The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
washingtonpost.com
The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
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Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#2I was rather disappointed that this article wasn’t about the worlds first guided missile, that was used to hunt ships in the pacific in WW2 — it was called the Bat.
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#3[deleted]
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#4Everything about the old story of the idea to arm a large quantity of bats with incendiary explosives, to attack a fire-prone city reads like information that might be fed to suspected moles in a counterintelligence operation.
The idea being that you wouldn't knowingly jeopardize real plans, by gambling their exposure among an untrustworthy audience, but, since counterintelligence is an understood expense, allocate some funds for seemingly outrageous boondoggles, and see if those secrets circulate.
The bat bomb plan was stamped “top secret” and
assigned the suitably sci-fi code name Project
X-Ray.
Why take it so far? Probably victimization by sunk cost fallacy, plus persistent suspicion and paranoia. Plus, when the time came to retire the project, it might have gained some extra inertia all its own.
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#5This is really a dream i keep getting on and on. In the future we will genetically breed very large eagles, saddle them, and fly them to get from place to place. Everyone in future will have a pet eagle, like everyone has a pet dog now.
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#6This is really a dream i keep getting on and on. In the future we will genetically breed very large eagles, saddle them, and fly them to get from place to place. Everyone in future will have a pet eagle, like everyone has a pet dog now.
I like this dream, but think you need to pair it with a dream of cows the size of elephants as each day the eagle will need to eat a 1000 pounds of meat.
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#7Everything about the old story of the idea to arm a large quantity of bats with incendiary explosives, to attack a fire-prone city reads like information that might be fed to suspected moles in a counterintelligence operation. The idea being that you wouldn't knowingly jeopardize real plans, by gambling their exposure among an untrustworthy audience, but, since counterintelligence is an understood expense, allocate s…
[deleted]
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#8There's a great episode of The Memory Palace about this: http://thememorypalace.us/2009/01/episode-4/
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#9Everything about the old story of the idea to arm a large quantity of bats with incendiary explosives, to attack a fire-prone city reads like information that might be fed to suspected moles in a counterintelligence operation. The idea being that you wouldn't knowingly jeopardize real plans, by gambling their exposure among an untrustworthy audience, but, since counterintelligence is an understood expense, allocate s…
I suspect it would have been slightly more effective in terms of cost vs result than you might think.
So even if it started as counter espionage it may have continued based on results being more effective than initially supposed.
Re: The batty, explosive history of bats in the military and a new idea
#10Everything about the old story of the idea to arm a large quantity of bats with incendiary explosives, to attack a fire-prone city reads like information that might be fed to suspected moles in a counterintelligence operation. The idea being that you wouldn't knowingly jeopardize real plans, by gambling their exposure among an untrustworthy audience, but, since counterintelligence is an understood expense, allocate s…
This story was part of a news report sourced by the daughter of a general on NBC. I saw it between 1987ish (I may be off by a year).
> The project never recovered from this ignominious retreat, and it was canceled in 1944.
It was "cancelled" after a shockingly effective test because the first A-bomb was going to be ready. Multiple projects were going on in parallel. Because bat-instigated fire was still an uncontrollable and unpredictable force to unleash on a population, it was wisely cancelled (the research kept, which is all that mattered) in favor of a more pointed and well-understood system. A big targeted explosion.