How the Pentagon is planning to use bats in the battle against bioweapons

The US military has a long history of enlisting the help of animals in warfare. The bottlenose dolphin’s sophisticated sonar enabled the Navy to detect and clear underwater bombs during the Iraq War, and homing pigeons played a vital role as secret messengers during both world wars, with some awarded medals for bravery.

But there is one animal that the military has had significantly less success in conscripting, and that is the bat.

In the wake of the Pearl Harbour bombing in 1941, hundreds of Mexican free-tailed bats were recruited as part of a hare-brained scheme to blow up Japanese cities by arming the flying insectivores with tiny bombs and releasing them from planes. The idea was that the bats would roost in buildings and explode, killing the enemy as they slept. What could possibly go wrong?

Undeterred, the scientists ran a test of “Project X-ray” using real bats and tiny bombs in June 1943. Things did not go as planned. A report on the experiment stated somewhat evasively that “testing was concluded … when a fire destroyed a large portion of the test material.”

It failed to mention that the barracks, control tower and several other buildings at the auxiliary field station in Carlsbad, New Mexico, were set spectacularly ablaze by escapee bat bombers. The need to maintain military secrecy prevented civilian firefighters from entering the scene, and fire leapt from building to building, incinerating most of the base. As a final insult, a couple of winged missiles went AWOL, taking up roost under a general’s car before exploding.

Project X-ray was later cancelled.