Project X-Ray: When the U.S. Military Enlisted Bats

Meg Godlewski

Tuesday, May 03, 2022 at 12:48 PM ET

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The Mexican free-tailed bat was chosen because of its sheer abundance. [Courtesy: U.S. Department of the Interior]

Key Takeaways:

During WWII, a dentist proposed "Project X-Ray" to weaponize Mexican free-tailed bats by attaching small incendiary devices, with the aim of dropping them over Japanese cities to cause widespread fires in their wooden and paper structures.
The plan involved capturing thousands of bats, inducing hibernation to attach time-delayed incendiary bombs, and deploying them from canisters, but tests were plagued with practical challenges.
These challenges included bats dying, escaping, crashing, and even accidentally setting U.S. military base structures on fire, leading to the project's cancellation in 1944 as focus shifted to the atomic bomb.

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During wartime, there is no shortage of experimental airborne weapons. Some, like the so-called dam-busting bomb, are successful. Others, like the one that attempted to turn Mexican free-tail bats into weapons of war, not so much.

How it Happened

In January of 1942, America was reeling from the attack on Pearl Harbor a month earlier, and the military was scrambling for ways to defend the United States.