The bat bomb was a bizarre experimental weapon developed by the U.S. military during World War II, designed to start thousands of fires in cities across Japan in retribution for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The bat bomb plan called for 1,000 live bats per bomb, with a tiny incendiary device fitted to each bat. All 1,000 bats would then be housed inside a casing that could be dropped from a U.S. warplane over Japan. The idea was that the bats and their attached incendiaries would then seek wooden Japanese homes and buildings to roost in, where they would kindle fires for the war effort.
The bat bomb plans seems to have been taken seriously, since it received approval from President Roosevelt in 1942, and the U.S. military went on to spend more than $2 million dollars trying to get it to work. More than 6,000 bats were used in the bat bomb tests: most of them plunged straight to the ground or just flew away. But, they did manage to set fire to a simulated Japanese village, a U.S. Army hangar and a general's car before the program was abandoned.
Lucky for us, we used nukes. #stayzero #zerofoxtrot #batman #weirdshit