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CLASSIC: Uncle Sam Tried to End World War II With Bat Bombs · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Fellow ridiculous historians, We're back with a classic. I'm Ben Bullin.
0:05
Speaker 1: Our colleague Noel Brown is Our Adventures will be returning
0:08
Speaker 1: soon and look I got to show you out, super producer,
0:14
Speaker 1: mister Max Williams. You and I were talking off air,
0:19
Speaker 1: as we do pretty often, about just how bizarre World
0:23
Speaker 1: War two was.
0:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's honestly become kind of a pet
0:27
Speaker 2: interest of mine, and it's fun from working on the
0:32
Speaker 2: show about you know, and well in you know, the
0:35
Speaker 2: European theater, there was actual fighting and land on each
0:38
Speaker 2: other's country and stuff like that. But when it became
0:40
Speaker 2: of the United States and Japan, there was never really
0:43
Speaker 2: fighting on either continental land between these countries. So there
0:47
Speaker 2: was a lot of really weird ideas they had throughout
0:51
Speaker 2: the years of how to either attack the other one
0:55
Speaker 2: or defend from an attack. So like, you know, we
0:57
Speaker 2: have the episode, most recent one I'm pretty sure about,
1:01
Speaker 2: like them building fake towns on bomber factories, like them
1:06
Speaker 2: fighting like battles on Worthless, like frozen hundred Islands in
1:11
Speaker 2: the North Pacific, or obviously the balloon bomb episode, which yeah,
1:16
Speaker 2: before this, and so then like reading this, it's like
1:18
Speaker 2: World war two bat bombs, Okay, they kept trying.
1:23
Speaker 1: Look, war is a huge driver of horror and also
1:28
Speaker 1: scientific and medical innovation. So if you go to your
1:32
Speaker 1: average doctor's office or to your average space launch center,
1:38
Speaker 1: as I'm sure we all do, then a lot of
1:41
Speaker 1: the amazing technology you see is directly descended from the
1:44
Speaker 1: atrocities of warfare. Really, most modern war is a war
1:52
Speaker 1: of tiny edges, right, It's a war of seeking any
1:56
Speaker 1: possible advantage. Everything can go on the drawdrawing board, even
2:01
Speaker 1: if we understand that most of the stuff will never
2:04
Speaker 1: leave that drawing board because they're frankly desperate and stupid ideas.
2:10
Speaker 1: So this involves, of course, a long running obsession of
2:16
Speaker 1: our sister shows stuff. They don't want you to know
2:18
Speaker 1: the idea of weaponizing animals, right. Ever, since Empires of
2:23
Speaker 1: old just ran over enemy forces with elephants, people were
2:27
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to leverage the natural world
2:31
Speaker 1: to military advantage. And it is true, Uncle Sam, once
2:37
Speaker 1: upon a time spent millions of dollars trying to take
2:42
Speaker 1: bats like little bats, not baseball bats, the animals, the
2:45
Speaker 1: mammals bats, and strapping explosive devices on them and then
2:52
Speaker 1: launching them en mass across Japanese cities. Now again, this
2:57
Speaker 1: is a drawing board idea, but as we'll learn in
3:01
Speaker 1: this classic episode from twenty nineteen, it might have actually worked.
3:06
Speaker 1: So how close do we get? We'll tell you in
3:09
Speaker 1: this classic episode. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
3:40
Speaker 1: No no, no no no no no no no no no,
3:42
Speaker 1: no no, no bat bombs. Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians.
3:47
Speaker 1: What the heck are we talking about? Well, we're about
3:50
Speaker 1: to tell you hello, my name is Ben.
3:52
Speaker 3: My name is done Ben. You know we did that
3:53
Speaker 3: before with knife Man.
3:55
Speaker 1: Yes, it's just a great it's a great musical device.
3:59
Speaker 3: It really is.
4:00
Speaker 1: Goes into anything with two syllables.
4:01
Speaker 3: I'm into it.
4:02
Speaker 1: Oh and I'm also into our super producer, Casey Pegram.
4:07
Speaker 1: We were off air today, just about to jump into
4:10
Speaker 1: the studio and Casey, I don't know. Have you ever
4:13
Speaker 1: heard of batbombs?
4:14
Speaker 3: I have not. No, I have no idea what this
4:16
Speaker 3: episode is about. Unless it's guano. That's the only bat
4:18
Speaker 3: bomb I can think of. Hey, that was good, Yeah, no,
4:21
Speaker 3: and funny enough. I think guano is actually quite flammable
4:25
Speaker 3: and could be potentially used in explosives.
4:27
Speaker 1: And guano is also quite valuable. Right, We did an
4:31
Speaker 1: episode for a different show on a cannibal cave. You
4:35
Speaker 1: can find a ce teca. We did an episode on
4:39
Speaker 1: cannibal cave that was discovered because of some unscrupulous guano miners.
4:45
Speaker 1: Bats have actually played a surprisingly influential role in US
4:51
Speaker 1: history at various times. And also, bats are one of
4:54
Speaker 1: those creatures that are up close. A lot of bats
4:59
Speaker 1: that I've run in two are pretty gross, but they're
5:02
Speaker 1: still just from a biological perspective, amazing.
5:05
Speaker 3: They are amazing. And there is a YouTube video or
5:07
Speaker 3: an Instagram video or one of those videos where someone's
5:10
Speaker 3: like handling a bat and it's a particularly cute bat.
5:14
Speaker 3: So they have the potential to be both terrifying and adorable.
5:17
Speaker 3: Is it a fruit bat? It must have been.
5:19
Speaker 1: So there's so many different types of bat. And today
5:26
Speaker 1: we are talking about a type of plan that the
5:31
Speaker 1: US made with bats. This is okay, So we have
5:34
Speaker 1: to go in two different directions here, right, and maybe
5:37
Speaker 1: tie them together as we continue. First, it's no secret
5:42
Speaker 1: to any fan of history or to anyone who's perused
5:46
Speaker 1: the Adventures of the US military that the US military
5:50
Speaker 1: like many other militaries has kind of a spaghetti at
5:54
Speaker 1: the wall approach to developing new stuff, and most of
5:59
Speaker 1: the time it doesn't work out.
6:00
Speaker 4: You know.
6:01
Speaker 3: You know, this reminds me of been It's sort of
6:02
Speaker 3: like the Hollywood studio system, where you might just have
6:05
Speaker 3: some intern in an office just pitch some crazy idea
6:08
Speaker 3: that an executive happens to year and he's like, you
6:10
Speaker 3: know what, that's just crazy enough to work.
6:12
Speaker 1: That's a good point. This reminds me of a clip
6:16
Speaker 1: that we cannot for legal reasons play in full for you,
6:20
Speaker 1: but we can tell you what it is and go
6:22
Speaker 1: check it out on YouTube. After this show, John mullaney
6:25
Speaker 1: has a great bit about how Back to the Future
6:28
Speaker 1: became a film.
6:29
Speaker 3: Did you ever see that?
6:30
Speaker 1: No?
6:30
Speaker 3: I don't think I did. Know.
6:31
Speaker 1: Oh man, Okay, well, we can't stop the show. I
6:36
Speaker 1: wish I could just play this for you. Now google it,
6:39
Speaker 1: I'll send you the link. Is it is exactly what
6:41
Speaker 1: you were talking about, and that is a very good
6:44
Speaker 1: comparison to the approach that the military has taken at times. Today.
6:51
Speaker 1: Our story starts well, it really gets running toward the
6:56
Speaker 1: end of World War Two, thanks to a guy named
7:00
Speaker 1: doctor Little Adams or Litel Adams.
7:04
Speaker 3: I'm gonna go with little gotta be Little. You got
7:06
Speaker 3: Little Adams l Y T l E.
7:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think if that's why, I'm giving him space
7:12
Speaker 1: to be Litel Adams too, just in case, because I
7:14
Speaker 1: don't know, Like, would you want to be walked around
7:18
Speaker 1: called Lil Brown? Yeah, you would be into.
7:20
Speaker 3: That, absolutely. I support that wholeheartedly.
7:25
Speaker 1: So doctor Adams doesn't begin life as a mad scientist
7:29
Speaker 1: for Uncle Sam. He starts life in Irwin, Pennsylvania, and
7:34
Speaker 1: for a long time he works as a dentist.
7:36
Speaker 3: Before that, presumably as a baby.
7:38
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, no, he began life as a middle aged dentist.
7:41
Speaker 1: That's crazy common medical condition. That is that like Benjamin
7:46
Speaker 1: Button sort of Yeah, Benjamin Button is is loosely based
7:49
Speaker 1: on the Adventures of the dentist Doctor Adams.
7:52
Speaker 3: Now the Adventures of Little Adams. That sounds like a fun,
7:56
Speaker 3: rollicking good time. It sounds like a real rom doesn't it.
7:59
Speaker 1: So here's what happened in real life, Doctor Adams. And
8:03
Speaker 1: you might not see this unless you watch the director's
8:05
Speaker 1: cut of Benjamin Button. Doctor Adams is driving home from
8:09
Speaker 1: a vacation at Carl's Bad Caverns, in New Mexico, and
8:15
Speaker 1: while he's driving home, he is haunted by this vision
8:21
Speaker 1: that he saw this amazing spectacle. He watched bats leaving
8:28
Speaker 1: the caves of Carlsbad caverns. And we've seen those clips
8:31
Speaker 1: of bats leaving mass right right right, a little round
8:34
Speaker 1: twilight or so, like a.
8:35
Speaker 3: Hive mind operating on some kind of crazy psychic connection.
8:39
Speaker 1: And he watched millions of these bats fly out, And
8:43
Speaker 1: as he was driving, he was thinking, Wow, that was
8:45
Speaker 1: such an amazing thing. There were so many bats. I
8:49
Speaker 1: had no idea the sheer magnitude of nature and all
8:53
Speaker 1: its glory. And he probably we're speculating a little here,
8:57
Speaker 1: but he probably goes, all right, well, it's long drive
9:00
Speaker 1: from New Mexico to Pennsylvania. I'm going to turn on
9:02
Speaker 1: my car radio. I'm going to get the news. Here's
9:05
Speaker 1: some tunes. And that's when he hears the terrible news.
9:09
Speaker 1: He's listening on December seventh, nineteen forty one, that's when
9:12
Speaker 1: he hears the terrible news that Japan has just attacked
9:15
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor.
9:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and much like you and I remember likely where
9:20
Speaker 3: we were when the attacks on September eleventh took place.
9:24
Speaker 3: Everyone in this country likely does very similar experience to
9:28
Speaker 3: Pearl Harbor. When people first heard that news, it was
9:30
Speaker 3: a like a slap in the face. It was a
9:32
Speaker 3: real emotional response that people had to this event. And
9:36
Speaker 3: that was the case for doctor Adams, and he kind
9:40
Speaker 3: of oddly combined that emotional response with the vision of
9:44
Speaker 3: swarming bats that he had just seen.
9:48
Speaker 1: Kind of you a Bruce Wayne esque way when he
9:52
Speaker 1: discovers the cave right below Wayne manor that's a little
9:56
Speaker 1: bit of a spoiler for anybody who has ever heard
10:00
Speaker 1: words or seeing comics.
10:02
Speaker 3: It's true.
10:03
Speaker 1: So we have to imagine how insane this drive must
10:06
Speaker 1: have been. It's not a short drive home, So is
10:09
Speaker 1: it any wonder that who was left alone with his
10:11
Speaker 1: thoughts and just kept combining and recombining his recent experiences.
10:16
Speaker 1: Either way, it doesn't take him long to take action.
10:20
Speaker 1: He combines this vision, as you said, of these bats
10:23
Speaker 1: and this desire for revenge into a coherent plan, and
10:28
Speaker 1: less than a month later, mid January January twelfth, nineteen
10:33
Speaker 1: forty two, he sends his plan to the White House.
10:36
Speaker 1: What does he say? What's the pitch?
10:39
Speaker 3: Yeah, he thinks it'd be a swell idea to strap
10:41
Speaker 3: tiny bombs to bats release them and in the hopes
10:46
Speaker 3: that they will roost in the eaves and in various
10:48
Speaker 3: locations of Japanese cities, at which point they would be detonated,
10:52
Speaker 3: causing chaos across the land. But real quick. This was
10:57
Speaker 3: not the first such idea that doctor Adams hat. He
11:01
Speaker 3: actually came up with in nineteen thirty nine, an idea
11:05
Speaker 3: for a plane that could do male pickups mid air.
11:10
Speaker 3: And so he was kind of had a history of
11:13
Speaker 3: being something of a tinkerer, even though his trade was
11:16
Speaker 3: in the dental profession.
11:18
Speaker 1: Yes, that's a really good point. This is not a
11:21
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime innovation or bright idea for him.
11:26
Speaker 1: He has several ideas that would seem at the very
11:30
Speaker 1: least unorthodox right to mainstream humanity.
11:34
Speaker 3: Yeah big. Bringing it back to Batman, this mid air
11:37
Speaker 3: pickup idea was very similar to Operations Skyhook in the
11:42
Speaker 3: I Believe Batman Begins movie. Is that right? It is
11:45
Speaker 3: in the Dark Night, Dark Knight, that's right when they
11:48
Speaker 3: sort of extract Bruce Wayne from a Japanese high rise
11:52
Speaker 3: with this hook and they pull him out with this wire.
11:56
Speaker 3: And he came up with this idea while serving in
11:57
Speaker 3: the Navy during World War One consisted of these two
12:01
Speaker 3: kind of vertical walls that made a V shape at
12:04
Speaker 3: the narrow end of which a weighted cable was trailing.
12:08
Speaker 3: And this is underneath the airplane and as it passed
12:10
Speaker 3: it would engage in an object to be picked up
12:13
Speaker 3: and then lifted and extracted, So very similar to skyhook.
12:16
Speaker 1: Actually, he also, I believe, depleted a lot of his
12:20
Speaker 1: own fortune and personal savings pursuing this until he met
12:24
Speaker 1: Richard DuPont of the DuPont DuPonts, the DuPont DuPonts. Yes,
12:29
Speaker 1: and it wasn't that it wasn't it designed to never land?
12:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly because he figured there was. This wasn't like
12:35
Speaker 3: a completely unique idea, But the notion was that a
12:38
Speaker 3: lot of time and effort was wasted when the planes
12:41
Speaker 3: were landing and they had to refuel. So this system,
12:44
Speaker 3: in theory, would allow it to refuel in the air,
12:47
Speaker 3: pick up fuel reserves from the ground or even from
12:50
Speaker 3: a passing train. They could coordinate and specifically for long
12:55
Speaker 3: distance mail pickups and freight and things like that. I
12:59
Speaker 3: don't know, I know it was patented, but it certainly
13:01
Speaker 3: never hit in the way that he hoped it would.
13:04
Speaker 3: But fast forward to World War Two. Let's go back
13:06
Speaker 3: to the pitch. How was he able to get an
13:08
Speaker 3: audience with the White House in the first place. He
13:10
Speaker 3: was not exactly like he didn't work for them. He
13:13
Speaker 3: was just kind of a regular joe who was a
13:14
Speaker 3: tinkerer on the side. And this whole you know, mid
13:18
Speaker 3: flight refueling mail pickup scheme never really gained too much momentum,
13:23
Speaker 3: so he didn't really have a reputation as being someone
13:26
Speaker 3: the government should like turn to during times of war.
13:28
Speaker 1: Would you say it never got off the ground?
13:30
Speaker 4: I would say that, man, Oh, but you said it first.
13:34
Speaker 4: Oh sorry, sorry, no joke left untold. He did manage
13:45
Speaker 4: to shout above the din the cacophony of people with
13:49
Speaker 4: unsolicited suggestions, plans, and schemes. We have to imagine, of course,
13:54
Speaker 4: how many people would be writing directly to the White
13:58
Speaker 4: House saying, here's what we do, and it may be
14:02
Speaker 4: worth our time in another episode to look at some
14:04
Speaker 4: of the most unorthodox World War two revenge schemes. But
14:07
Speaker 4: Adams had an edge. He had a very important friend.
14:13
Speaker 1: That's right. This is somewhat a story about nepotism. You
14:16
Speaker 1: see Adams happen to know a woman by the name
14:19
Speaker 1: of Eleanor Roosevelt. He had flown her to check out
14:24
Speaker 1: his airmail scheme previously, right, and because they had this
14:30
Speaker 1: previous relationship, historians speculate that's the way he was able
14:34
Speaker 1: to get his voice heard and his idea, his pitch, right,
14:42
Speaker 1: the one that you established earlier, and all about dropping
14:46
Speaker 1: these bats in Japanese cities. It made more sense than
14:51
Speaker 1: it might sound at first, blush, because of Japanese architecture.
14:55
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, tell us more about that, Ben. It's not
14:57
Speaker 3: something I'd quite considered, because I was wondering how were
15:00
Speaker 3: to get into all of these little nooks and crannies,
15:02
Speaker 3: if you know, it seems like it would take time
15:05
Speaker 3: for them to work their way into the eaves of
15:08
Speaker 3: homes as we know it. But I believe the architecture
15:10
Speaker 3: in Japan was a little more open and possibly more
15:13
Speaker 3: accessible to these small creatures. And they were quite small.
15:17
Speaker 1: They were quite small. Yes, So this pitch hinged on
15:20
Speaker 1: some stereotypes about Japan at the time. One of those
15:23
Speaker 1: concerned in the architecture. In the mind of many Americans,
15:29
Speaker 1: policymakers and civilians alike, Japan was a country composed of
15:34
Speaker 1: crowded cities filled with houses and factories made of paper
15:39
Speaker 1: and wood, and that's their vision of traditional Japanese architectures.
15:44
Speaker 1: So the argument there might be that flying bats with
15:48
Speaker 1: small andcendiary devices into a city where most things are
15:54
Speaker 1: built of stone or concrete, that won't do much, right,
15:58
Speaker 1: It takes an enormous amount of heat today image that
16:00
Speaker 1: stuff but paper and wood could catch fire with a
16:03
Speaker 1: relatively small amount of flame.
16:06
Speaker 3: But also wouldn't it have something to do with how
16:08
Speaker 3: easy and quickly it might have been for the bats
16:11
Speaker 3: to work their way into these structures. They weren't like
16:15
Speaker 3: sealed air tight quite in the way we would think
16:18
Speaker 3: of a traditional American home.
16:20
Speaker 1: Right, Well, they thought that would fly into those like
16:22
Speaker 1: picture of traditional Japanese tile roof right, they thought they
16:25
Speaker 1: would fly into the eaves of those roofs, and that
16:29
Speaker 1: this would this would get them close enough to the
16:34
Speaker 1: paper walls, and wouldn't make sense. So we have a
16:37
Speaker 1: quote from him, Think of thousands of fires breaking out
16:41
Speaker 1: simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter. For
16:44
Speaker 1: every bomb dropped, Japan could have been devastated, yet with
16:49
Speaker 1: small loss of life which doesn't really make sense because
16:54
Speaker 1: when cities catch on fire, a lot of people die.
16:57
Speaker 3: So I guess he was maybe he was talking about
16:59
Speaker 3: America in lives.
17:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably, that's that's unfortunately, it sounds very accurate.
17:06
Speaker 3: Because I mean, obviously the bats were on suicide missions here,
17:09
Speaker 3: so that's you know, I don't imagine Peter would approve
17:12
Speaker 3: this plan today.
17:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, let's take a second maybe and talk about
17:16
Speaker 1: the bats.
17:16
Speaker 3: What do you say? Let's do it all right.
17:18
Speaker 1: So once the project gets the green light, and again
17:23
Speaker 1: please listen to that John Mullaney, back to the future bit,
17:26
Speaker 1: it's worth it won't ruin it for you. Once the
17:29
Speaker 1: project gets the green light, somehow, doctor Adams gathers a
17:33
Speaker 1: team of naturalists from the Hancock Foundation University California, and
17:39
Speaker 1: they start investigating likely sites where they could gather large
17:44
Speaker 1: quantities of bats. As we know, bats are mostly found
17:48
Speaker 1: in caves, but a ton of them roost in attics, barnes, houses, bridges,
17:54
Speaker 1: anywhere they can get it infitted, right.
17:56
Speaker 3: That's right, it's funny. Casey and I actually at ten
18:00
Speaker 3: did to capture a mass exodus of bats like this
18:03
Speaker 3: on video in Austin, there's this bridge that's referred to
18:07
Speaker 3: as the bat Bridge, where every night, at a certain time,
18:10
Speaker 3: all of these bats that nest under this bridge or
18:12
Speaker 3: they kind of just hang out there during the day
18:14
Speaker 3: go out to feed at night because they're nocturnal animals.
18:17
Speaker 3: But we waited there for an awful long time and
18:19
Speaker 3: they never emerged. So I cannot offer a first hand
18:23
Speaker 3: account of this, but I have been told that it
18:25
Speaker 3: does happen.
18:26
Speaker 1: Yes, it's true. I don't know if I have revealed
18:28
Speaker 1: this to you guys, but years and years ago, one
18:32
Speaker 1: of my childhood homes actually did have a bat infestation
18:35
Speaker 1: in the attic, and I happened to live in a
18:38
Speaker 1: room that adjoined the attic, and I was surprised to
18:41
Speaker 1: find that, at least here in Georgia, you cannot kill
18:45
Speaker 1: the bats. You have to essentially wait for them to
18:48
Speaker 1: leave or compel them to leave whatever area they're roostine legally.
18:53
Speaker 1: Yeah really yeah, And you then find whatever heidi holes
18:57
Speaker 1: or ingress egress points they're using, block those, with the
19:01
Speaker 1: hope being that vampire rules they'll find a new place
19:04
Speaker 1: to sleep before dawn.
19:06
Speaker 3: That's terrifying. I didn't know that, so that you can't
19:08
Speaker 3: treat them like you would like any other household infestation.
19:12
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no no, because they're so good for
19:14
Speaker 1: the ecosystem.
19:15
Speaker 3: It's well interesting. I had no idea about that.
19:17
Speaker 1: So they go atoms, not the bats that I used
19:20
Speaker 1: to live with. They go around scouring these areas to
19:25
Speaker 1: find the best possible large quantity of bats suitable for
19:29
Speaker 1: this project. According to Adams, they visit a thousand caves
19:33
Speaker 1: and three thousand mines, and Adams says speed was so
19:38
Speaker 1: imperative that we generally drove all day and night. When
19:41
Speaker 1: we weren't exploring caves, we slept in cars, taking turns
19:44
Speaker 1: of driving one car. And our search team covered three
19:47
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand miles. And then they started cataloging
19:53
Speaker 1: the types of bats they found, and they were looking
19:55
Speaker 1: for the ideal combination of bat size which would dictate
20:00
Speaker 1: the amount of explosive the bat could carry versus back quantity.
20:06
Speaker 1: How many bats of that type could they find, because
20:08
Speaker 1: you know, if you found like twelve bats that were
20:11
Speaker 1: large enough to carry eight pounds of dynamite, you know,
20:15
Speaker 1: good for those bats, but that's not really going to
20:17
Speaker 1: do anything to a Japanese city on a large scale
20:20
Speaker 1: the way they were hoping.
20:21
Speaker 3: That's very true. And just a little detail here. These
20:24
Speaker 3: were Mexican free tailed bats. They decided on because of
20:28
Speaker 3: their size and their availability. And so in March of
20:33
Speaker 3: nineteen forty three, this is backtracking just a little bit,
20:36
Speaker 3: the US Air Force decided they wanted to investigate this.
20:40
Speaker 3: There was a letter that was drafted to formally, you know,
20:42
Speaker 3: announce the pursuing of this, like a memo, and it
20:45
Speaker 3: was called Test of Method to Scatter Incendiaries. It was
20:49
Speaker 3: also referred to as Project X ray.
20:52
Speaker 1: Way cool name uses Mexican free tailed bats. The other
20:56
Speaker 1: bats they tried were things like the mastiff. The massive
21:00
Speaker 1: bat is huge as a twenty inch wingspan. It can
21:03
Speaker 1: carry one pound of dynamite. But the problem was they
21:06
Speaker 1: couldn't find enough of these bats. And then they found
21:09
Speaker 1: another bat, the mullard or common palid bat, that could
21:13
Speaker 1: carry three ounces. But naturalists said, there's no way these
21:17
Speaker 1: guys will survive the strange process we're going to subject
21:21
Speaker 1: them to. And when they found the free tailed bat,
21:25
Speaker 1: the main reason they went with it is because it
21:28
Speaker 1: could travel with a one ounce bomb over a relatively
21:31
Speaker 1: short distance, even though it only weighed a third of
21:33
Speaker 1: an ounce, and they found twenty to thirty million of
21:37
Speaker 1: them in a cave in Nay Cave near Bandera, Texas.
21:41
Speaker 1: And it was so large. This kind of ties into
21:45
Speaker 1: the adventure that Noel, you and Casey had in Austin.
21:48
Speaker 1: It was so large that when these bats left the cave,
21:51
Speaker 1: it took five hours for them to all leave out
21:54
Speaker 1: of the cave, flying in a dense stream fifteen feet
21:57
Speaker 1: in diameter and so closely packed that they could barely
22:00
Speaker 1: lap their wings.
22:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, obviously, these must be
22:03
Speaker 3: very powerful creatures in terms of their ability to like
22:06
Speaker 3: like ants. They always say they can carry ten times
22:08
Speaker 3: their body weight or whatever. This must be a similar case.
22:11
Speaker 3: Although they had to take the weight into consideration when
22:14
Speaker 3: they figured out which bats to use and what amount
22:17
Speaker 3: of incendiaries would pack the most punch. And I'm guessing
22:21
Speaker 3: that it was all considered. Like you said, it wouldn't
22:22
Speaker 3: take a whole lot. They weren't. They weren't going to
22:25
Speaker 3: level a building with these bats. They were going to
22:27
Speaker 3: start a little flame that was then going to catch
22:30
Speaker 3: on fire, and they were going to do them all
22:31
Speaker 3: at once. But Ben, did you catch anywhere in your research.
22:34
Speaker 3: How they were planning to detonate these bat bombs, like
22:38
Speaker 3: all at once or was it on a timer or timer?
22:41
Speaker 3: It was on a timer. Yeah, that makes the most sense.
22:43
Speaker 1: That's probably that's the best way to do it, you know,
22:44
Speaker 1: that is the best way to do it.
22:46
Speaker 3: So they finally settled on these Mexican free tail bats,
22:50
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of consideration for various stages
22:54
Speaker 3: of this process, right like the questions we were just asking,
22:57
Speaker 3: how to transport them, how to deploy them, etc. What
23:01
Speaker 3: were some of the things that they sort of figured
23:02
Speaker 3: out during this process?
23:03
Speaker 1: Man, sure, sure, So this project when it gets a
23:07
Speaker 1: cool name, the Army says, wait, we want projects with
23:11
Speaker 1: cool names. So the project is transferred to the army
23:14
Speaker 1: and they start capturing these thousands and thousands of Mexican
23:18
Speaker 1: freetail bats the caverns all around the southwest United States.
23:23
Speaker 1: They wanted to figure out how to get these things
23:27
Speaker 1: from the location where they are attached to these bombs,
23:31
Speaker 1: these incendiary devices, and then transport them without blowing anything up,
23:37
Speaker 1: and then deploying them so that they don't blow up
23:40
Speaker 1: until they're supposed to. The first thing they had to
23:43
Speaker 1: figure out was how to keep the bats calm, and
23:46
Speaker 1: that is when they decided to induce hibernation in the bats.
23:50
Speaker 1: This is interesting, this is this is something that might
23:54
Speaker 1: surprise some people. Bats actually do hibernate, which makes it
23:59
Speaker 1: a little bit less inhumane, you know what I mean.
24:03
Speaker 1: Bats hibernate from late fall until spring, so October, November
24:08
Speaker 1: to March and April. And I'm just realizing this now.
24:13
Speaker 1: No bats are listening to this podcast, Yeah right now.
24:15
Speaker 3: It's probably better that way. Yeah, this could be triggering.
24:18
Speaker 1: Until summer spring. Yes, so we know that they will
24:22
Speaker 1: hibernate typically in the same environments in which they roost,
24:26
Speaker 1: but they roost in caves and mines and attics and
24:29
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So how do you strap an explosive
24:32
Speaker 1: device to them or in scendiary device and then convince
24:35
Speaker 1: them to hibernate on a plane. What they ultimately decided
24:39
Speaker 1: to do was to stick the bats in ice cube trays. Again,
24:44
Speaker 1: these are very small, the only way about the way
24:47
Speaker 1: less announced.
24:47
Speaker 3: But surely not the kind of ice cube trays you
24:50
Speaker 3: and I are used to. I mean that's way too small.
24:52
Speaker 3: One little compartment in an ice cube tray that would
24:54
Speaker 3: go in our freezer.
24:56
Speaker 1: All my ice cube trays are specifically designed to fit bats.
24:58
Speaker 1: That's fair, It's pretty unfair to the bats.
25:01
Speaker 3: But would would the explosives be strapped to them already
25:05
Speaker 3: at this point or would they have to like put
25:07
Speaker 3: them on after they woke them up. This whole thing
25:10
Speaker 3: seems like a logistical nightmare, and that seems like stuff
25:12
Speaker 3: that they didn't consider up front when they said, hey,
25:14
Speaker 3: this guy's onto something.
25:15
Speaker 1: Well, it seems like a lot of bats probably died
25:18
Speaker 1: in the process of figuring out the best way to
25:22
Speaker 1: do this.
25:23
Speaker 3: Well, ultimately, these were suicide bats anyway, so they were
25:26
Speaker 3: all destined for death. Right.
25:33
Speaker 1: They also had to figure out how to release these
25:35
Speaker 1: bats in mid air. So they thought, we'll have a
25:40
Speaker 1: cardboard container that automatically opens and releases the bats. And
25:45
Speaker 1: they were trying to figure out how to do this.
25:47
Speaker 1: They spent a lot of time working out the perfect
25:50
Speaker 1: order of operations, and then they took it to real testing.
25:54
Speaker 1: They took it off the drawing board into the world,
25:58
Speaker 1: and they found out that there was a lot of
26:02
Speaker 1: stuff they needed to work on.
26:03
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a lot of kinks. There's an article in
26:05
Speaker 3: the Atlantic called Old Weird Tech The Bat Bombs of
26:08
Speaker 3: World War Two by Alexis C. Madrigal, and in this
26:12
Speaker 3: article she talks about some of the unfortunate mishaps that
26:17
Speaker 3: occurred when they really started doing real world testing, one
26:20
Speaker 3: of which involved a general's car that was exploded, basically burned,
26:26
Speaker 3: and also an airplane hangar that sustained some pretty serious damage.
26:32
Speaker 3: They did pass this off to the Marine Corps and
26:35
Speaker 3: the testing continued.
26:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when they passed it to the Marine Corps
26:41
Speaker 1: in December of nineteen forty three, the operation was moved
26:46
Speaker 1: to the Marine Corps air Station El Centro, California. The
26:50
Speaker 1: definitive test was carried out after several experiments on what
26:55
Speaker 1: they called a Japanese village. It was a mock up
26:58
Speaker 1: of a Japanese city built by the Chemical Warfare Service
27:03
Speaker 1: at their Dougway Proving Grounds test site in Utah, and
27:06
Speaker 1: this test produced not terrible results. So the chief of
27:13
Speaker 1: incendiary testing at Dougway wrote, a reasonable number of destructive
27:17
Speaker 1: fires can be started in spite of the extremely small
27:20
Speaker 1: size of the units. Those are the bats. The main
27:23
Speaker 1: advantage of the units would seem to be their placement
27:25
Speaker 1: within the enemy structures without the knowledge of the householder
27:29
Speaker 1: or fire watchers, thus allowing the fire to establish itself
27:33
Speaker 1: before being discovered. So what they're saying is when they
27:35
Speaker 1: get into these attics and these eves, it is highly
27:38
Speaker 1: unlikely that somebody will notice this very very tiny, tiny,
27:42
Speaker 1: tiny furry creature, and they probably won't notice the fire
27:46
Speaker 1: until it's too late.
27:48
Speaker 3: My question, though, is, we know the way bats behave,
27:52
Speaker 3: wouldn't they all go to one place like what was
27:55
Speaker 3: causing what was leading them to.
27:57
Speaker 1: Go to disperse?
27:58
Speaker 3: To disperse, because it doesn't seem that's what bats typically do.
28:01
Speaker 3: It seems like they kind of like have that hive
28:03
Speaker 3: mind quality to it. I was joking when I said
28:04
Speaker 3: they have, you know, psychic connections or whatever. But sometimes
28:07
Speaker 3: when you see flocks of birds or bats or any
28:10
Speaker 3: kind of creatures like that migrating or moving in these
28:12
Speaker 3: tight patterns together, I just don't know, it seems very random.
28:17
Speaker 3: They would not. Obviously, they wouldn't have been able to
28:18
Speaker 3: control where they went. They would just hope that they
28:21
Speaker 3: went enough different places that this had actually caused them
28:24
Speaker 3: significant damage over a large area.
28:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a good question. Maybe there's an argument
28:32
Speaker 1: that the bats would be so disoriented, just waking up
28:35
Speaker 1: from hibernation, that they're just seeking a shelter. Yeah, you know,
28:39
Speaker 1: for now, it looks like the answer to that is
28:44
Speaker 1: still unclear in the modern day. Oh, we do have
28:48
Speaker 1: to mention also, people called this the Atoms Plan in
28:52
Speaker 1: common conversation when you know, when they weren't referring to
28:55
Speaker 1: it officially's Project X ray. But one of the things
28:58
Speaker 1: that they thought would be another great advantage was that
29:00
Speaker 1: the use of bats would be demoralizing, so there was
29:03
Speaker 1: some psyop here as well. All in all, there's a
29:07
Speaker 1: total of thirty demonstrations of this technology, of this plan
29:12
Speaker 1: and two million dollars spent over the period of development,
29:17
Speaker 1: with full scale bomber bat test planned for August nineteen
29:22
Speaker 1: forty four. However, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, who at
29:26
Speaker 1: the time was Chief of Naval Operations, learned that the
29:29
Speaker 1: bats would not be ready for combat until mid nineteen
29:32
Speaker 1: forty five. Well that's not going to five, right, He
29:35
Speaker 1: abruptly canceled the operation, and needless to say, doctor Adams
29:42
Speaker 1: was disappointed. There's also a little bit of interesting historical
29:45
Speaker 1: speculation here too, because there was another even more secret
29:50
Speaker 1: perhaps even more ambitious and insane project that Uncle Sam
29:54
Speaker 1: was pouring a ton of resources into.
29:57
Speaker 3: Yeah, unlikely needed every last penny. And that was the
30:00
Speaker 3: atomic bomb, which ultimately and tragically was used to end
30:05
Speaker 3: that conflict and then never again.
30:07
Speaker 1: The most powerful explosive device ever created at that time,
30:12
Speaker 1: which different from several thousand pets.
30:14
Speaker 3: Right.
30:15
Speaker 1: So doctor Adams, obviously this was a real bummer for
30:20
Speaker 1: a Pennsylvanian dentist.
30:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was understandably disappointed because this would have
30:24
Speaker 3: been his second big idea that seemed to be going
30:29
Speaker 3: somewhere and then ultimately didn't quite hit in the way
30:33
Speaker 3: that he wanted it to write, Ben Oh, yeah, because
30:35
Speaker 3: of air pickup.
30:36
Speaker 1: But this was these two ideas were not his only
30:40
Speaker 1: two ideas. Yeah, some other stuff, right.
30:43
Speaker 3: And then progressively I would say, you know, the bat bomb,
30:46
Speaker 3: between the bat bomb and the air pickup bat bomb
30:48
Speaker 3: was way more on the surface crackpot, even though it
30:51
Speaker 3: did have some function to it. But these these last
30:54
Speaker 3: ones that we're going to talk about are a little
30:56
Speaker 3: bit more on the kooky side. But you have clearly
30:59
Speaker 3: a forward thinking.
31:00
Speaker 1: And clearly has a thing about aviation and the power
31:03
Speaker 1: of flight. So he had this he later has this
31:07
Speaker 1: plan to use bombers to distribute seeds across the prairie
31:14
Speaker 1: land in hopes of revolutionizing agriculture. Right, that's that's pretty ambitious.
31:20
Speaker 1: It's also way less destructive. It's kind of the same
31:23
Speaker 1: thing as bombing places with bats, that's true.
31:27
Speaker 3: And then he had another idea, non aviation related.
31:29
Speaker 1: This is my favorite one.
31:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, where he thought it would be a good idea
31:33
Speaker 3: and people would flock to a fried chicken vending machine.
31:37
Speaker 1: I absolutely would, But how would you keep it fresh?
31:40
Speaker 1: It has to be like fried on demand. You would
31:43
Speaker 1: have to hit the button to make your request, and
31:47
Speaker 1: then it would have to be able to automatically fry.
31:50
Speaker 3: So it would be sort of like those coke machines
31:52
Speaker 3: where it picks up the bottle with like a little thing,
31:54
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it up and then drops it, only it
31:56
Speaker 3: would be like a hole. You get to watch your
31:58
Speaker 3: chicken being fried, and you have to are at one
32:00
Speaker 3: piece at a time. I want to know more about
32:02
Speaker 3: the logistics of this.
32:04
Speaker 1: Well, I want to tell you that someone has made
32:07
Speaker 1: this dream a reality. What yes, doctor Adams, If you
32:11
Speaker 1: are listening from the Eternal Hibernation of Death, this is
32:16
Speaker 1: something that hopefully will warm your heart. There is a
32:19
Speaker 1: vending machine that serves fried chicken in Japan. I don't
32:23
Speaker 1: know how it would feel about it, but it is
32:25
Speaker 1: in Japan. I mean obviously, of course all cool vending
32:29
Speaker 1: machines in Japan, and we know they love fried chicken too, yes,
32:32
Speaker 1: especially around Christmas. A Japanese convenience chain name Looston Incorporated
32:37
Speaker 1: is testing this machine out, or they were as of
32:41
Speaker 1: December of twenty eighteen. So this is breaking news. This
32:44
Speaker 1: comes to us through technobob and this is in Shinagawa
32:49
Speaker 1: Ward in Tokyo. The machine has technology that allows it
32:53
Speaker 1: to fry chicken in a little bit over a minute.
32:57
Speaker 1: But somehow they prepare the chicken and keep it warm
33:01
Speaker 1: until someone orders it to me. That's where it breaks down,
33:04
Speaker 1: because fried chicken, it's like French fries. It's like most
33:07
Speaker 1: fried food. You got to eat it when it's fresh.
33:10
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. That's why nobody wants gas station fried
33:13
Speaker 3: chicken sitting under that like hot lamp for god knows
33:15
Speaker 3: how long. No, No, it's got to be fresh and
33:17
Speaker 3: crispy and juicy and delicious.
33:19
Speaker 1: So we want to hear from you, fellow ridiculous historians
33:23
Speaker 1: out there in Japan, especially if you're in this area
33:26
Speaker 1: of Tokyo, because this trial only operated from I guess
33:32
Speaker 1: mid December to December twenty eighth, twenty eighteen. So right now,
33:37
Speaker 1: the good folks at Lass and Incorporated, we can only imagine,
33:41
Speaker 1: are studying the results of their fried chicken experiment, and
33:46
Speaker 1: you know what, I hope it works out. I am
33:49
Speaker 1: a big fan of venue machines and I would give
33:51
Speaker 1: it a shot. Even though if you look at the photo,
33:54
Speaker 1: there is one photo of this fried chicken from a
33:57
Speaker 1: vending machine, they look more like chicken nuggets then, you know,
34:00
Speaker 1: like a two piece or three piece. I don't know
34:02
Speaker 1: about you, ma'am, but I like my chicken bone in
34:04
Speaker 1: really yeaheah.
34:05
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of boneless fried chicken, but you know,
34:08
Speaker 3: you can't quite beat a freshly fried bone in bird.
34:13
Speaker 1: That's true. I wonder if we should do the history
34:16
Speaker 1: of vending machines as an episode. Wouldn't that be cool?
34:19
Speaker 3: I would love to hear about that. I have a
34:21
Speaker 3: feeling it started like on the boardwalks and the Carnie Times,
34:25
Speaker 3: you know, things like that. This is just speculation on
34:27
Speaker 3: my part, but I think that's a great idea, Ben.
34:29
Speaker 1: I don't wonder where I would start, because there were
34:31
Speaker 1: some places in We may have talked about this in
34:34
Speaker 1: previous episode Noo, but I know there were some places
34:38
Speaker 1: in England centuries and centuries ago where it was like
34:42
Speaker 1: a manual vending machine. You would walk up to a
34:44
Speaker 1: wall and then you would knock or slide a penny
34:47
Speaker 1: or something across, and then someone would just hand you
34:49
Speaker 1: I think a small cup of gin.
34:51
Speaker 3: Nice. According to Doctor Internet, the first vending machine came
34:55
Speaker 3: out in the eighteen eighties in London and it was
34:58
Speaker 3: for purchasing post guards and it was invented by Percival Everett.
35:03
Speaker 3: But you know, there's a long and story history of
35:05
Speaker 3: vending machines as they evolved over time. How we came
35:08
Speaker 3: from back bombs to vending machines. I guess we're talking
35:10
Speaker 3: about forward thinking, innovative types, you know. Yes, yes, let's
35:15
Speaker 3: let's definitely do history of any machine episodes.
35:17
Speaker 1: Let's definitely do it. Let us know about your favorite
35:19
Speaker 1: vending machine, let us know about your favorite seemingly crackpot
35:23
Speaker 1: military scheme, because oh buddy, this is only scratching the surface.
35:29
Speaker 1: The US military and other militaries have attempted to use
35:32
Speaker 1: dolphins for wartime efforts, cats for spying. I think rats
35:38
Speaker 1: as well for something.
35:39
Speaker 3: We did an episode on this.
35:40
Speaker 1: We did an.
35:40
Speaker 3: Episode here on this, oh about the skinner boxes and
35:45
Speaker 3: a sideshow kind of carnival TV show. Yeah, there was
35:50
Speaker 3: like a whole farm where they took these animals that
35:52
Speaker 3: they had trained for military purposes and like made money
35:54
Speaker 3: with the chicken that would peck the.
35:56
Speaker 4: Yeah or whatever.
35:57
Speaker 1: How time flies really does?
35:59
Speaker 3: We've been doing for like over a year now, have we?
36:02
Speaker 3: I don't think we ever acknowledged the year anniversary, but
36:04
Speaker 3: it is coming gone.
36:05
Speaker 1: Making a show like this is sort of like in
36:09
Speaker 1: all those classic cartoons where Elmer Fudd or Wiley Coyote
36:14
Speaker 1: or you know, Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny when they
36:17
Speaker 1: walk off the cliff and they just keep walking until
36:21
Speaker 1: they look down. Just don't look down.
36:23
Speaker 3: I call it critical mass. Critical mass. You know, you
36:26
Speaker 3: do something you just kind of like have this trajectory
36:29
Speaker 3: and you just never look back, And as long as
36:31
Speaker 3: you don't look back, you kind of forget what's going
36:32
Speaker 3: on or how time passes.
36:34
Speaker 1: Now we're going into philosophy as well, but well said
36:38
Speaker 1: and we hope that you enjoy this episode. We do
36:41
Speaker 1: want to hear these answers. I will look at pictures
36:44
Speaker 1: of your favorite vending machines or the most unusual vending
36:47
Speaker 1: machines until the stars collapse and the universe meets its end.
36:54
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Thank you so much for tuning in.
36:57
Speaker 1: Thanks to our super producer Pegram.
37:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks to Alex Williams who composed our theme. Thanks
37:03
Speaker 3: to our research associate Gabe, and we're gonna try a
37:06
Speaker 3: new thing. Hey, if you want to check out me
37:07
Speaker 3: and Ben's individual exploit. Since our show Instagram account is
37:12
Speaker 3: not the most fascinating in the world, you can check
37:14
Speaker 3: me out at Embryonic Insider on Instagram.
37:18
Speaker 1: And you can find me at Ben Bullen on Instagram. Yes,
37:22
Speaker 1: in a burst of creativity, folks, The newest thing that
37:26
Speaker 1: I have up is maybe the Saturn five wago replica
37:32
Speaker 1: that I built this weekend, which is huge, very impressive.
37:35
Speaker 3: It's weird.
37:36
Speaker 1: You can find us on our respect to Instagram. You
37:39
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter. You can also find us
37:41
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Perhaps most importantly, you can find your fellow
37:44
Speaker 1: Ridiculous historians on our Facebook community page, Ridiculous historians.
37:49
Speaker 3: And please tune into our next episode where we talk
37:52
Speaker 3: about the ridiculous origins of state name, specifically Idaho. We'll
37:57
Speaker 3: see it m