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, Project X-Ray was an unconventional US military plan, conceived by a dentist, to weaponize Mexican free-tailed bats by attaching small incendiary devices to them and dropping them over Japanese cities to cause widespread fires.
The plan involved refrigerating bats to induce hibernation for bomb attachment, then deploying them in canisters designed to open mid-air.
However, the project faced numerous challenges due to a lack of understanding of bat behavior, leading to issues like bats failing to wake, premature deployment, and accidental fires on the testing base.
Ultimately, Project X-Ray was canceled in 1944, with no bats ever deployed, as military focus shifted to developing 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.