Speaker 1: No no no no no no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no no bat bombs. Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 1: What the heck are we talking about? Well, we're about
Speaker 1: to tell you hello, my name is Ben, my name
Speaker 1: is not Ben. You know we did that before with
Speaker 1: knife Man. Yes, it's just a great it's it's a
Speaker 1: great musical device that goes into anything with two syllables.
Speaker 1: Oh and I'm also into our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 1: We were off air today just about to jump into
Speaker 1: the studio and Casey, I don't know. Have you ever
Speaker 1: heard of bat bombs? I have not No, I have
Speaker 1: no idea what this episodes about. Unless it's guano. That's
Speaker 1: the only bat bomb I can think of. Hey, that
Speaker 1: was good, No, and and and funny enough. I think
Speaker 1: guano is actually quite flammable and could be potentially used
Speaker 1: in explosives. And guando is also quite valuable. Right. We
Speaker 1: did an episode for a different show on a cannibal cave.
Speaker 1: You can you can find a c taka uh. We
Speaker 1: did an episode and cannibal cave that was discovered because
Speaker 1: of some unscrupulous guando minors. Bats have actually played a
Speaker 1: surprisingly influential role in US history at various times. And
Speaker 1: also that's one of those creatures that are up close.
Speaker 1: A lot of bats that I've run into are pretty gross,
Speaker 1: but they're still just from a biological perspective, amazing. They
Speaker 1: are amazing. And there is a YouTube video or Instagram
Speaker 1: video or one of those videos, um where someone's like
Speaker 1: handling a bat and it's a particularly cute bat. So
Speaker 1: they have the potential to be both terrifying and adorable.
Speaker 1: Is it a fruit bat? It must have been. So
Speaker 1: there's there's so many different types of bat, and today
Speaker 1: we are talking about a type of plan that the
Speaker 1: US made with bats. This is okay, So we have
Speaker 1: to go in two different directions here, right, and maybe
Speaker 1: tie them together as we continue. First, it's no secret
Speaker 1: to any fan of history or to anyone who's perused
Speaker 1: the Adventures of the U S Military that the US military,
Speaker 1: like many other militaries, has kind of a spaghetti at
Speaker 1: the wall approach to developing new stuff, and most of
Speaker 1: the time it doesn't work out. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of been It's sort of like the
Speaker 1: Hollywood studio system, where you might just have some intern
Speaker 1: in an office just pitched some crazy idea that an
Speaker 1: executive happens to the area's like, you know what, that's
Speaker 1: just crazy enough to work. That's a good point. This
Speaker 1: reminds me of a clip that we cannot for legal
Speaker 1: reasons play in full for you, but we can tell
Speaker 1: you what it is and go check it out on YouTube.
Speaker 1: After this show, uh, John mulaney has a great bit
Speaker 1: about how Back to the Future became a film. Did
Speaker 1: you ever see that? Noll? I don't think I did.
Speaker 1: Oh man, Okay, well, we can't stop the show. I
Speaker 1: wish I could just play this for you now google it,
Speaker 1: I'll send you the link. It is. It is exactly
Speaker 1: what you're talking about, and that is a very good
Speaker 1: comparison to the approach that the military has taken at times. Uh. Today,
Speaker 1: our story starts well, it really gets running toward the
Speaker 1: end of World War Two thanks to a guy named
Speaker 1: doctor Little Atoms or lttle Atoms. I'm gonna go with
Speaker 1: little gotta be little l y T l E. I
Speaker 1: think if that's why I'm giving him space to be
Speaker 1: lightle atoms to just in case, because I don't know, like,
Speaker 1: would you want be walked around called little Brown you
Speaker 1: would be into absolutely. I support that wholeheartedly. So Dr
Speaker 1: Adams doesn't begin life as a mad scientist for Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1: He starts life uh in Irwin, Pennsylvania, and for a
Speaker 1: long time he works as a dentist. Before that, presumably
Speaker 1: as a baby. Yes, yeah, no, he began life as
Speaker 1: a middle aged dentist. Common medical condition is that like?
Speaker 1: Is that like Benjamin Button? Sort of? Yeah, Benjamin Button
Speaker 1: is is loosely based on the adventures of the dentist
Speaker 1: Dr Adams. Now the Adventures of Little Adams. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a fun, rollicking good time. That sounds like a
Speaker 1: real wrong, doesn't it. So here's what happened in real life,
Speaker 1: Dr Adams. And you might not see this unless you
Speaker 1: watch the director's cut of Benjamin Button. Dr Adams is
Speaker 1: driving home from a vacation at Carl's Bad Caverns in
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and while he's driving home, he is haunted
Speaker 1: by this vision that he saw this amazing spectacle. He
Speaker 1: watched bats leaving the caves of Karl's Bad Caverns. And
Speaker 1: we've seen those clips of bats leaving right right right,
Speaker 1: little round twilighter, So like a hive mind operating on
Speaker 1: some kind of crazy psychic connection, and he watched millions
Speaker 1: of these bats fly out, and as he was driving,
Speaker 1: he was thinking, Wow, that was such an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: There were so many bats. I had no idea the
Speaker 1: sheer magnitude of nature and all its glory. And he
Speaker 1: probably were speculating a little here, but he probably goes,
Speaker 1: all right, well, it's a long drive from New Mexico
Speaker 1: to Pennsylvania. I'm gonna turn on my car radio. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get the news. Here's some tunes. And that's when
Speaker 1: he hears the terrible news. He's listening on December seven one,
Speaker 1: that's when he hears the terrible news that Japan has
Speaker 1: just attacked Pearl Harbor. Yeah, and much like you and
Speaker 1: I remember likely where we were when the attacks on
Speaker 1: September eleven took place, everyone in this country likely does
Speaker 1: very similar experience to Pearl Harbor. When people first heard
Speaker 1: that news, it was a like a slap in the face.
Speaker 1: It was a real um emotional response that people had
Speaker 1: to this event. And that was the case for Dr Adams,
Speaker 1: and he kind of oddly combined that emotional response with
Speaker 1: the vision of swarming bats that he had just seen.
Speaker 1: Kind of in a Bruce Wayne esque way when he
Speaker 1: discovers the cave right below Wayne Manner. That's a little
Speaker 1: bit of a spoiler for anybody who is never heard
Speaker 1: words or seen comics. It's true, So we have to
Speaker 1: imagine how insane this drive must have been. It's not
Speaker 1: a short drive home. So is it any wonder that
Speaker 1: he was left alone with his thoughts and just kept
Speaker 1: combining and recombining his recent experiences. Either way, it doesn't
Speaker 1: take him long to take action. He combines this vision,
Speaker 1: as you said, if these bats and this desire for
Speaker 1: revenge into a coherent plan in less than a month later,
Speaker 1: mid January January two, he sends his plan to the
Speaker 1: White House. What what does he say? What's the what's
Speaker 1: the pitch? Yeah, he thinks it would be a swell
Speaker 1: idea to strap tiny bombs two bats, um, release them
Speaker 1: and in the hopes that they will roost in the
Speaker 1: eaves and in various locations of Japanese cities, at which
Speaker 1: point they would be detonated, causing chaos across the land.
Speaker 1: Um but real quick. This was not the first such
Speaker 1: idea that Dr Adams had. He actually came up with
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty nine, an idea for UM a plane
Speaker 1: that could do mail pickups mid air. UM. And so
Speaker 1: he was kind of had a history of being something
Speaker 1: of a tinkerer, even though his trade was in the
Speaker 1: dental profession. Yes, that's a really good point. This is
Speaker 1: not a once in a lifetime innovation or bright idea
Speaker 1: for him. He has several ideas that would seem at
Speaker 1: the very least unorthodox right to mainstream humanity. Yeah. Big.
Speaker 1: Bringing it back to Batman, this mid air pickup idea
Speaker 1: was very similar to Operations sky Hook in Uh, the
Speaker 1: I believe Batman begins movie. Is that right? It is
Speaker 1: in the Dark Night, Dark Night, that's right when they
Speaker 1: sort of extract Bruce Wayne from a Japanese high rise
Speaker 1: with this hook and they pull him out um with
Speaker 1: this wire. And he came up with this idea while
Speaker 1: serving in the Navy during World War One. And it
Speaker 1: consisted of these two kind of vertical walls that made
Speaker 1: a V shape at the narrow end of which awaited
Speaker 1: cable was trailing. This is underneath the airplane and as
Speaker 1: it passed, it would engage in an object to be
Speaker 1: picked up and then lifted and extracted. So very similar
Speaker 1: to skyhook. Actually, he also I believe, depleted a lot
Speaker 1: of his own fortune and personal savings pursuing this until
Speaker 1: he met Richard DuPont of the DuPont And Uh, it
Speaker 1: was it wasn't that it wasn't it designed to like
Speaker 1: never land. Yeah, exactly because he figured there was. This
Speaker 1: wasn't like a completely unique idea. But the notion was
Speaker 1: that a lot of time, uh and effort was wasted
Speaker 1: when the planes were landing and they had to refuel.
Speaker 1: So this system, in theory, would allow it to refuel
Speaker 1: in the air, pick up fuel reserves from the ground
Speaker 1: or even from a passing train. They could coordinate and
Speaker 1: specifically uh for long distance mail pickups and freight and
Speaker 1: things like that. Um, I don't know. I know it
Speaker 1: was patented, but it certainly never hit in the way
Speaker 1: that he hoped it would. But fast forward to World
Speaker 1: War Two. Let's go back to the pitch. How was
Speaker 1: he able to get an audience with the White House
Speaker 1: in the first place because he was not exactly like,
Speaker 1: he didn't work for them. He was just kind of
Speaker 1: a regular joe who was a tinkerer on the side.
Speaker 1: And this whole you know, mid flight refueling mail pickup
Speaker 1: scheme never really gained too much momentum, so he didn't
Speaker 1: really have reputation. But being someone the government should like
Speaker 1: turn to during times of war, would you say it
Speaker 1: never got off the ground? I would say that man. Oh,
Speaker 1: but you said at first, oh, sorry, sorry, no joke
Speaker 1: left untold. He did manage to shout above the din
Speaker 1: the cacophony of people with unsolicited suggestions, plans, and schemes.
Speaker 1: We have to imagine, of course, how many people would
Speaker 1: be writing directly to the White House saying, here's what
Speaker 1: we do, and it may be worth our time in
Speaker 1: another episode to look at some of the most unorthodox
Speaker 1: World War two revenge schemes. But Adams had an edge.
Speaker 1: He had a very important friend. That's right. This is
Speaker 1: somewhat a story about nepotism. You see at happened to
Speaker 1: know a woman by the name of Eleanor Roosevelt. He
Speaker 1: had flown her to check out his airmail scheme previously, right,
Speaker 1: and because they had this previous relationship his story and
Speaker 1: speculate that's the way he was able to get his
Speaker 1: voice heard and his idea, his pitch right, the one
Speaker 1: that you established earlier, know about dropping these bats in
Speaker 1: Japanese cities. It made more sense than it might sound
Speaker 1: at first blush, because of Japanese architecture, right, yeah, tell
Speaker 1: us more about that. But it's not something I had
Speaker 1: quite considered, because I was wondering, how were they to
Speaker 1: get into all of these little nooks and crannies, if
Speaker 1: you know, it seems like it would take time for
Speaker 1: them to work their way into the eaves of homes
Speaker 1: as we know it. But I believe the architecture in
Speaker 1: Japan was a little more open and possibly more accessible
Speaker 1: to these small creatures. And they were quite small. They
Speaker 1: were quite small. Yes, So this pitch hinged on some
Speaker 1: stereotypes about Japan at the time, one of those concerning
Speaker 1: the architecture. In the mind of many Americans, policymakers and
Speaker 1: civilians alike, Japan was a country composed of crowded cities
Speaker 1: filled with houses and factories made of paper and wood,
Speaker 1: and that's their vision of traditional Japanese architecture. So the
Speaker 1: argument there might be that flying bats with small incendiary
Speaker 1: devices into a city where most things are built of
Speaker 1: stone or concrete, Uh, that won't do much. Right. It
Speaker 1: takes an enormous amount of heat to damage that stuff,
Speaker 1: but paper and wood could catch fire with a relatively
Speaker 1: small amount of flame. But also wouldn't it have something
Speaker 1: to do with how easy and quickly it might have
Speaker 1: been for the bats to work their way into these structures.
Speaker 1: They weren't like sealed air tight quite in the way
Speaker 1: we would think of a traditional American home, right, Well,
Speaker 1: they thought that would fly into those like picture a
Speaker 1: traditional Japanese tile roof. They thought they would fly into
Speaker 1: the eaves of those roofs, and that this would this
Speaker 1: would get them close enough to the paper walls and
Speaker 1: wouldn't make sense. So we have a quote from him,
Speaker 1: think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a
Speaker 1: circle of forty miles in diameter. For every bomb dropped,
Speaker 1: Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life,
Speaker 1: which doesn't really make sense because when cities catch on fire,
Speaker 1: a lot of people die. So I guess he was
Speaker 1: he was talking about American lives. Yeah, that's probably, that's
Speaker 1: that's Unfortunately, it sounds very accurate because I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: the bats were on suicide missions here, so that's you know,
Speaker 1: I don't imagine Peter would approve this plan today. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's take a second maybe and talk about the bats.
Speaker 1: What do you say, Let's do it alright, So once
Speaker 1: the project gets the green light, and again please listen
Speaker 1: to that, John Mulaney, back to the future bit, it's
Speaker 1: worth it won't ruin it for you. Once the project
Speaker 1: gets the green lights, somehow, Dr Adams gathers a team
Speaker 1: of naturalists from the Hancock Foundation University California, and they
Speaker 1: start investigating likely sites where they could gather large quantities
Speaker 1: of bats. As we know, bats are mostly found in caves,
Speaker 1: but a ton of them roost in addicts, barns, houses, bridges,
Speaker 1: anywhere they can get it and fitted right, it's funny.
Speaker 1: Casey and I actually attempted to capture a mass exodus
Speaker 1: of bats like this on video. In Austin, there's this
Speaker 1: bridge that's referred to as the Bat Bridge where every night,
Speaker 1: at a certain time, all of these bats that nest
Speaker 1: under this bridge or they kind of just hang out
Speaker 1: there during the day go out to feed at night
Speaker 1: because they're nocturnal animals. But we waited there for awful
Speaker 1: long time and then they never emerged. So I cannot
Speaker 1: offer a firsthand account of this, but I have been
Speaker 1: told that it does happen. Yes, it's true. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I have revealed this to you guys, but
Speaker 1: years and years ago, one of my childhood homes actually
Speaker 1: did have a bat infestation in the attic, and I
Speaker 1: happen to live in a room that adjoined the attic,
Speaker 1: and I was surprised to find that, at least here
Speaker 1: in Georgia, you cannot kill the bats. You have to
Speaker 1: essentially wait for them to leave or compel them to
Speaker 1: leave what area, whatever area they're roosting legally. Yeah really yeah?
Speaker 1: And you then find whatever hidy holes or ingress e
Speaker 1: great points they're using and block those, with the hope
Speaker 1: being that vampire rules, they'll find a new place to
Speaker 1: sleep before dawn. Terrifying. I didn't know that, So that
Speaker 1: you can't treat them like you would like any other
Speaker 1: household infestation. No, no, no, no no, because they're so
Speaker 1: good for the ecosystem as well. Had no idea about that.
Speaker 1: So they go atoms, not the bats that I used
Speaker 1: to live with. They go around scouring these areas to
Speaker 1: find the best possible large quantity of bats suitable for
Speaker 1: this project. According to Adams, they visit a thousand caves
Speaker 1: and three thousand mines, and Adams says speed was so
Speaker 1: imperative that we generally drove all day and night. When
Speaker 1: we weren't exploring caves, we slept in cars, taking turns
Speaker 1: of driving one car in our search team cover three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand miles. And then they started cataloging
Speaker 1: the types of bats they found, and they were looking
Speaker 1: for the ideal combination of bat size, which would dictate
Speaker 1: the amount of explosive the bat could carry versus bat quantity.
Speaker 1: How many bats of that type could they find, because
Speaker 1: you know, if you found like twelve bats that were
Speaker 1: large enough to carry eight pounds of dynamite, you know,
Speaker 1: good for those bats, but that's not really gonna do
Speaker 1: anything to a Japanese city on a large scale the
Speaker 1: way they were hoping. That's very true. And and just
Speaker 1: just a little detail here. These were Mexican free tailed
Speaker 1: bats they decided on because of their size and uh,
Speaker 1: their availability. Um. And so in March of this is
Speaker 1: backtracking just a little bit, um, the US Air Force
Speaker 1: decided they wanted to investigate this. There was a letter
Speaker 1: that was drafted to formally, you know, announced the pursuing
Speaker 1: of this like a memo, and it was called Test
Speaker 1: of Method to Scatter Incendiaries UM. It was also referred
Speaker 1: to as Project X ray Way cool name uses Mexican
Speaker 1: free tailed bats. The other bats they tried were things
Speaker 1: like the mastif. The mastive bat is huge as a
Speaker 1: twenty inch wingspan, it can carry uh one pound of dynamite.
Speaker 1: But the problem was they couldn't find enough of these bats.
Speaker 1: And then they found another bat, the mullard or common
Speaker 1: palid bat, that could carry three ounces. But naturalists said,
Speaker 1: there's no way these guys will survive the strange process
Speaker 1: we're going to subject them to. And when they found
Speaker 1: the free tailed bat, the main reason they went with
Speaker 1: it is because it could travel with a one ounce
Speaker 1: bomb over a relatively short distance, even though it only
Speaker 1: weighed a third of an ounce. And they found twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty million of them in a cave Inny Cave
Speaker 1: near Bendera, Texas. And it was so large. This kind
Speaker 1: of ties into the adventure that Noel, You and Casey
Speaker 1: had in Austin. It was so large that when these
Speaker 1: bats left the cave, it took five hours for them
Speaker 1: to all leave out of the cave, flying in a
Speaker 1: dense stream fifteen feet in diameter and so closely packed
Speaker 1: that they could barely flap their wings. Yeah, I cannot imagine. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously these must be very powerful creatures in
Speaker 1: terms of their ability to like like ants. They always
Speaker 1: say they can carry ten times their body weight or whatever.
Speaker 1: This must be a similar case. Although they had to
Speaker 1: take the weight into consideration when they figured out which
Speaker 1: bats to use and what amount of incendiaries would pack
Speaker 1: the most punch. And I'm guessing that it was all considered,
Speaker 1: like you said, it wouldn't take a whole lot. They weren't.
Speaker 1: They weren't gonna level a building with these bats. They
Speaker 1: were going to start a little flame that was then
Speaker 1: going to catch it on fire, and they were going
Speaker 1: to do them all at once. But Ben, did you
Speaker 1: catch anywhere in your research how they were planning to
Speaker 1: detonate these um bat bombs like all at once or
Speaker 1: was it on a timer? It was on a timer.
Speaker 1: That makes the most sense. That's probably that's the best
Speaker 1: way to do it. You know that that is the
Speaker 1: best way to do it. So, um, they finally settled
Speaker 1: on these Mexican freetail bats um and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of consideration for various stages of this process. Right,
Speaker 1: like the questions we were just asking, how to transport them,
Speaker 1: how to deploy them, um, etcetera. What were some of
Speaker 1: the things that they sort of figured out during this process? Then? Sure, sure,
Speaker 1: So this project when it gets a cool name, the
Speaker 1: Army says, wait, we want projects with cool names. So
Speaker 1: the project is transferred to the army and they start
Speaker 1: capturing these thousands, thousands of Mexican freetail bats of caverns
Speaker 1: all around the southwest United States. They wanted to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get these things from the location where
Speaker 1: they are, you know, attached to these bombs, these incendiary devices,
Speaker 1: and then transport them without blowing anything up, and then
Speaker 1: deploying them so that they don't blow up until they're
Speaker 1: supposed to the first thing they had to figure out
Speaker 1: was how to keep the bats calm, and that is
Speaker 1: when they decided to induce hibernation in the bats. This
Speaker 1: is um, this is something that might surprise some people.
Speaker 1: Bats actually do hibernate, which makes it a little bit
Speaker 1: less inhumane, you know what I mean? Uh, Bats hibernate
Speaker 1: from late fall until springs, so October November to March
Speaker 1: and April. And I'm just realizing this now. No bats
Speaker 1: are listening to this podcast right now. It's probably better
Speaker 1: that way because this could be triggering until summer spring. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we know that they will hibernate typically in the
Speaker 1: same environments in which they roost, but they roost in
Speaker 1: caves and mines and attics and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: how do you strap uh an explosive device to them
Speaker 1: or incendiary device and then convince them to hibernate on
Speaker 1: a plane. What they ultimately decided to do was to
Speaker 1: stick the bats in ice cube trays. Again, these are
Speaker 1: very small the only way about the way less announced,
Speaker 1: but surely not the kind of ice cube trays you
Speaker 1: and I are used to. I mean, that's that's way
Speaker 1: too small. One little compartment and an ice cube traying
Speaker 1: that would go in our freezer. All my ice cube
Speaker 1: trays as specifically designed to fit that. It's pretty unfair
Speaker 1: to the bats. But would the would the the explosives
Speaker 1: be strapped to them already at this point or would
Speaker 1: they have to like put them on after they woke
Speaker 1: them up. This whole thing seems like a logistical nightmare,
Speaker 1: And then it seems like stuff that they didn't consider
Speaker 1: up front when they said, hey, this guy is onto something. Well,
Speaker 1: it seems like a lot of bats probably died in
Speaker 1: the in the process of figuring out the best way
Speaker 1: to do this well, and ultimately these were suicide bats anyway,
Speaker 1: so they were all destined for death. Right. They also
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to release these bats in
Speaker 1: mid air. So they thought, we'll have a cardboard container
Speaker 1: that automatically opens and releases the bats. And they were
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to do this. They spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time working out the perfect order of operations,
Speaker 1: and then they took it to real testing. They took
Speaker 1: it off the drawing board into the world, and they
Speaker 1: found out that there was a lot of stuff they
Speaker 1: needed to work on, a lot of kinks. UM. There's
Speaker 1: an article in The Atlantic called Old Weird Tech The
Speaker 1: Bat Bombs of World War Two by Alexis C. Magical UM,
Speaker 1: and in this article she talks about some of the
Speaker 1: unfortunate mishaps that occurred when they really started doing real
Speaker 1: world testing UM. One of which involved a general's car
Speaker 1: that was exploded basically burned UM and also an airplane
Speaker 1: hangar that sustained some pretty serious damage. They did pass
Speaker 1: this off to the Marine Corps and the testing continued. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when they passed it to the Marine Corps in
Speaker 1: December of nineteen forty three, the operation was moved to
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps Air Station Nel Centro, California. The definitive
Speaker 1: test was carried out after several experiments on what they
Speaker 1: called a Japanese village was a mock up of a
Speaker 1: Japanese city built by the Chemical Warfare Service at their
Speaker 1: doug Way Proving Grounds test site in Utah, and this
Speaker 1: test produced uh not terrible results. So the chief of
Speaker 1: incendiary testing it, doug Way, wrote, a reasonable number of
Speaker 1: instructive fires can be started in spite of the extremely
Speaker 1: small size of the units. Those are the bats. The
Speaker 1: main advantage of the units would seem to be their
Speaker 1: placement within the enemy structures without the knowledge of the
Speaker 1: householder or fire watchers, thus allowing the fire to establish
Speaker 1: itself before being discovered. So what they're saying is when
Speaker 1: they get into these atticts and these eves, it is
Speaker 1: highly unlikely that somebody will notice this very very tiny, tiny,
Speaker 1: tiny furry creature um and they probably won't notice the
Speaker 1: fire until it's too late. My question though, is, we
Speaker 1: know the way bats behave, wouldn't they all go to
Speaker 1: one place, like what what was causing what was leading
Speaker 1: them to go to disperse? To disperse? Because it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like that's what bats typically do. It seems like
Speaker 1: they kind of like have that hive mind quality to it.
Speaker 1: I was joking when I said they have, you know,
Speaker 1: psychic connections or whatever. Sometimes when you see flocks of
Speaker 1: birds or bats or any kind of creatures like that
Speaker 1: migrating or moving in these tight patterns together, I just
Speaker 1: don't know, it seems very rand. They would not Obviously,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have been able to control where they went.
Speaker 1: They would just hope that they went enough different places
Speaker 1: that this would actually caused them significant damage over a
Speaker 1: large area. Yeah, it's it's a good question. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: an argument that the bats would be so disoriented just
Speaker 1: waking up from hybridation that they're just seeking a shelter.
Speaker 1: You know. For now, it looks like the answer to
Speaker 1: that is still unclear in the modern day. Oh, we
Speaker 1: do have to mention also, people called this the Adam's
Speaker 1: plan in common conversation. When you know, when they weren't
Speaker 1: referring to it officially is Project X Ray. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that they thought would be another great
Speaker 1: advantage was that the use of bats would be demoralizing,
Speaker 1: so there was some psi op here as well. All
Speaker 1: in all, there's a total of thirty demonstrations of this technology,
Speaker 1: this plan, and two million dollars spent over over the
Speaker 1: period of development, with full scale bomber bat test planned
Speaker 1: for August nineteen forty four. However, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King,
Speaker 1: who at the time was Chief of Naval Operations, learned
Speaker 1: that the bats would not be ready for combat until
Speaker 1: mid nineteen rights he abruptly canceled the operation, and needless
Speaker 1: to say, Dr Adams was disappointed. There's also a little
Speaker 1: bit of interesting historical speculation here too, because there was
Speaker 1: another even more secret, perhaps even more ambitious and insane
Speaker 1: project that Uncle Sam was pouring a ton of resources into,
Speaker 1: yeah and likely needed every last penny, And that was
Speaker 1: the atomic bomb, which ultimately and tragically was used to
Speaker 1: end that conflict and then never again. The most powerful
Speaker 1: explosive device ever created at that time. It's different from
Speaker 1: several thousand paths, right, So Dr Adams obviously this was
Speaker 1: a real bummer for a Pennsylvanian dentist. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: was understandably disappointed because this would have been his second
Speaker 1: big idea that seemed to be going somewhere and then
Speaker 1: ultimately didn't quite hit in the way that he wanted it.
Speaker 1: To write, Ben, Oh, yeah, because of air pickup. But
Speaker 1: this was these two ideas were not his only two ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's some other stuff, right, and progressively, I would say,
Speaker 1: you know, the bat bomb, between the bat bomb and
Speaker 1: the air pickup bat bomb was way more on the
Speaker 1: surface crackpot, even though it did have some function to it.
Speaker 1: But these these last ones that we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: are a little bit more on the cookie side. But
Speaker 1: you have clearly a forward thinking man and clearly has
Speaker 1: a thing about aviation and the power of flights. So
Speaker 1: he had this he he later has this plan to
Speaker 1: use bombers to distribute seeds across the prairie land in
Speaker 1: in hopes of revolutionize seeing agriculture. Right, That's that's pretty ambitious.
Speaker 1: It's also way less destructive. It's kind of the same
Speaker 1: thing as bombing places with bats, that's true. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then he had another idea, non aviation related. This is
Speaker 1: my favorite one where he thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good idea. People would flock to a fried chicken vending machine.
Speaker 1: I absolutely would, But how would you keep it fresh?
Speaker 1: It has to be like fried on demand. You would
Speaker 1: have to hit the button to make your request, and
Speaker 1: then it would have to be able to automatically fried.
Speaker 1: So it would be sort of like those coke machines
Speaker 1: where it picks up the bottle with like a little thing,
Speaker 1: sit up and then drops it, only it would be
Speaker 1: like a hole. You get to watch your chicken being fried,
Speaker 1: and you have to order it one piece at a time.
Speaker 1: I want to know more about the logistics of this, well,
Speaker 1: I want to tell you that someone has made this
Speaker 1: dream of reality. What yes, Dr Adams, if you're listening
Speaker 1: from the Eternal Hibernation of Death, Uh, this is something
Speaker 1: that hopefully will warm your heart. There is a vending
Speaker 1: machine that serves fried chicken in Japan. I don't know
Speaker 1: how he would feel about it, but it is in Japan.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, of course, all cool vending machines in Japan,
Speaker 1: and we know they love fried chicken too, yes, especially
Speaker 1: around Christmas. Japanese convenience chaining Lawson Incorporated is testing this
Speaker 1: machine now, or they were as of December, So this
Speaker 1: is breaking news. This comes to us through technobob and
Speaker 1: this is in chinagaua ward in Tokyo. The machine has
Speaker 1: technology that allows it to fried chicken in a little
Speaker 1: bit over a minute, but somehow they prepare the chicken
Speaker 1: and keep it warm until someone orders it to me.
Speaker 1: That's where it breaks down, because fried chicken, it's like
Speaker 1: French fries. It's like most fried food. You gotta eat
Speaker 1: it when it's fresh. Yeah, that's true. That's why nobody
Speaker 1: wants gas station fried chicken sitting out of that like
Speaker 1: hot lamp from god knows how long. No, no, it's
Speaker 1: gotta be fresh and crispy and juicy and delicious. So
Speaker 1: we want to hear from you, fellow ridiculous historians out
Speaker 1: there in Japan, especially if you're in this area of Tokyo,
Speaker 1: because this trial only operated from I guess mid December
Speaker 1: to December two thousand and eighteen. So right now, the
Speaker 1: good folks at Lawson Incorporated, we can only imagine, are
Speaker 1: studying the results of their fried chicken experiment. And you
Speaker 1: know what, I hope it works out. I am a
Speaker 1: big fan of vending machines, and I would give it
Speaker 1: a shot. Even though if you look at the photo,
Speaker 1: there is one photo of this fried chicken from a
Speaker 1: vending machine. They look more like chicken nuggets than you know,
Speaker 1: like a two piece or three piece. I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, ma'am, but I like my chicken bone in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of boneless fried chicken um. But you
Speaker 1: know that you can't quite be a freshly fried um
Speaker 1: bone and bird, that's true. I wonder if we should
Speaker 1: do the history of vending machine machines as an episode.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be cool? I would love to hear about that.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling it started like on the boardwalks
Speaker 1: and the carny times, you know, things like that. This
Speaker 1: is just speculation on my part, but I think that's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Ben. I don't wonder where it would start,
Speaker 1: because there were some places, and we may have talked
Speaker 1: about this in previous episode Old, but I know there
Speaker 1: were some places in England centuries and centuries ago where
Speaker 1: it was like a manual vending machine. You would walk
Speaker 1: up to a wall and then you would knock or
Speaker 1: slide a penny or something across and then someone would
Speaker 1: just hand you, I think a small cup of gin. Nice.
Speaker 1: According to dr Internet, the first vending machine came out
Speaker 1: in the eighteen eighties in London and it was for
Speaker 1: purchasing postcards. It was invented by Percival Everett. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's a long and story history of vending machines as
Speaker 1: they evolved over time. Um, how we came from bat
Speaker 1: bombs to vending machines. I guess we're just talking about
Speaker 1: forward thinking, innovative types, you know, yes, yes, then let's
Speaker 1: let's definitely do a history of vending machine episodes. Let's
Speaker 1: definitely do it. Let us know about your favorite vending machine.
Speaker 1: Let us know about your favorite seemingly crackpot military scheme,
Speaker 1: because oh buddy, this is only scratching the surface. Uh.
Speaker 1: The U. S Military and other militaries have attempted to
Speaker 1: use dolphins for wartime efforts, cats for spying, I think
Speaker 1: rats as well for something. We did an episode on this.
Speaker 1: We did an episode here on this about the skinner
Speaker 1: boxes and sideshow kind of carnival show. Yeah, there was
Speaker 1: like a whole farm where they took these animals that
Speaker 1: they had trained for military purposes and like made money
Speaker 1: with the chicken that would peck them, yeah or whatever?
Speaker 1: How time flies really does? We've been doing this for
Speaker 1: like over a year now, have we. I don't think
Speaker 1: we ever acknowledged the year anniversary, but it has come
Speaker 1: and gone. Making a show like this is sort of
Speaker 1: like in all those classic cartoons where Elmer Fudd or
Speaker 1: Wiley Coyote or you know, Daffy Duck or it is
Speaker 1: funny when they walk off the cliff and they just
Speaker 1: keep walking until they look down. I just don't look down.
Speaker 1: I call it critical mass. Critical mass. You know, you
Speaker 1: do something you just kind of like have this trajectory
Speaker 1: and you just never look back. And as long as
Speaker 1: you don't look back, you kind of forget what's going
Speaker 1: on and how time passes. Now we're going into philosophy
Speaker 1: as well, but well said, and we hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoy this episode. We do want to hear these answers.
Speaker 1: I will look at pictures of your favorite vending machines,
Speaker 1: were the most unusual vending machines? Uh, until the stars
Speaker 1: collapse and the universe meets its end. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks to our
Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram. Yeah, thanks to Alex Williams who
Speaker 1: composed our theme. Thanks to our research associate Gabe, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna try a new thing. Hey, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out me and Ben's individual exploits since our
Speaker 1: our show um Instagram account is not the most fascinating
Speaker 1: in the world, you can check me out at Embryonic
Speaker 1: Insider on Instagram and you can find me at Ben
Speaker 1: Bolan on Instagram. Yes, in a burst of creativity, folks. Uh,
Speaker 1: the newest thing that I have up is maybe the
Speaker 1: Saturn five wago replica that I built this weekend, which
Speaker 1: is huge, very impressive. It's weird. You can find us
Speaker 1: on our respective instagrams. You can find us on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on Facebook. Perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 1: you can find your fellow Ridiculous historians on our Facebook
Speaker 1: community page Ridiculous Historians. And please tune into our next
Speaker 1: episode where we talk about the ridiculous origins of state name,
Speaker 1: specifically Idaho. We'll see it am