. The more common bat was the mule-eared or pallid species, which could carry 3 ounces. However, the naturalists concluded that the species was not sufficiently hardy for the work that needed to be done.

They finally settled on the Mexican free-tail bat for the project. Although it weighed only one-third of an ounce, experiments showed that it could fly fairly well with a payload of 15 to 18 grams. The Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, near Washington, D.C., was to design an incendiary bomb weighing no more than 18 grams.

The largest colony of free-tails found during the search was an estimated 20 to 30 million that lived in the limestone Ney and Bracken caves near Bandera, in southwest Texas. At Ney Cave, U.S. Army Captain Wiley W. Carr reported that "five hours' time is required for these animals to leave the cave while flying out in a dense stream fifteen feet in diameter and so closely packed they can barely fly."

[snippy_about_it]

Good evening feather.

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks for the ping.

[snippy_about_it]

She's a beauty!

[snippy_about_it]

Glad to hear the good news on the Mrs!

[snippy_about_it]

LOL. And he has an Ollie North sticker!

[snippy_about_it]

so I can be sure I have the right kind of coupling for the grease gun :-)

ROTFLOL.

[Soaring Feather]

Good evening and good night, snippy.

[snippy_about_it]

Wonder woman is whooped! In fact I'm going to say goodnight now, wait up long enough to ping folks to tomorrow's thread and hit the hey. Gotta make the donuts this morning. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Nighty night sweets.

[snippy_about_it]

Thanks for the link Phil. Doesn't Chuckie look great in pink.

[SAMWolf]

The best! "-)

[PhilDragoo]

Roger scary.

[Iris7]

"How do you live the Christian life?"

As for me, I remember Orde Wingate. General Wingate was raised strictly in a Plymouth Brethren family. He knew the Gospels and Psalms mostly by heart.

I remember Douglas MacArthur. A devout Christian man.

Very much I remember La Pucelle, Saint Joan of Arc.

Robert Edward Lee.

---

There was a certain Chaplain, Howell Forgy, aboard the U.S.S. New Orleans during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was a Lieutenant (j.g.) on that Sunday morning in December, 1941.

Another Lieutenant who had been in charge of an ammunition line on the USS New Orleans during the attack remembered.

" I heard a voice behind me saying, "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition". I turned and saw Chaplain Forgy walking toward me along the line of men. He was patting the men on the back and making that remark to cheer them and keep them going. I know it helped me a lot, too", he said.

---

Let us remember Chaplain Howell Forgy.

Let us remember Maximillian Kolbe, Catholic Priest and Saint and Martyr, who died for another at Auschwitz.

Let us remember that the Nazis could have been stopped in their tracks as late as 1936 by being willing to do what was needed. What was needed required bloodshed.

Reflect that a serious attempt to support the Whites (including the Poles) against the Reds in 1919 to 1924 would have stopped the Soviet Union cold.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[Soaring Feather]

LOL!

Good image of the Hildabeast.