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

Summary

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

Podcast: Ridiculous History
Hosts: Ben Bowlin, Noel Brown
Episode Date: November 8, 2025
Theme: The bizarre WWII U.S. military experiment to use bats as bomb delivery systems, a.k.a. “bat bombs.”

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into one of the strangest tales from WWII: the United States military’s serious attempt to weaponize bats by strapping miniature incendiary bombs to them, with the goal of inflicting widespread fire damage on Japanese cities. Through their classic banter, Ben and Noel explore the twisted intersection of desperation, creativity, and outright absurdity that characterized the war and the people swept up in it.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Genesis: An Odd Inspiration (06:38–13:25)

• Enter Dr. Lytle S. Adams:
  Dr. Adams, a Pennsylvania dentist with a penchant for quirky inventions, is introduced as the mind behind the bat bomb idea. After witnessing a breathtaking swarm of bats at Carlsbad Caverns, Adams is struck by inspiration when he later hears of the Pearl Harbor attack (11:21). He pieces together the vision of bats and the urgency for a U.S. response, birthing his infamous proposal.

  "He combines this vision...of these bats and this desire for revenge into a coherent plan. And less than a month later...he sends his plan to the White House." – Ben (12:34)

• Pitch to Power:
  Despite being “just a regular Joe,” Adams gets his bat bomb proposal in front of the White House, possibly thanks to his personal connection with Eleanor Roosevelt (21:04).

2. The “Logic” Behind Bat Bombs (13:25–24:20)

• The Idea:
  Adams proposes strapping timed incendiary devices to bats, which would be released over Japanese cities to seek shelter in wooden structures, setting off thousands of fires simultaneously.
  The plan hinges on American assumptions (and stereotypes) about Japanese architecture—namely, that buildings are made of highly flammable materials (22:38).

  “Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of 40 miles in diameter...Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life.” – Ben quoting Adams (23:58)

• Desperation Breeds Creativity:
  The hosts liken the military’s openness to wild ideas to throwing “spaghetti at the wall”—sheer desperation in search of any edge or advantage (08:03).

3. From Drawing Board to Implementation (24:39–32:22)

• Finding the Right Bats:
  The team, including naturalists from the Hancock Foundation, scoured over 1,000 caves and 3,000 mines for ideal species—settling on the tiny, plentiful Mexican free-tailed bat (27:43).

  “When these bats left the cave...it took five hours for them to all leave out of the cave, flying in a dense stream 15 ft in diameter.” – Ben (28:12)

  Mexican free-tails were chosen for their numbers and ability to carry a 1-ounce bomb—just enough to ignite fires without burdening the animal.

• Technical Challenges:
  The military wrestled with logistics: inducing hibernation (using ice-cube trays!) so the bats would wake up in Japan instead of mid-flight, designing release containers, and timing the detonators (31:14, 30:03).

  “What they ultimately decided to do was to stick the bats in ice cube trays. Again, these are very small...They weigh less than an ounce.” – Ben (32:09)

4. Testing and Mishaps (37:30–41:30)

• Real-World Testing:
  Once passed to the Marine Corps, the scheme was tested at a replica Japanese village built in Utah’s Dugway Proving Grounds.
  Early mishaps included accidentally burning down a general’s car and starting fires in unintended places (37:59). Despite technical snafus, testers recognized the concept worked in theory: bats could start hidden fires in enemy structures (38:34).

  “A reasonable number of destructive fires can be started in spite of the extremely small size of the units.” – Ben reading a military report (39:03)

  But controlling where bats roosted was an unsolvable problem.

• Psychological Warfare:
  The use of bats was also pitched as a means to demoralize the enemy — imagine the terror and confusion of mysterious fires caused by living creatures (40:34).

5. Cancellation: The Age of the Atom (41:30–41:53)

• When admiralty realized the bats would not be ready for use until mid-1945, the project was abruptly scrapped in favor of the atomic bomb program. Total cost: $2 million, 30 tests, and untold numbers of bat casualties.

  “He abruptly canceled the operation. And needless to say, Dr. Adams was disappointed.” – Ben (41:31)

6. The Rest of Dr. Adams’ Career & Legacy (42:18–46:26)

• More “Forward-Thinking” Ideas:
  Adams wasn’t done dreaming: he also pitched using bombers to sow seeds across prairies and invented a fried chicken vending machine (43:22, 43:27).

  “He thought it would be a good idea and people would flock to a fried chicken vending machine.” – Noel (43:27)

• Modern Echoes:
  The vending machine dream did come true in Japan decades later (44:06).

7. Broader Reflections (47:13–End)

• On Military Eccentricity:
  This bat story is just the tip of the iceberg—U.S. military has tried everything from training dolphins to spy cats and rats.

• Call for Listener Input:
  The hosts invite listeners to share their favorite outlandish military schemes and vending machine histories.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “War is a huge driver of horror and also scientific and medical innovation....Everything can go on the drawing board, even if...they’re desperate and stupid ideas.” – Ben (01:21)
• “He thinks it’d be a swell idea to strap tiny bombs to bats, release them...in the hopes that they will roost...and then be detonated, causing chaos.” – Noel (13:25)
• “The main advantage...would seem to be their placement in enemy structures without the knowledge of the householder or fire watchers.” – Ben reading military report (39:03)
• “Wouldn’t they all go to one place?...They wouldn’t have been able to control where they went.” – Noel, questioning practical hurdles (39:45)
• “The use of bats would be demoralizing. So there was some psyop here as well.” – Ben (40:34)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment | |--------------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------| | 06:38–13:25 | Dr. Adams’ inspiration and personal background | | 13:25–24:20 | Original proposal: mechanics and military reasoning | | 24:39–32:22 | Species selection & project logistics | | 37:30–41:30 | Testing phase, mishaps, psychological warfare angle | | 41:30–41:53 | Project X-Ray cancellation, Manhattan Project context | | 42:18–46:26 | Adams’ other inventions (seed bombing, chicken vending machine) | | 47:13–End | Broader theme of wacky war experiments, call for feedback |

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Final Thoughts

The episode provides a tongue-in-cheek yet informative look at the desperation, creativity, and frequent absurdity of wartime innovation. From the peculiar life of Dr. Adams to the logistical nightmares of “bat bombs,” Ben and Noel explore the U.S. military’s willingness to entertain—and in this case pursue—ideas often best left in comic books. It’s a reminder that history is as much about the plans that didn’t come to fruition as those that did.

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Further Listening / Reading

• Mentioned article: “Old Weird the Bat Bombs of World War II” by Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic.
• “Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know” sister podcast – for more animal warfare oddities.
• Classic John Mulaney bit about the making of “Back to the Future” (paralleling harebrained ideas and Hollywood).

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Transcript

[A]

Fellow ridiculous historians, we're back with a classic. I'm Ben Bolan. Our colleague Noel Brown is on adventures. We'll be returning soon. And look, I gotta shout you out, super producer Mr. Max Williams. You and I were talking off air, as we do pretty often, about just how bizarre World War II was.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, it's honestly become kind of a pet interest of mine. And it spun from working on this show about, you know, in world. In, you know, the European theater, there was actual fighting and land on each other's countries like that. But when it became the United States and Japan, there was never really fighting on either continental land between those countries. So there was a lot of really weird ideas they had throughout the years of how to either attack the other one or defend from an attack. So like, you know, we have the episode, most recent one I'm pretty sure about, like them building fake towns on bomber factories or like them fighting like battles on worthless like frozen tundra islands in the North Pacific or obviously the balloon bomb episode, which is from before this. And so then like reading this, it's like World War II bat bombs. Okay, World War II, we.

[A]

They kept trying. Look, war is a huge driver of horror and also scientific and medical innovation. So if you go to your average doctor's office or to your average space launch center, as I'm sure we all do, then a lot of the amazing technology you see is directly descended from the atrocities of warfare. Really, most modern war is a war of tiny edges, right? It's a war of seeking any possible advantage. Everything can go on the drawing board. Even if we understand that most of the stuff will never leave that drawing board because they're frankly, desperate and stupid ideas. So this involves, of course, a long running obsession of our sister shows, stuff they don't want you to know. The idea of weaponizing animals, right? Ever since empires of old just ran over enemy forces with elephants, people were trying to figure out how to leverage the natural world to military advantage. And it is true. Uncle Sam, once upon a time spent millions of dollars trying to take bats, like little bats, not baseball bats, the anim, the mammals bats and strapping explosive devices on them and then launching them en masse across Japanese cities. Now, again, this is a drawing board idea, but as we'll learn in this classic episode from 2019, it might have actually worked. So how close do we get? We'll tell you in this classic episode.

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[A]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show ridiculous historians. What the heck are we talking about? Well, we're about to tell you. Hello, my name is Ben.

[B]

My name is Noel. Ben. You know, we did that before with Knifeman.

[A]

Yes, it's just a great. It's a great musical device.

[B]

It really is.

[A]

That goes into anything with two syllables.

[B]

I'm into it.

[A]

Oh, and I'm also into our super producer, Casey Pegram. We were off air today, just about to jump into the studio and Casey, I don't know. Have you ever heard of bat bombs? I have not, no. I have no idea what this episode's about.

[B]

Unless it's guano.

[A]

That's the only bat bomb I can think of. Hey, that was good.

[B]

Yeah. No, and funny enough, I think guano is actually quite flammable and could be potentially used in explosives.

[A]

And guano is also quite valuable.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

We did an episode for a different show on a cannibal cave you can find at Si Te Cah. We did an episode on cannibal cave that was discovered because of some unscrupulous guano mine. Bats have actually played a surprisingly influential role in U.S. history at various times. And also bats are one of those creatures that are up close. A lot of bats that I've run into are pretty gross, but they're still just from a biological perspective. Amazing.

[B]

They are amazing. And there is a YouTube video or Instagram video or one of those videos where someone's handling a bat and it's a particularly cute bat. So they have the potential to be both terrifying and adorable.

[A]

Is it a fruit bat?

[B]

It must have been.

[A]

So there's so many different types of bat, and today we are talking about a type of plan that the US made with bats. This is. Okay, so we have to go in two different directions here, right? And maybe tie them together as we continue. First, it's no secret to any fan of history or to anyone who's perused the adventures of the US Military, that the US Military, like many other militaries, has kind of a spaghetti at the wall approach to developing new stuff. And most of the time, it doesn't work out. You know?

[B]

You know, this reminds me of Ben. It's sort of like the Hollywood studio system, where you might just have some intern in an office just pitch some crazy idea that an executive happens to hear, and he's like, you know what? That's just crazy enough to work.

[A]

That's a good point. This reminds me of a clip that we cannot, for legal reasons, play in full for you, but we can tell you what it is and go check it out on YouTube. After this show, John Mulaney has a great bit about how Back to the Future became a film. Did you ever see that, Noel?

[B]

I don't think I did, no.

[A]

Oh man. Okay, well we can't stop the show. I wish I could just play this for you now. Google it. I'll send you the link. It is exactly what you were talking about. And that is a very good comparison to the approach that the, the military has taken at times. Today our story starts well, it really gets running toward the end of World War II, thanks to a guy named Dr. Little Adams or Lytle Adams.

[B]

I'm going to go with Little. Gotta be Little. You gotta look Little Adams.

[A]

L, Y T L E. Yeah, I think that's why I'm giving him space to be Lytle Adams too, just in case because I don't know, like, would you want to be walking around called Lil Brown? Yeah. You would be into that?

[B]

Absolutely. I support that wholeheartedly.

[A]

So Dr. Adams doesn't begin life as a mad scientist for Uncle Sam. He starts life in Irwin, Pennsylvania. And for a long time he works as a dentist.

[B]

Before that, presumably as a baby.

[A]

Yes. Yeah. No, he began life as a middle aged dentist.

[B]

That's crazy.

[A]

Common medical condition.

[B]

Is that like, is that like Benjamin Button?

[A]

Sort of, yeah. Benjamin Button is, is loosely based on the adventures of the dentist Dr. Adams.

[B]

Now the adventures of Little Adams. That sounds like a fun rollicking good time.

[A]

That sounds like a real romp, doesn't it? So here's what happened in real life, Dr. Adams. And you might not see this unless you watch the directors cut a Benjamin Button. Dr. Adams is driving home from a vacation at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. And while he's driving home, he is haunted by this vision. He saw this amazing spectacle. He watched bats leaving the caves of Carlsbad Caverns. We've seen those clips of bats leaving en masse. Right, right, right. Little round twilight or so.

[B]

Like a hive mind operating on some kind of crazy psychic connection.

[A]

And he watched millions of these bats fly out. And as he was driving he was thinking, wow, that was such an amazing thing. There were so many bats, I had no idea the sheer magnitude of nature in all its glory. And he probably, we're speculating a little here, but he probably goes, ah, all right, well it's a long drive from New Mexico to Pennsylvania. I'm going to turn on my car radio, I'm going to get the news, hear some tunes and that's when he hears the terrible news. He's listening on December 7, 1941. That's when he hears the terrible news that Japan has just attacked Pearl Harbor.

[B]

Yeah. And much like you and I remember likely where we were when the attacks on September 11 took place, everyone in this country likely does very similar experience to Pearl Harbor. When people first heard that news, it was like a slap in the face. It was a real emotional response that people had to this event. And that was the case for Dr. Adams. And he kind of oddly combined that emotional response with the vision of swarming bats that he had just seen, kind.

[A]

Of in a Bruce Wayne esque way. When he discovers the cave right below Wayne Manor. That's a little bit of a spoiler for anybody who has never heard words or seen comics. It's true. So we have to imagine how insane this drive must have been. It's not a short drive home. So is it any wonder that he was left alone with his thoughts and just kept combining and recombining his recent experiences? Either way, it doesn't take him long to take action. He combines this vision, as you said, of these bats and this desire for revenge into a coherent plan. And less than a month later, mid January, January 12, 1942, he sends his plan to the White House. What does he say? What's the pitch?

[B]

Yeah, he thinks it'd be a swell idea to strap tiny bombs to bats, release them, and in the hopes that they will roost in the eaves and various locations of Japanese cities, at which point they would be detonated, causing chaos across the land. But real quick, this was not the first such idea that Dr. Adams had. He actually came up with in 1939, an idea for a plane that could do mail pickups midair. And so he kind of had a history of being something of a tinkerer, even though his trade was in the dental profession.

[A]

Yes, that's a really good point. This is not a once in a lifetime innovation or bright idea for him. He has several ideas that would seem, at the very least, unorthodox. Right. To mainstream humanity.

[B]

Yeah. Bringing it back to Batman. This mid air pickup idea was very similar to Operation Skyhook in the, I believe, Batman Begins movie. Is that right?

[A]

It is in the Dark Knight.

[B]

Dark Knight, that's right. When they sort of extract Bruce Wayne from a Japanese high rise with this hook and they pull him out with this. And he came up with this idea while serving in the Navy during World War I. And it consisted of these two kind of vertical walls that made a V shape at the narrow end of which a weighted cable was trailing. And this is underneath the airplane. And as it passed, it would engage in an object to be picked up and then lifted and extracted. So very similar to Skyhook, actually.

[A]

He also, I believe, depleted a lot of his own fortune and personal savings pursuing this. Until he met Richard Dupont of the Dupont Duponts.

[B]

The Dupont Duponts, yes.

[A]

And wasn't it designed to like Never Land?

[B]

Yeah, exactly, because he figured there was. This wasn't like a completely unique idea, but the notion was that a lot of time and effort was wasted when the planes were landing and they had to refuel. So this system in theory would allow it to refuel in the air, pick up fuel reserves from the ground, or even from a passing train they could coordinate. And specifically for long distance mail pickups and freight and things like that. I don't know. I know it was patented, but it certainly never hit in the way that he hoped it would. But fast forward to World War II. Let's go back to the pitch. How was he able to get an audience with the White House in the first place? He was not exactly like, he didn't work for them. He was just kind of a regular Joe who was a tinkerer on the side. And this whole mid flight refueling, mail pickup scheme never really gained too much momentum. So he didn't really have a reputation as being someone the government should turn to during times of war.

[A]

Would you say it never got off the ground?

[B]

I would say that, man. Oh, but you said it first.

[A]

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[A]

He did manage to shout above the din, the cacophony of people with unsolicited suggestions, plans and schemes. We have to imagine, of course, how many people would be writing directly to the White House saying, here's what we do. And it may be worth our time in another episode to look at some of the most unorthodox World War II revenge schemes. But Adams had an edge. He had a very important friend. That's right. This is somewhat a story about nepotism. You see, Adams happened to know a woman by the name of Eleanor Roosevelt. He had flown her to check out his airmail scheme previously. Right. And because they had this previous relationship, historians speculate that's the way he was able to get his voice heard. And his idea, his pitch. Right, the one that you established earlier, Noel, about dropping these bats in Japanese cities. It made more sense than it might sound at first blush. Because of Japanese architecture. Right, yeah.

[B]

Tell us more about that, Ben. And it's not something I had quite considered because I was wondering how were they to get into all of these little nooks and crannies? If, you know, it seems like it would take time for them to work their way into the eaves of homes as we know it. But I believe the architecture in Japan was a little more open and possibly more accessible to these small creatures. And they were quite small.

[A]

They were quite small, yes. So this pitch hinged on some stereotypes about Japan at the time, one of those concerning the architecture in the mind of many Americans, policymakers and civilians alike, Japan was a country composed of crowded cities filled with houses and factories made of paper and wood. And that's their vision of traditional Japanese architecture. So the argument there might be that flying bats with small incendiary devices into a city where most things are built of stone or concrete, that won't do much. Right. It takes an enormous amount of heat to damage that stuff. But paper and wood could catch fire with a relatively small amount of flame.

[B]

But also, wouldn't it have something to do with how easy and quickly it might have been for the bats to work their way into these structures? They weren't, like, sealed, airtight, quite in the way we would think of a traditional American home. Right.

[A]

Well, they thought that would fly into those, like, picture a traditional Japanese tile roof.

[B]

Right.

[A]

They thought they would fly into the eaves of those roofs.

[B]

I see.

[A]

And that this would. This would get them close enough to the paper walls.

[B]

Gotcha.

[A]

And wooden walls.

[B]

That makes sense.

[A]

So we have a quote from him. Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of 40 miles in diameter for every dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life, which doesn't really make sense because when cities catch on fire, a lot of people die. So I guess he was.

[B]

Maybe he was talking about American lives.

[A]

Yeah, that's probably. That's. Oof. That's. Unfortunately, it sounds very accurate because, I.

[B]

Mean, obviously the bats were on suicide missions here, so that's. You know, I don't imagine PETA would approve this plan today.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Let's take a second maybe, and talk about the bats. What do you say?

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

All right. So once the project gets the green light, and again, please listen to that John Mulaney Back to the Future bit. It's worth it won't ruin it for you. Once the project gets the green light, somehow. Dr. Adams gathers a team of naturalists from the Hancock Foundation University, California, and they start investigating likely sites where they could gather large quantities of bats. As we know, bats are mostly found in caves, but a ton of them roost in attics, barns, houses, bridges, anywhere they can get it and fit it. Right?

[B]

That's right. It's funny. Casey and I actually attempted to capture a mass exodus of bats like this on video in Austin. There's this bridge that's referred to as the bat Bridge, where every night at a certain time, all of these bats that nest under this bridge, or they kind of just hang out there during the day, go out to feed at night, because they're nocturnal animals. But we waited there for an awful long time and they never emerged. So I cannot offer a firsthand account of this, but I have been told that it does happen.

[A]

Yes, it's true. I don't know if I have revealed this to you guys, but years and years ago, one of my childhood homes actually did have a bat Infestation in the attic. And I happened to live in a room that adjoined the attic. And I was surprised to find that at least here in Georgia, you cannot kill the bats. You have to essentially wait for them to leave or compel them to leave whatever area they're roosting.

[B]

You mean legally?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yeah. And you then find whatever hidey holes or ingress egress points they're using and block those with the hope being that vampire rules. They'll find a new place to sleep before dawn.

[B]

That's terrifying. I didn't know that. So that you can't treat them like you would like any other household infestation?

[A]

No, no, no, no, no. Because they're so good for the ecosystem as well. Interesting.

[B]

I had no idea about that.

[A]

So they go. Adams. Not the bats that I used to live with. They, they go around scouring these areas to find the best possible large quantity of bats suitable for this project. According to Adams, they visit 1,000 caves and 3,000 mines. And Adams says speed was so imperative that we generally drove all day and night. When we weren't exploring caves, we slept in cars taking turns at driving. One car on our search team covered 350,000 miles. And then they started cataloging the types of bats they found. And they were looking for the ideal combination of bat size, which would dictate the amount of explosive the bat could carry versus bat quantity. How many bats of that type could they find? Because you know, if you found like 12 bats that were large enough to carry 8 pounds of dynamite, you know, good for those bats. But that's not really going to do anything to a Japanese city on a large scale the way they were hoping.

[B]

That's very true. And then just, just a little detail here. These were Mexican free tailed bats they decided on because of their s and their availability. And so in March of 1943, this is backtracking just a little bit. The U.S. air Force decided they wanted to investigate this. There was a letter that was drafted to formally announce the pursuing of this.

[A]

Like a memo.

[B]

And it was called Test of method to Scatter Incendiaries. It was also referred to as Project.

[A]

X Ray Way cool name. Uses Mexican free tailed bats. The other bats they tried were things like the mastiff. The mastiff bat is huge. It has a 20 inch wingspan. It can carry one pound of dynamite. But the problem was they couldn't find enough of these bats. And then they found another bat, the mule eared or common pallet bat that could carry 3 ounces. But naturalists said there's no way these guys will survive the strange process we're going to subject them to. And when they found the free tailed bat, the main reason they went with it is because it could travel with a 1oz bomb over a relatively short distance, even though it only weighed a third of an ounce. And they found 20 to 30 million of them in a cave in nay Cave near Bandera, Texas. And it was so large, this kind of ties into the adventure that Noel Ewing Casey had in Austin. It was so large that when these bats left the cave, it took five hours for them to all leave out of the cave. Flying in a dense stream, 15ft in diameter and so closely packed that they could barely flap their wings.

[B]

Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, obviously these must be very powerful creatures in terms of their ability to like ants. They always say they can carry 10 times their body weight or whatever. This must be a similar case, although they had to take the weight into consideration when they figured out which bats to use and what amount of incendiaries would pack the most punch. And I'm guessing that it was all considered, like you said, it wouldn't take a whole lot. They weren't gonna level a building with these bats. They were gonna start a little flame that was then going to catch it on fire and they were gonna do them all at once. But Ben, did you catch anywhere in your research how they were planning to detonate these bat bombs like all at once or was it on a timer?

[A]

Or timer.

[B]

It was on a timer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That makes the most sense.

[A]

That's the best way to do it.

[B]

You know, that is the best way to do it. So they finally settled on these Mexican free tail bats. And there was a lot of consideration for various stages of this process. Right. Like the questions we were just asking, how to transport them, how to deploy them, et cetera. What were some of the things that they sort of figured out during this process, Ben?

[A]

Sure, sure. So this project, when it gets a cool name, the army says, wait, we want projects with cool names. So the project is transferred to the army and they start capturing these thousands and thousands of Mexican free tailed bats at cavern governs all around the southwest United States. They wanted to figure out how to get these things from the location where they are, you know, attached to these bombs, these incendiary devices, and then transport them without blowing anything up and then deploying them so that they don't blow up until they're supposed to. The first thing they had to figure out was how to keep the Bats calm. And that is when they decided to induce hibernation in the bats.

[B]

This is interesting.

[A]

This is something that might surprise some people. Bats actually do hibernate, which makes it a little bit less inhumane. You know what I mean? Bats hibernate from late fall until spring. So October, November to March and April. And I'm just realizing this now. No bats are listening to this podcast right now.

[B]

It's probably better that way. Okay.

[A]

This could be triggering until summer or spring. Yes. So we know that they will hibernate typically in the same environments in which they roost, but they roost in caves, in mines and attics and stuff like that. So how do you strap an explosive device to them or incendiary device and then convince them to hibernate on a plane? What they ultimately decided to do was to stick the bats in ice cube trays. Again, these are very small. They only weigh about. They weigh less than ounce.

[B]

But surely not the kind of ice cube trays you and I are used to. I mean that's, that's way too small. One little compartment in an ice cube tray that would go in our freezer.

[A]

All my ice cube trays are specifically designed to fit bats.

[B]

That's fair.

[A]

It's pretty unfair to the bats.

[B]

But would the, would the explosives be strapped to them already at this point or would they have to like put them on after they woke them up? This whole thing seems like a logistical nightmare. And it seems like stuff that they didn't consider up front when they said, hey, this guy's onto something.

[A]

Well, it seems like a lot of bats probably died in the, in the process of figuring out the best way to do this.

[B]

Well, and ultimately these were suicide bats anyway, so they were all destined for death.

[A]

Right?

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[A]

They also had to figure out how to release these bats in midair. So they thought, we'll have a cardboard container that automatically opens and releases the bats. And they were trying to figure out how to do this. They spent a lot of time working out the perfect order of operations. And then they took it to real testing. They took it off the drawing board into the world. And they found out that there was a lot of stuff they needed to work on.

[B]

Oh, yeah, a lot of kinks. There's an article in the Atlantic called Old Weird the Bat Bombs of World War II by Alexis C. Madrigal. And in this article she talks about some of the unfortunate mishaps that occurred when they really started doing real world testing. One of which involved a general's car that was exploded, basically burned, and also an airplane hangar that sustained some pretty serious damage. They did pass this off to the Marine Corps and the testing continued.

[A]

Yeah. So when they passed it to the Marine Corps In December of 1943, the operation was moved to the Marine Corps Air Station, El Centro, California. The definitive test was carried out after several experiments on what they called a Japanese village. It was a mock up of a Japanese city built by the Chemical Warfare Service at their Dugway Proving Grounds test site in Utah. And this test produced not terrible results. So the chief of incendiary testing at Dugway wrote, a reasonable number of destructive fires can be started in spite of the extremely small size of the units. Those are the bats. The main advantage of the units would seem to be their placement the enemy structures without the knowledge of the householder or fire watchers, thus allowing the fire to establish itself before being discovered. So what they're saying is when they get into these attics and these eaves, it is highly unlikely that somebody will notice this very, very tiny, tiny, tiny furry creature. And they probably won't notice the fire until it's too late.

[B]

My question, though is we know the way bats behave. Wouldn't they all go to one place? Like, what was causing, what was leading them to go to disperse. To disperse? Cause it doesn't seem like that's what bats typically do. It seems like they kind of like have that hive mind quality to it. I was joking when I said they have, you know, psychic connections or whatever. But sometimes when you see flocks of birds or bats or any kind of creatures like that migrating or moving in these tight patterns together, I just don't know. It seems very random. They would not. Obviously they wouldn't have been able to control where they went. They would just hope that they went enough different places that this has actually caused some significant damage over a large area.

[A]

Yeah, it's a good question. Maybe there's an argument that the bats would be so disoriented just waking up from hibernation, that they're just seeking a shelter.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, for now, it looks like the answer to that is still unclear in the modern day. Oh, we do have to mention also, people called this the Adams plan in common conversation when, you know, when they weren't referring to it officially as Project X Ray. But one of the things that they thought would be another great advantage was that the use of bats would be demoralizing. So there was some psyop here as well. All in all, there's a total of 30 demonstrations of this technology, this plan, and $2 million spent over the period of development, with full scale bomber batt test planned for August 1944. However, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, who at the time was chief of naval operations, learned that the bats would not be ready for combat until mid-1945.

[B]

That's not gonna fly.

[A]

Right. He abruptly canceled the operation. And needless to say, Dr. Adams was disappointed. There's also a little bit of interesting historical speculation here too, because there was another even more secret, perhaps even more ambitious and insane project that Uncle Sam was pouring a ton of resources into.

[B]

Yeah. And likely needed every last penny. And that was the atomic bomb, which ultimately and tragically was used to end that conflict and then never again.

[A]

The most powerful explosive device ever created at that time. Much different from several thousand pats. Right. So Dr. Adams, obviously this was a real bummer for our Pennsylvanian dentist.

[B]

Yeah. And he was understandably disappointed because this would have been his second big idea that seemed to be going somewhere and then ultimately didn't quite hit in the way that he wanted it to. Right. Ben.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Because of air pickup. But these two ideas were not his only two ideas. Yeah, it's some other stuff. Right.

[B]

And progressively I would say, you know, the bat bomb, between the bat bomb and the air pickup bat bomb was way more on the surface. Crackpot. Even though it did have some function to it. But these last ones that we're gonna talk about are a little bit more on the kooky side. But clearly a forward thinking man and.

[A]

Clearly has a thing about aviation and the power of flight. So he had this. He later has this plan to use bombers to distribute seeds across the prairie land in hopes of revolutionizing agriculture. Right. That's pretty ambitious. It's also way less destructive. It's kind of the same thing as bombing places with bats.

[B]

That's true. And then he had another idea, non aviation related.

[A]

This is my favorite one.

[B]

Yeah. Where he thought it would be a good idea and people would. Would flock to a fried chicken vending machine.

[A]

I absolutely would.

[B]

But how would you keep it fresh?

[A]

It has to be like fried on demand. You would have to hit the button, make your request, and then it would have to be able to automatically fry the steak.

[B]

So it would be sort of like those Coke machines where it picks up the bottle with like a little thing and lifts it up and then drops it. Only it would be like a whole. You get to watch your chicken being fried and you'd have to order it one piece at a time. I want to know more about the logistics of this.

[A]

Well, I want to tell you that someone has made this dream a reality.

[B]

What?

[A]

Yes, Dr. Adams, if you are listening from the eternal hibernation of death, this is something that hopefully will warm your heart. There is a vending machine that serves fried chicken.

[B]

Is it in Japan?

[A]

I don't know how he would feel about it, but it is in Japan. I mean, obviously, of course, all cool vending machines are in Japan.

[B]

And we know they love fried chicken too.

[A]

Yes. Especially around Christmas. Japanese convenience chain in Lawson Incorporated is testing this machine out, or they were as of December of 2018. So this is breaking news. This comes to us through technobob. And this is in Shinagawa Ward in Tokyo. The machine has technology that allows it to fry a chicken in a little bit over a minute. But somehow they prepare the chicken and keep it warm until someone orders it. To me, that's where it breaks down.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because fried chicken, it's like French fries. It's like most fried food, you gotta eat it when it's fresh.

[B]

Yeah, that's true. That's why nobody wants gas station fried chicken sitting under that like hot lamp for God knows how long. No, no, it's gotta be fresh and crispy and juicy and delicious.

[A]

So we want to hear from you fellow ridiculous historians out there in Japan, especially if you're in this area of Tokyo, because this trial only oper operated from I guess mid December to December 28, 2018. So right now the good folks at Lawson Incorporated, we can only imagine are studying the results of their fried chicken experiment. And you know what? I hope it works out. I am a big fan of vending machines and I would give it a shot. Even though if you look at the photo, there is one photo of this fried chicken from a vending machine. They look more like chicken nuggets than, you know, like a two piece or three piece. I don't know about you, man, but I like my chicken bone in.

[B]

Really? Yeah, yeah. I'm a fan of boneless fried chicken, but you know, you can't quite beat a freshly fried bone in bird.

[A]

That's true. I wonder if we should do the History of Vending Machines as an episode. Wouldn't that be cool?

[B]

I would love to hear about that. I have a feeling it started like on the boardwalks in the carny times, you know, things like that. This is just speculation on my part, but I think that's a great idea, Ben.

[A]

And I wonder where I would start because there were some places in. We may have talked about this in a previous episode, Noel, but I know there were some places in England centuries and centuries ago where it was like a manual vending machine. You would walk up to a wall and then you would knock or slide a penny or something across and then someone would just hand you, I think, a small cup of gin.

[B]

Nice. According to Dr. Internet, the first vending machine came out in the 1880s in London and it was for purchasing post used carts and was invented by Percival Everett. But you know, there's a long and storied history of vending machines as they evolved over time. How we came from bath bombs to vending machines. I guess we're just talking about forward thinking innovative types, you know. Yes, yes, Ben, let's definitely do history of Vending Machine episodes.

[A]

Let's definitely do it. Let us know about your favorite vending machine. Let us know about your favorite seemingly crackpot military scheme because oh, buddy, this is only scratching the surface. The US military and other militaries have attempted to use dolphins for wartime efforts, cats for spying, I think rats as well.

[B]

For something we did an episode on this.

[A]

We did an episode here on this. Oh.

[B]

About the. The Skinner boxes and.

[A]

Oh, that's true.

[B]

Sideshow kind of carnival. Yeah, yeah. TV show.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There was like a whole farm where they took these animals that they had trained for military purposes and, like, made money with the chicken that would peck.

[A]

The buns or whatever. How time flies.

[B]

It really does. We've been doing this for like over a year now.

[A]

Have we?

[B]

Yeah. I don't think we ever acknowledged the year anniversary, but it has come and gone.

[A]

Making a show like this is sort of like in all those classic cartoons where Elmer Fudd or Wile E. Coyote or, you know, Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny, when they walk off the cliff.

[B]

Cliff.

[A]

And they just keep walking until they look down. Just don't look down.

[B]

Yeah. I call it critical mass.

[A]

Critical mass. Yeah.

[B]

You know, you do something, you just kind of like have this trajectory and you just never look back. And as long as you don't look back, you kind of forget what's going on or how time passes.

[A]

Now we're going into philosophy as well, but well said, and we hope that you enjoy this episode. We do want to hear these answers. I will look at pictures of your favorite vending machines or the most unusual vending machines until the stars collapse and the universe meets its end. In the meantime, thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks to our super producer, Casey Pegram.

[B]

Yeah, thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme. Thanks to our research associate, Gabe. And we're going to try a new thing. Hey, if you want to check out me and Ben's individual exploits, since our show Instagram account is not the most fun fascinating in the world, you can check me out Brionicinsider on Instagram.

[A]

And you can find me Ben Bollen on Instagram. Yes, in a burst of creativity, folks, the newest thing that I have up is maybe the Saturn Vue Lego replica that I built this weekend, which is huge.

[B]

Very impressive.

[A]

It's weird. You can find us on our respective Instagrams. You can find us on Twitter. You can also also find us on Facebook. Perhaps most importantly, you can find your fellow ridiculous historians on our Facebook community page. Ridiculous historians.

[B]

And please tune in to our next episode where we talk about the ridiculous origins of state names, specifically Idaho. We'll see you then. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night.

[A]

I'm Dr. Priyanka Wali, a double board certified physician.

[B]

And I'm Hari Kondabolu, a comedian and someone who Once googled, do I have scurvy at 3am and on our show, we're talking about health in a different way. Like our episode where we look at diabetes in the United states.

[A]

I mean, 50% of Americans are pre diabetic.

[B]

How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Listen to Health Stuff on the iHeartRadio.

[A]

App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. She said, Johnny, the kids didn't come home last night. Along the central Texas plains, teens are dying, suicides that don't make sense, strange accidents and brutal murders in what seems to be a plot plot ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. Drugs, alcohol, trafficking of people.

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There are people out there that absolutely know what happened.

[A]

Listen to Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen murders on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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What do you get when you mix 1950s Hollywood, a Cuban musician with a dream, and one of the most iconic sitcoms of all time? You get Desi Arness on the podcast starring Desi Arness and Wilmer Valderrama. I'll take you on a journey to Desi's life. How he redefined American television and what that meant for all of us watching from the sidelines, waiting for a face like ours on screen. Listen to starring Desi Arnaz and Wilmer valderrama on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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I'm Robert Smith and this is Jacob Goldstein.

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And we used to host a show called Planet Money.

[A]

And now we're back back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, how Southwest Airlines used cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business.

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The most Texas story ever.

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Listen to business history on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Podcasts. Hey, I'm Kal Penn, and on my new podcast, here We Go Again, we'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lilly Singh and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics.

[B]

Put another way, are you high?

[A]

Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, but my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

This is an iHeart podcast.