Bat Bombs

A dentist friend of Eleanor Roosevelt proposed bat bombs. He said that not only were the Japanese terrified of bats, but bats could also roost in difficult to access areas of Japanese buildings. Combine this with a timed incendiary device and the wood-and-rice-paper construction of Japanese buildings would cause catastrophic damage. The Army Air Force spent six months trying to build bat bombs and achieved little aside from burning down the test range at Carlsbad Army Air Field Auxiliary Air Base when some of the bats escaped, nested under a fuel tank, and exploded 6,000 miles from the intended target. After the debacle at Carlsbad, the USAAF fobbed the project off to the Navy, who wisely passed it along to the Marines. To everyone's surprise, the Marine Corps was able to get the project to work, even carrying out a successful test at Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Unfortunately, the project lost out to the atomic bomb and was canceled in early 1944.