One million AMERICAN suicide bombers
Aerial Com-BAT
In the last Daily Dose, I told you about how the Navy’s innovative marine mammal program is poised to save American lives both here and abroad. But as I teased in the first part of this series, the things they’re teaching dolphins and seals to do isn’t anywhere near the most inventive or ambitious implementation of “animal soldiers” in U.S. history.
In the early 1940s, a clandestine faction of the United States military was busy working on a bomb with but one purpose: To wreak mass destruction and havoc on infrastructure, supply and manufacturing facilities on the Japanese mainland
But it wasn’t “The Manhattan Project.”
It was called Project X-ray. And as unbelievable as it sounds, it was a program designed to convert thousands of BATS into deadly little American suicide bombers. Here’s the story
Owing to a quartet of advantages bats owe to Mother Nature – their numbers, nocturnal flight, propensity to roost in small, secluded places, and their ability to carry more than their own weight while flying – one American (a dentist, of all things) identified these marvels of mammalian design as perfectly suited to deliver small incendiary charges deep into the very guts of factories and other buildings undetected. After pitching the idea to the White House in 1942, President Roosevelt gave it the green light.
The long and short of the idea was this: 10 B-24 bombers were to drop 1000 parachute-equipped canister-bombs, each containing 1000 bats, over Osaka Bay’s industrial complexes at night. During their long descent, the fresh air was to revive the bats from a state of induced semi-hibernation. One by one, the furry little flyers would take wing, then when dawn came, would roost – many of them in the eaves and rooftops of factories and industrial facilities
Then, some hours later, timers built into tiny explosive/accelerant packs each of these bats carried would detonate them all more or less simultaneously, causing massive fire outbreaks everywhere these million suicide bombers roosted.
Testing of this plan proved phenomenally successful. The only reason it wasn’t carried to fruition was that the atomic bomb became drop-ready mere weeks before the “bat-bomb” would have
Isn’t that wild chapter in American martial history?
But all of this has been leading up to something. You didn’t think all this bat-talk was random, did you?
Every summer, I talk about mosquito-borne disease, like West Nile and others. And every year, I make recommendations about how to keep from getting the Big Bite – things like using DEET insect repellant, staying indoors in the evening, wearing long sleeves and confining daytime activities to the early morning.
But there’s another thing you can do – one that’s fun (especially for kids) and great for the natural world
You can erect BAT HOUSES.
It’s easy. You can get plans on how to make them off the Internet, or you can buy them pre-made from any number of places online. They look like upside-down wooden wall-mounted mailboxes – they’re deep and wide, but thin from front-to-back. All you have to do is mount them, open side down, 15 feet or more off the ground on a tree-trunk, in a garage roof-eave, or even on a stand-alone pole. Do this before the spring’s over, and in no time, you’ll have a resident colony of your own living bug-zappers
Each “house” can hold hundreds of bats. It’s really neat to watch them come swooping out every evening in the summertime to hunt, and you’d be surprised at the effect that these furry flying friends can have on insect populations in your backyard. Each one of them consumes its own body-weight in insects every night!
Of course, there are some safety precautions that go along with living in close proximity to bats – namely, don’t touch them. A bat on the ground is a sick bat, usually. Just leave it for the raccoons or other scavengers
This may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it is effective in reducing mosquito-related risks, beneficial for wildlife conservation (bat habitat is getting scarce), and it really is a lot of fun.
