Episodes 72 & 73
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SPEAKER_00 0:01
Alright, care. You've known me for a little while now, I'm assuming.
SPEAKER_02 0:08
I'd imagine so.
SPEAKER_00 0:10
Have I ever told you what I really like about a total war? No. Like the one thing I find absolutely lovable and enjoyable or enjoying about a massive world war.
SPEAKER_02 0:29
Women who are getting work and income for the first time in a long time.
SPEAKER_00 0:35
Or being able to play in like a national sport.
SPEAKER_02 0:38
Yeah. Like baseball.
SPEAKER_00 0:39
Other than just being a cheerleader, yeah, baseball.
SPEAKER_02 0:43
There's no crying in baseball.
SPEAKER_00 0:46
Crying? There's no crying in baseball. I know. The one so yes, there there is that. Um, but for the sake of today's episode, the one thing I really love it love about like humanity when they go into a massive, massive war, um isn't like the genocide, right? It's not not even really the politics. It's the amount of crazy ideas that are deeply considered.
SPEAKER_02 1:21
Yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_00 1:23
So, like, if you had a crazy idea and it's peacetime, you would never bring it up.
SPEAKER_02 1:31
Or you get laughed at.
SPEAKER_00 1:32
Or you get laughed at, or or whatever. But like, when everything hits the fan and like there's no telling how this war is gonna pan out, hey, you got a crazy idea? Let's try it out and see what happens.
SPEAKER_02 1:50
Yeah. Desperation.
SPEAKER_00 1:52
So, like, and I've and I feel like there's a lot of progress to be had in humanity when that happens. The downside is this like you say, like the American Civil War. Hey, how do we shorten up this war? The Gatling gun. Cool. So, like, let's move on into another era of humanity where we try to find ways to kill each other more effectively. But every once in a while, man, there's like some weird oddball idea that comes out of nowhere, and it's like, oh yeah, yeah, we gotta give this, give this a whirl. So I say we get into World War Two's bat bombs. Hello. Welcome to another day in your day's dumpster fire. Uh, I am your host, Ed. With me as always, is Kara. This is a oh, I uh I cut you off there. Sorry about that. Uh but if you're just stumbling on this podcast, this is a podcast where we look at all the times in human history where uh we think as a species we have the uh perfect, infallible, no way could this plan ever go sideways, and then five minutes later it all blows up in your face, and now you are left with a dumpster fire. So not really limelighting is a self-help show, but if you are in you know at some point in your life where you're like, man, I really screwed this up, or man, I like I don't know how I'm gonna get out of this. This show helps you take into consideration that there's people out there that screwed up a lot more than you have. Well, hopefully.
SPEAKER_02 4:05
I mean, unless you want to end up on the show in like 20 years, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 4:13
Come and come and talk to us in in a few years after and see if you're still in the news. Um but yeah, no, it's it's a fun show where we look at humanity's most fantastic failures, and uh I think this is like the fourth, my fourth episode in a row. I'm kind of doing a Kara like in a marathon.
SPEAKER_02 4:34
I don't know. How does it feel? Is it liberating?
SPEAKER_00 4:38
It's like people get to remember who I am, like I hogged it for long enough, it's all good. Uh yeah, yeah, I know, like you because you did Great Depression, and then before that you had like it was prohibition.
SPEAKER_02 4:51
Yeah, yep. We went through the entire interwar period for American history.
SPEAKER_00 4:57
Well, and then you also had Dust Bowl.
SPEAKER_02 4:59
Yeah, I did Dust Bowl too.
SPEAKER_00 5:01
Yep. So like so, yeah, like if you if you really look at say like Gallipoli and you look at Boston molasses flood, and then you look at Dust Bowl, and then you look at Prohibition and then Great Depression. Um your 1910 to 1945, uh like yeah, you should be set for that time period.
SPEAKER_02 5:26
It's pretty, it's pretty good. Yeah, we're pretty good. Yeah, I will say we're a little skimpy on like actual World War II stuff, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00 5:40
Yeah, yeah, because we try to find like the more wackier stories or the things where you know, like uh a female activist comes in and starts throwing axes at like mirrors and stuff like that. You know, like we try to find the more uh the more stuff that you typically don't find in your high school history class.
SPEAKER_02 6:00
Right. Like women with hatchets. Gotta love her.
SPEAKER_00 6:05
Oh, yeah. And we do have we do have a badass check of of our story today.
SPEAKER_02 6:11
We have an awesome lady of an episode today. That's exciting. I love that.
SPEAKER_00 6:17
Uh yeah, well, yeah. Only problem is is like, yeah, I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll get into it. Yeah, we'll get into it. So like sit down, buckle up, here we go. Uh, this episode's gonna be in a much, much different direction that I have been going lately. Lately, it's been like Bangladesh, Bankheist, right? 2015, or Enron, or you know, more recent-y types of episodes involving like technology and whatnot. Uh, here we're gonna go back to World War II. And I'm a middle-aged man, and I like to smoke meat on like on the on the grill, and I like to read up on World War II history. And I had somebody explain to me like that is the true sign of a middle-aged American man. They grill stuff and then they study World War II history.
SPEAKER_02 7:07
Sounds right.
SPEAKER_00 7:08
Has Gabe started doing that yet?
SPEAKER_02 7:10
Or no, no, no, he's not there yet.
SPEAKER_00 7:13
No, okay, so yeah, he's he's still he's still a young one.
SPEAKER_02 7:17
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 7:17
Even though I think he's only a few years younger than me, but still. Going back to like our intro here, we have a uh one of my favorite things about studying like massive, massive wars. And one of the coolest things about studying huge wars is this notion that we're when the world is literally on fire, any idea is considered. Because how many uh have you had times in your life, Kara, where you're like at work and you're like, okay, I have a really, really hare-brained idea. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I don't dare speak up because I'll just get laughed at. Oh, really? That's right. Yeah, because you're like a dungeon master.
SPEAKER_02 8:06
No, I'm a player.
SPEAKER_00 8:08
Oh.
SPEAKER_02 8:09
Um, but I had a stupid idea that I didn't think was gonna work, but I asked anyway. It got shot down, but I tried.
SPEAKER_00 8:21
Well, did your plan yesterday involve explosive bats? No, cool, yeah. Because that is that is what today's episode is all about. It is the wild and crazy idea of attacking Japan with explosive bats.
SPEAKER_02 8:44
Sweet.
SPEAKER_00 8:45
And I like to think of like you know, in Zelda, um, where they have like you go in the dungeon and they have the bats that are on fire, and they're like super annoying to try to kill because they light you on fire. Or if you play Ocarina of Time, it they burn up your shield.
SPEAKER_02 8:58
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 8:58
That that's what comes to mind here. But this goes so much further sideways. Let's uh let's get into it. So obviously, the best place is to start at the beginning, and I'm gonna gloss over this because I'm pretty sure most people know how how America got involved in World War II. I'd hope so. So, like, I like that is a dumpster fire in its own right. That like attack on Pearl Harbor may be uh something that I'll look into, but that one is that one's fun. It's like the Titanic, where there's so many like different theories as to why it got attacked, and some of these ideas are just off the wall crazy. Um, but let's start with part one, and each part of today's episode is going to be an operation because the operation or the project that we are looking into today is famously known as Project X-ray or Operation X-ray. So, part one here is Operation Do A Lot by Doolittle. And no, that's not a real operation, but yeah, we're gonna be talking about do little here. So Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Empire Japan commenced a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which was nestled on the south side of Oahu. Oahu. Oahu. Oahu. Yeah. Uh I my Hawaiian is terrible. Um, it's the one with Honolulu on it. Um, in fact, Pearl Harbor is just located west of Honolulu. If you go to Honolulu and you look to your west, you will see Pearl Harbor. It's kind of a fixture there. This attack is a dumpster fire in its own right and could be its own episode, but I'm not gonna dive into too much today on that. Uh, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories out there about the attack. You know, again, we're not gonna get into that because I've seen the conspiracy theories range from like communist plot to alien abductions to you know uh Roosevelt orchestrating it from the ground up. And it or my personal favorite in my previous job, did Pearl Harbor ever actually happen, or was it just uh uh a media frenzy? Yeah, if you could look at the uh the uh Kara's face right now, it's like, oh god, and you know those people that it makes me beyond angry, but it's fine. Continue on yeah, it because it you oh geez, don't vote. Um, so like to really kind of like look at this a little bit here, like the Empire of Japan, um, for the decades prior leading up to the attack on Pearl uh was modernizing like crazy from like 1900 to the 1940s, Japan really, really wanted to be like the other quote-unquote developed nations out there, like America, Britain, France, Spain. So, like they really wanted to be viewed as an equal partner player in the world, you know, political and economic forum. So the issue is that even though Japan had come a very long way and was extremely technologically savvy, the developed world really didn't take him seriously, right? They they were kind of like the little kids at the table. And Japan or the Japanese are they're very stoic, very reserved. They're not like the kind of people that are necessarily fanatical in terms of what we're used to seeing today. And as a result, they kind of got put on the back burner. So this caused a lot of resentment, right? Japan did a lot to modernize, uh, they weren't taken very seriously. Anybody who isn't taken seriously for whatever reason, they start building up a lot of resentment. And then America wasn't helping either, uh, because Japan was buying pretty much all of its oil from America. America was really kind of fiddling with the uh oil prices and really was kind of like leveraging oil to kind of control Japan. So it was like Japan became more involved and they got more of a military and more wanting to be like a world player kind of a thing, America would kind of strangle them or try to restrain them by messing with the oil. Again, I could go on for hours on this. This is a very, very complicated thing. I am glossing over so much stuff. I I do recommend if you really want to study like World War II from like a Japanese perspective. Uh, pretty sure if you're listening to this history podcast, you probably have already heard of like Dan Carlin's uh Hardcore History. He did like a four or five parter on Japan, and that is a masterwork of a history podcast.
SPEAKER_02 13:58
Yeah, it's very good.
SPEAKER_00 13:59
Oh, yeah, it is absolutely incredible. So, like, go study that or go listen to that because Carlin doesn't do like what I'm gonna be doing and go into some uh more uh lesser-known things that are kind of humorous and probably not worth mentioning in like 20 hours of of a podcast series. So, all that matters, Pearl Harbor got bombed the next day. Franklin Delano Roosevelt uh delivered his Day of Infamy speech.
SPEAKER_02 14:30
Day of Forever Living Infamy.
SPEAKER_00 14:33
Oh, yeah, it is that's a wild speech. Like it's a good one, yeah. Remember, I used to play it for our students, like right around 9-11.
SPEAKER_02 14:42
And I had to read it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 14:43
Yeah, reading it's pretty good because uh because we always hear the first part of it, we never really hear the second half of it. Where for like five or six minutes, Rosewell goes on to explain, like, oh, last night, you know, Japan attacked Guam, Japan attacked Micronesia, Japan attacked like Pearl Harbor was just like a uh a list of targets that Japan was targeting. They were busy on December 7th. They were really getting around out there, and so basically, Roosevelt was asking Congress to declare war. And I have here like an all caps, uh, for those who don't know, a president cannot declare war. A president has he's commander-in-chief and he has control of the military for a certain period of time, but he cannot single-handedly put a nation into a state of war, only Congress can do that. But he can certainly ask, and he he can definitely work work with his own political party, which pretty much dominated the uh uh both houses in Roosevelt's time. So when he was asking Congress to go to war against Japan, it really wasn't that hard of a sell. And so, like on December 8th, the House of Representatives voted 388 to one to go to war against Japan. And this is where our like our badass girl of the episode comes in. And I shouldn't say there's two. We have Eleanor Roosevelt.
SPEAKER_02 16:15
Can never forget, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 16:16
Like she she actually makes this whole this whole bat bomb thing happen. It is like her influence that kind of really gets the ball rolling on that, but I'll get there very shortly. Uh, the one dissenter was a representative uh by the name of Jeanette Rinken. She's a Republican from Montana, and she was a huge pacifist, and she felt that if I can't go to war, like if I mean if I can't go for you know my gender or age or whatever, then I ethnically can't send other people's children to go die. Uh, she did the same thing uh with World War I in 1917. She's like, if all of us are gonna vote to send other people to their desks, then we need to be able to do that, like be willing to do that ourselves. And if you're not willing to do that, then you shouldn't really be doing that. Nat, that takes a lot of courage. Yeah, it does. Because I can only imagine how what the response was from other Republicans and other Democrats, uh, you know, the 388 other people that voted to go to war. I can only imagine, like, you know, what the tweets would have been like. Yeah, I I have a lot of respect, uh, respect for that. So, and I have here like unfortunately, Representative Jeanette is our only badass lady of the episode. That is not true. We will be talking about Eleanor Roosevelt, but I did just want to bring her up because she's a fascinating figure in terms of like she's a Republican and she is from Montana, and she's like, no war. Let's let's try to work another way around this. But there's another one here, we'll get into it. Uh, one thing that was rampant on most Americans' minds, though, is like after the attack on Pearl Harbor, uh, Americans were pissed. And like overnight, the nation rallied. I remember my grandfather telling me how like the Japanese ceased to be human beings. Uh, the Japanese ceased to be somebody that you would even want to associate with. Um, it didn't help that they look a little different than say people from the Western side. But like, yeah, my grandfather, even up to like in his 80s, never really referred to Japanese, but he would always have some other derogatory term for them. And it's not because he hated him, it's because that's what he like, that's all he was surrounded in. That that's how all Americans refer to the Japanese as like these rats that need to be chased out and exterminated.
SPEAKER_02 18:57
Yeah, you you it starts to get um pretty ugly in in that regard. Um, the American attitudes towards the Japanese after Pearl Harbor happened was uh it was pretty ugly. It it got really bad. In tournament camps were set up. Um it yeah, it's it's not exactly the Americans' proudest moments in World War II. Yes.
SPEAKER_00 19:22
Yeah, no, I it it is definitely uh something that I'm not a huge it's a behavior that I'm not a huge fan of. However, given the time, I understand why people were upset.
SPEAKER_02 19:33
I understand why people were upset, but the fact that they took it as far as they did, I don't think is excusable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 19:38
And to say that that Americans are the good guys, but you know, like the evil Nazis in the concentration camps and everything, like, yeah, but yeah, granted, America wasn't trying to exterminate a race of humanity, but they were still putting families in camps in less than ideal situations. Only and here's the funny thing is it's like there was actually no real confirmed case of Japanese espionage in America.
SPEAKER_02 20:05
Correct.
SPEAKER_00 20:06
It was just that, hey, these people look different, lock them up.
SPEAKER_02 20:09
Yeah, and it is a very interesting piece of history, piece of World War II history that I do suggest you look up. Um, read up on it.
SPEAKER_00 20:17
I've been to Manzanar, and is that the one that's in um It's in California. Oh, is it California?
SPEAKER_02 20:24
Okay, yeah, it's on the like the eastern side of the state. There's a book on it, it's called Farewell to Manzanar. Excellent book. Read it. But yeah, it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00 20:33
Yeah, it is. It's uh again, it's kind of like a blemish on um American identity. But yeah, it was let's just say that America in the 1940s was a was a pretty different country than it is today, much the same way uh Japan back then was vastly different than what it is today. So um the Empire of Japan is not the Japan of today. It is a completely different mindset, it is a completely different set of priorities. So, like, I I remember teaching even in high school, and I remember we had some middle schoolers that were like, I don't even want to talk or be associated with a Japanese person today because of what they did back then, and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hang on here.
SPEAKER_02 21:25
No, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00 21:26
That that's that's not how this works. That's not the point.
SPEAKER_02 21:28
That's not the point.
SPEAKER_00 21:30
Yeah, exactly. Kind of like uh, okay, yeah, we could look at the Catholic Church, right? And the Inquisition and the stuff that was going on in Spain with the Catholic Church and whatnot. That is not the same Catholic Church today, because I don't think the Catholic Church today would have anything to do with torturing people in the name of God for conversion.
SPEAKER_04 21:51
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 21:52
Like it just doesn't, it just doesn't sit well. So yeah, I always whenever I talk about stuff like this, I always want to bring that up. Okay, I'm gonna refer to the Japanese, but not as they are today, but as as the Empire Japan was back then. So Americans wanted to hit back at Japan, right? Hey, you surprise attacked us, we want to surprise attack you. And um that's kind of difficult, especially when you look at America going into World War II. Uh, didn't have the largest army, air force really wasn't up to spec. Uh, I think there was a total of four aircraft carriers, so it's not like America had in all categories of fighting a war, America was pretty um pretty laxed going into World War II compared to other nations. So, like, just getting out there and hopping in a plane and attacking Tokyo isn't something that you just do on the fly. Like, it took Japan over a year to plan out the attack on Pearl Harbor. So it's not like something that they just did, like, hey, you know what? Tomorrow, let's go bomb Pearl Harbor.
SPEAKER_02 23:05
That's not how that worked.
SPEAKER_00 23:06
Uh, the big thing is because there's a gigantic ocean that makes everything way more difficult. Um, in terms of preparedness, uh, Japan literally had America beat in every category. Um, Japan had a way more massive navy. Uh, they had a lot more uh men in their army. They actually had an air force. Like going into World War II, uh biplanes were still commonly used. Like uh it like the the planes that we see today in like the documentaries and stuff like that. Uh that's not the kind of military we had or the air force we had back in the uh in 1942. It was uh yeah, America had an awakening. Um Japan also had a an army that was way more experienced, primarily because of the atrocities that they were committing in China and Korea during that time.
SPEAKER_02 24:06
Yeah, we touched on that the end of the depression episode a little bit.
SPEAKER_00 24:11
Yeah, yeah, and even to this day, like there is still some resentment in that part of the world for what happened because the atrocities that were committed in China is brutal.
SPEAKER_02 24:21
Yeah, it was it's really bad.
SPEAKER_00 24:23
Um, which again, completely different Japan than what it is today. So, like the Japanese, uh top of having all of the better technology and a larger army and all that kind of stuff, um, their morale towards fighting was vastly different than Americans. And to quote Dan Carlin from his uh series on the supernova in the East, uh the Japanese soldiers were just like any other soldier, but just a little bit more. And yeah, it was it was proven that like the Japanese, uh, because compared to the Americans, they were shorter, uh, they were thinner. Uh, the Japanese weren't like these huge corn-fed Midwestern farmer boys. Um, their their strategy was just absolute unwavering nationalism. And like to die for your country is like, it's not just like the greatest honor that you could do. It is like the expectation. Like it, they were a tough, tough fighting force. And Britain saw that firsthand when they got involved years before. MacArthur got his butt handed to him in the first part of America's involvement in World War II. So, like, just getting out there and blowing the crap out of Japan, just it's not something that you can just do easily. So, America decided that something's gotta happen. Something has we we've got to be able to send a message to Japan and and show that America may be the underdog in in all this, and we're gonna come out on top. That is a huge American theme, especially in the literature, is like one man against all odds, right? The little guy rising to the top be the most powerful or whatever. And that's kind of what the famous Doolittle Raid was. So, again, the Doolittle Raid is a pretty complicated thing in its own right, but I'll go over it real quickly here. April 18th, 1942, about five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, which that's an iconic name. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02 26:40
It's it's pretty solid.
SPEAKER_00 26:42
Yeah, yeah. Doolittle man, and this guy was a tough dude. Um, he commanded a 16 crew B-25 Mitchell bomber squadron. Um, and the B-25 makes its presence known in this this episode, too. Um, led like this bomber squadron that bombed various Japanese military targets, including Tokyo. And again, harrowing experience. They didn't have enough fuel to get back to the aircraft carrier, so they had to like fly into Japan and then ditch the plane and try to make their way back to America. Uh, 14 of the 16 crews eventually made its way back to the United States, uh, but it was like after the war and after they were taken prisoner by the Japanese and and all that stuff. Yeah, crazy, crazy raid, but it was designed to send a message to Japan and to the rest of Japan's allies that, like, hey, you got a sucker punch in on us, fair enough, but we'll get we'll we will exact revenge in some way. And what this really did for America when the Doolittle Raid happened, it and now here's the funny thing: the Doolittle Raid really didn't do anything. They bombed a few targets, like maybe a sensitive spot or two, but like when they bombed uh uh Tokyo, uh Doolittle thought that he was gonna get court-martialed for not hitting any more major target. I I think he took out like a grocery store, you know. It it really wasn't it wasn't like a uh it wasn't a type of attack that was gonna bring Japan to its knees.
SPEAKER_04 28:25
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 28:25
And so like Doolittle thought that when he finally got out of like Japan-occupied China and everything, that he was gonna get in trouble um for missing his targets. Uh no, he actually got promoted to the rank of like general. Um, he got like the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he be not he became known as an absolute war hero. Uh, same thing with the squadron. Uh, but what what the attack was really designed to do was attack this impression that many people had that Japan was unimpregnable, undefeatable. Like you're not gonna get a counterattack in on them. Um, Japan is like this mighty empire that is too hard to crack. And the Doolittle Raid did a lot to damage that vision. Um, a lot of after Doolittle Raid, a lot of people in America were like, okay, yeah, we're back. We're in this, we're going to take on Japan head on and you know, just kick him square in the nuts. Um, and this plan is exactly what Admiral, uh Rear Admiral Chester Nimitz was hoping for because they do a little raid then like increased the morale on the American side. One thing led to another, and then it leads to the Battle of Midway, which is like the largest naval battle in history in terms of what was involved. Yeah, again, that's like another episode. Midway is from is a dumpster fire on the Japanese side. All things considered. I've actually been thinking about doing some episodes like that. Like, hey, if it's a victory on our part, it was a dumpster fire on their part.
SPEAKER_02 30:07
The same way that's been a lot of wars.
SPEAKER_00 30:10
Yeah, yeah, and we don't really focus too much on the opposite side. We don't really focus on, like, hey, America defeated Japan in Midway, okay. But, you know, on the Japanese perspective, that was a huge dumpster fire for them. So I may actually do a few episodes looking at famous battles, but told from the perspective of the side that lost, because that is a dumpster fire in its own right. But the raid picked a rather unique American perspective known as the underdog, right? This is an American-made literature thing where, against all odds, one man will rise to become all of this, or to take over all this, or be undefeatable, or whatever. And Americans clung to that, especially when it was like a real life application here. So this also kind of like um sparked another side of America that we don't really focus too much on about World War II. And there's the idea that now suddenly for the war effort, everybody had an idea, everybody had a voice, everybody wanted to contribute in their own way, whether it was like working in a paper factory, or it was signing up for the forces, or you know, coming up with some hare-brained idea that would be laughed at before. And that's gonna lead us to part two Operation Dentist Overlord.
SPEAKER_02 31:48
Sounds like a sonic villain.
SPEAKER_00 31:52
Right.
SPEAKER_02 31:53
I kind of dig it.
SPEAKER_00 31:55
Yeah, you gotta have like the 90s like retro music playing in the background. Yeah, it's a little ding, ding ding, ding. Yeah, but yeah, in in part two here, uh basically, um, America was heavily ensconcing the idea that we don't care how crazy the idea is, as long as it works, it ain't a crazy idea. It it's so like when I was researching this, I saw all sorts of memes where it showed, you know, like some hillbilly doing something stupid, you know, fixing something in an idiotic manner. But the caption below it says, like, if it looks stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid. Like, fair, but it still looks pretty stupid. So let us be introduced to I don't know, the hero, the protagonist, uh I don't know, you'll see. This guy is weird. Um, we've got Dr. Uh Little, or I'm sorry, Dr. Lytle S. Adams. He was a dentist from Irwin, Pennsylvania, and he literally had a bat-brained idea, so crazy it might just work. All right. Dr. Adams is a very colorful person, uh, very eccentric, uh, very happy. Who's always he's like that dude that you always see, or that like, you know, you have that one co-worker that even it's if it's a Monday and it's an absolute poo show, like they're super happy and bubbly and excited to be there. And you just like, please shut up.
SPEAKER_02 33:33
Not in the mood today.
SPEAKER_00 33:36
So yeah, he he was kind of like that. Um, so yeah, very pleasant guy, but just a little out there, right? Kind of reminds me of that that history channel meme where that that dude's got like that messed up hair.
SPEAKER_02 33:47
Oh, the alien guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 33:50
He just looks all weird. He's kind of like that in terms of uh his ideas. Um, but yeah, he was a dentist and he went from drilling out teeth to becoming a wartime inventor. Um in 1934, to kind of give you an idea of what this guy was all about, he came up with the idea of using airplanes with long hooks that would fly over skyscrapers and it would snag bags of mail. Uh, it was like a skyhook thing. And so, like, yeah, the plan to fly over, say, Empire State Building or whatever, snag this giant bag of mail and then take it to the post office.
SPEAKER_02 34:26
Drone deliveries before the drones?
SPEAKER_00 34:29
Uh, yeah. Um the idea didn't take off.
SPEAKER_02 34:34
Right. I feel like that'd be a little hard to um orchestrate in 1934.
SPEAKER_00 34:40
Uh, yeah, yeah. No, it was uh yeah, it was it was a pretty um it was an idea a little ahead of its time, and the reason why I say that is because this idea was used in the second Batman movie. Remember when Batman to try to like get to that that Chinese accountant dude and and he he went back to Beijing from from Gotham City, and the Joker's like, yeah, Batman has no jurisdiction. So, like, how is he gonna get this this mob accountant out? And that was how he actually used uh Dr. Adams' crazy idea here, where when he finally caught the Lao or whatever his name was, he went to the top of the building, and then no, I'm sorry, he threw like a balloon out the window with like a cable on it, and then the C-130 flew over, snagged that cable, and then pulled Batman and the guy out. It was and it was actually called uh Skyhook, which is what um Dr. Adams actually had in mind. So nice, yeah. I don't I don't know. I kind of want to talk to Christopher Nolan, like you know, just call him up on my cell phone and be like, hey bro.
SPEAKER_02 35:53
Yeah, yeah, you know I'm like that.
SPEAKER_00 35:55
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he and I go way back. Um, I'd probably if I ever got him on the phone, I'd probably just hyperventilate and just hang out. Uh-huh. I got knees. Oh no. It'd be like the the the first time in my entire life when I asked a girl out to a dance, and I literally stood there on her porch for 30 seconds, hyperventilating.
SPEAKER_02 36:28
Nice.
SPEAKER_00 36:29
Yep. Yep. And then she eventually had to like calm me down and be like, okay, I think I know what you're gonna ask me. And she's like, the answer's still no.
SPEAKER_02 36:40
At least she let you down easy, I guess.
SPEAKER_00 36:42
Uh yeah, she just let me sit there for the rest of the night hyperventilating. That's probably what I would do if I ever got Christopher Nolan on the phone. Um, so yeah, the uh the the skyhook thing, right? Cool. Um, another idea that really caught my interest. Um, he came up with a fried chicken vending machine.
SPEAKER_02 37:04
Okay, I can get behind this. Let's elaborate.
SPEAKER_00 37:08
Yes, when I when I heard that he came up with this idea, I'm like, oh, this has got carrot written all over. Because every time I've been to a restaurant with you, you just get chicken tenders.
SPEAKER_02 37:16
All reliable. You can you can base the quality of the restaurant on their chicken tendies.
SPEAKER_00 37:25
Yeah, yeah. Every time we would travel or whatever, man, you you just down those chicken tenders. Like, you know, this place is known for its burgers, yes, but chicken tenders.
unknown 37:37
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 37:38
So again, the idea flopped, just didn't quite take off, right? So we're kind of getting an idea of Dr. Adams here. Uh I and I applaud it, right? You you you gotta have ideas. You only need one to work. That's fair, and it did like eventually. Uh I think it's in Japan, no, Australia. Um, they have BRB bot, bird bot, snacky fry, and KFC uh released a fried chicken dispensing machine to give out like free samples, and that was actually just like a few months ago.
SPEAKER_02 38:13
See, we're making progress.
SPEAKER_00 38:15
Yeah, dude, like Dr. Adams, look at you, man, going from root canals to chicken tenders.
SPEAKER_02 38:22
Just like 80 years before his time.
SPEAKER_00 38:24
Yeah, he actually lived a long life, too. Like, he uh um, yeah, he's he saw a thing or two. So when uh when Pearl Harbor uh took place, people like Dr. Adams came out of the woodwork to offer up some of the craziest ideas uh to fight the enemy that even Archimedes would be jealous of. And Archimedes had some crazy ideas, uh, and this is what I love about a world war. Um, not that like woo-hoo, I can't wait for the next world war. Uh no, I don't want to come across like a warmonger, but I do give a lot of respect for uh for like how a war can change a country's philosophies, and like one of those philosophies is like, hey, any idea is worth looking into. And so, like, you've got like any idea that like you would throw out today uh would get you thrown out of the conversation, but back then you've got such inventions as like the panchandrum, which is this is a British idea where they took a big heavy wheel, put a bunch of rockets on it so that it would spin really, really fast, and then let it loose, and then it could go over like minefields and and whatnot.
SPEAKER_02 39:36
Isn't that how Walt died in Breaking Bad?
SPEAKER_00 39:39
Uh, sort of.
SPEAKER_02 39:41
Close enough.
SPEAKER_00 39:42
Yeah, the Penjandrum is basically a rocket-propelled explosive wheel. Uh, the Krumlof, a bent rifle that can shoot around corners.
SPEAKER_02 39:52
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 39:52
That one's kind of cool. Like it's literally a 90-degree bent rifle. Okay. Um, explosive rats. That's uh that and they literally put explosive charges in its rectum and oh sent them off. Yep. Oh, pigeon-guided missiles. So that that I feel like that could be an episode in its own right. Uh wind cannons.
SPEAKER_02 40:15
Wind cannons. That sounds like a really big fart.
SPEAKER_00 40:17
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. It's like we could get like just a whole bunch of people loaded up on like taco hot sauce or taco ball hot sauce and just fire away.
SPEAKER_02 40:26
It sounds like something one of my brothers would say. Like all of them. Yeah. Blood related or not blood related, it doesn't matter. Like any of the six or seven of them would say that.
SPEAKER_00 40:42
Yeah, you give me a loaded up on some uh Taco Bell man, and uh yeah, we'll we'll take them all out. Um, yeah, I have no idea what a wind cannon was, but I'm assuming it's a type of gun that would burst out like a puff of air with high velocity or whatever. For me, I feel like it's just like it's a wind machine.
SPEAKER_02 41:02
I don't know. I just think of farts.
SPEAKER_00 41:04
Yeah, yep. Um, so then we've also got uh the um oh yeah, the 1350-ton uh Schwerer Gustav railway gun. Oof. So that's a uh that's a massive gun that the Germans created that could only be used on railways, yeah, and it takes like two to three weeks to set up.
SPEAKER_02 41:28
Yeah, we get pictures of that thing, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00 41:30
Oh yeah, it is yeah, it it if it's not compensating for something in Hitler's personal life, I don't know what is like the World War II German guns, I guess.
SPEAKER_02 41:43
I don't I think left my brain. Um they're huge, especially early in the world, the war. They're massive for like I don't know why, for reasons.
SPEAKER_00 41:55
Yeah, well, like I said, maybe Hitler's compensating for something. I guess. But yeah, there were two things that the Germans were really known for in the war. We're talking German military. Yes, we know we were very well aware of the Holocaust part of it. The Germans had like some crazy guns, like cannons, and they were probably some of the best dressed in the war.
SPEAKER_02 42:17
Like there are accounts from World War One and World War II about German uniform and how impressive they were to people, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 42:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the especially the officers, dude, they they really knew how to dress. It is but they they really did such an amazing job on how they dress that today militaries are like, okay, how do we dress our officers super, super cool and not have it look like a Nazi? It's true, it's yeah, uh they almost did too good of a job. We also have the Fugo balloon bombs, that's where uh you take those like Japanese uh balloons, we're not really balloons, they're like little mini hot air balloons, and uh they you would light this candle, and then it would be like a couple feet in diameter, go up, and then the wind would carry them over to America. And I believe there was a couple fires that were started either in the PW or in NorCal from one of these balloons.
SPEAKER_02 43:18
Wow, traveled far.
SPEAKER_00 43:20
Oh, yeah, it's actually pretty impressive. That is actually pretty impressive. Again, it didn't do much to uh the American war effort, but still. Um, and then of course we got like some spy weapons like the umbrella gun, um, or the beano grenade, which was a grenade and shaped and dressed to look just like a baseball. So because yeah, it had the stitching on it and everything. That's funny. Um, and for the purposes of this episode, and probably most famously, Dr. Adams's most noteworthy contribution to the war effort bat bombs. RIP'd all the bats. Yes, I I hate to say it, but bats were harmed in the making of this weapon. Yeah. So if you if you're sensitive about animal um cruelty and whatnot, just be forewarned. We're not gonna get super graphic about it, but uh yes, the idea was was pretty simple. Um, use bats to bomb Japan. Our intrepid dentist inventor guy had an idea that would be so devastating to the Japanese that if implemented correctly, uh it couldn't rival that of another project that cost two billion dollars back then or$36 billion today, and it would rival that, but it only cost like a couple hundred thousand dollars, and it would be on par or provide more devastation to Japan than the Matt and Manhattan Project itself. So, like, even though the Manhattan Project and um Dr. Adams they they had no idea that either existed, so we can't say they're actively competing against each other. However, though, the um yeah, the uh the two plans did go into effect, and uh the idea was like, okay, let's bring Japan down by firebombing them. Whereas like the Manhattan Project is like, let's bring Japan down by a big ass bomb.
unknown 45:21
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 45:22
And again, I don't I don't need to go into too much detail on the Manhattan Project. If you do want some more behind the scenes stuff of the Manhattan Project, go check out episode 17, uh Oppie's Demon Core. Um you can find that on the daysimesterfire.com. So, like, go check that out. Um, that's another thing. Add on to the list of 1900 to 1940s podcasting stuff that we've done.
SPEAKER_02 45:50
Our 20th century repertoire is pretty pretty good.
SPEAKER_00 45:53
Uh, yeah, yeah. No, we yeah, we've got this pretty much pegged. So, um, so yeah, but for those of you don't know, the Manhattan Project was basically the plan to build a nuclear bomb, right? The idea of releasing the power of the nucleus of an atom, and America could firebomb like towards the end of the war, America would send over thousands of B-29 bombers and in the course of a night, like destroy an entire city. The nuclear bomb was designed to do that level of damage to a city, but in like five minutes. So, like some would argue like, does did the nuclear bomb even exist? Yes, it did. Well, then why did they why did they only you then they used that earlier in the war? Well, because they weren't made yet. Um well, but the Americans had these firebombs, right? Yeah, well, and they were more devastating, right? Yes. Then why did we even need a nuclear bomb? Because a nuclear bomb was way more efficient, it could level a city in minutes.
SPEAKER_02 46:53
Yeah. So the argument was that the war in the Pacific was so bad and so devastating on both sides that the nuclear bomb would end it with less casualties and much faster. It was it's almost like a mercy.
SPEAKER_00 47:09
A mercy kill.
SPEAKER_02 47:11
Um, so that was the conversations that were going on in terms of whether to drop the bomb or not. Those conversations are still being had in terms of whether it was right or wrong to drop the bomb. Um, but that that is the core idea of it, I guess.
SPEAKER_00 47:28
Yeah. Yeah, the the basic idea was that in order for America to invade Japan, it would cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and it could take it could like double the duration of the war. Yeah. Whereas, like, because again, the Japanese soldiers, it's like any other soldier, but just a little bit more. And like the island hopping strategy uh was effective, but it was grueling. Yeah. And these, like the Okinawas and the Pele Lu's and like in Guadalajanal, like these were vicious, vicious fights that the nuclear bomb was intended to just bypass all of that. So jury's still out on the ethics of that. It is again a very fascinating thing. I would have loved to be able to talk to Truman and be like, hey, dude, what was running through your mind? Because that that that decision literally changed the world.
SPEAKER_02 48:19
Yeah, it did.
SPEAKER_00 48:20
The trajectory of humanity took a completely different course after that.
SPEAKER_02 48:25
It was one of the few technological advancements that changed the course of the world. It's that it's probably the most recent one now, for now. Currently, yeah. Uh before that, it was probably um machinery, steam, coal, stuff like that from the 1800s. Before that, it was the printing press. So you don't have very many of them. This is definitely one though.
SPEAKER_00 48:45
Yeah. Yeah, I'd say there's like four or five inventions that absolutely were paradigm shifting. And the nuclear bomb is definitely probably the most recent one.
SPEAKER_02 48:54
And we'll bring up Christopher Nolan again. He does a pretty good job painting that picture of Oppenheimer's um thought process.
SPEAKER_00 49:01
Yeah, I wonder if he's gonna cut us a check for like us promoting his show so much. I know he's movies. Movies, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 49:08
Yeah, that'd be good. At least a phone call.
SPEAKER_00 49:11
Uh yeah. Well, I'll call you. If it calls me, it's me hyperventilating.
SPEAKER_02 49:15
Anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 49:17
Anyways, um, around the time that Pearl Harbor was being bombed, our dentist inventor guy, Dr. S. or Lytle S. Adams, he was in he was vacationing in southern New Mexico because you know, it's so fabulous down there.
SPEAKER_02 49:33
Well, New Mexico seems to be a very popular destination for people in the 1940s, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00 49:40
Yeah, because I mean it's nice.
SPEAKER_02 49:41
I like I like New Mexico, it's pretty it's it's pretty nice.
SPEAKER_00 49:43
Yeah, New Mexico is a yeah, it has its own vibe, it has its own uh vibe to it.
SPEAKER_02 49:52
Yeah, I've been to um Las Lunas and where they held the um project or the Manhattan Project, and it is very nice, the landscape's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00 50:03
I can understand why why they did it, but yeah, yeah, it's like the epitome of like Southwest, like the Wild West.
SPEAKER_02 50:09
100%, yeah, also the George O'Keefe Museum there, fantastic.
SPEAKER_00 50:13
Anybody know it is there.
SPEAKER_02 50:15
Oh, yeah, it's gorgeous.
SPEAKER_00 50:16
Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 50:17
So anyway, sorry, sorry, good, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 50:19
New Mexico is like that one state in the Union that you would never think would have such an impact on World War II.
SPEAKER_02 50:26
So fun fact, New Mexico, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 50:30
But yeah, uh, Dr. Adams, he was vacationing around Carlsbad, New Mexico, and there is a uh there's a massive cave structure down there that they're still trying to figure out like how deep and far it goes. Uh, so yeah, he was spelunking or caving or whatever. And uh yeah, he was there, and he noticed like these bats are kind of cool, like these bats that hang out there. Um, they're kind of remarkable uh little critters, especially the uh Mexican freetailed bat. He noticed that like they could actually carry a lot of weight and uh they're very reliable. And uh he's like, hmm, okay. So while studying these bats during his vacation, because that's what a real nerd does, is study stuff like this on vacation. Um, I have no idea what kind of sort of life outside of dentistry this guy had uh to be studying bats in southern New Mexico. But hey man, you do you. Uh while he was there, he heard about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and uh obviously he got pretty upset about that, like many Americans did, and he started to piece together an idea that would be so dangerous and so devious, so perfectly planned that when implemented, the island nation of Japan would be burnt to a crisp. Or as I misspelled it here, Crips.
SPEAKER_02 51:54
That's an unfortunate misspelling.
SPEAKER_00 51:56
Yeah, yeah, that didn't dinks, autocorrect, didn't save me that time. So essentially, Adams had an idea of a bat bomb, and if I wasn't gonna get copyright struck, I would have put the uh 1960s Batman. Kapow.
unknown 52:18
Bang!
SPEAKER_00 52:19
Yeah, so here was the basics of idea. Take a bunch of Mexican freetailed bats, strap a little incendiary bomb with a tiny little timer on it, stuff about a thousand of them into a canister with a parachute, fly a bunch of bombers over Japan with these bat canisters, and then just drop them like a normal bomb. The canisters would slow their the descent via like a parachute or whatever, and the bats would fly out. Um well, I'm sorry, uh the bats would want to fly out because they were exposed to daylight and would want to find color cover. So it's a plan that you drop your bat bombs in the outside, they see all the light. Oh my gosh, we gotta go hide because it's too bright out here. The thousands of bats would fly all over the place, uh, especially the populated parts of Japan. So they would fly into like the rafters of houses, uh, stairways, wooden bridges, anywhere that would be a good spot for a freaked out, super confused Mexican freetailed bat in the middle of Japan would want to go, right? So they would kind of like spread out and then start hiding. Um, eventually the little timers would run out and the incendiary units would ignite, thus, causing the bats to catch on fire. Poor bats, and whatever shelter they were hiding in. So the idea was that these bats would go all over the place and then they would hide. The timers would then ignite, and our little bat turns into a little torch. And if enough of these bomb bat bombs were dropped over Japan, the entire country could go up in flames. That was the plan. What could possibly go wrong?
SPEAKER_02 53:54
Boy.
SPEAKER_00 53:55
Oh, yeah, that's Japan's defeat would be imminent, humiliating, and a lesson learned for the uh attack on Pearl Harbor, so to speak. That's the grand plan. Adams, as we'll see, is kind of an eccentric guy, um, especially with quite an imagination. He, along with many other Americans, had some stereotypes about Japan, uh the Japanese or Japan as a whole that were being used in the planning of this bat bomb. And my I remember my grandfather bringing this up too. The prolific vision of Japan um that people had was that like all of Japan's buildings were made of paper and or bamboo. Um and and to a greater extent, that is true. Uh, at the time, a lot of Japanese buildings were made of a specific type of paper walls and bamboo and stuff like that, but they were also a developing nation and they had a lot of brick buildings and and whatnot. But people back then just thought that all of Japan was built from like paper towels.
SPEAKER_02 54:59
The mass amounts of propaganda doesn't help either.
SPEAKER_00 55:02
Um, well, it was more had to do with the pictures that they were seeing in like newspapers of like downtown Tokyo and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02 55:09
Makes sense.
SPEAKER_00 55:10
And since the architecture is very different there than it is here in America, people just assumed that, oh yeah, it's uh paper culture. So I can't confirm that this was said, but I read somewhere that Adams believed that bats would be a perfect candidate for the task of burning down the paper culture of Japan. Uh, because the shape of the Japanese eyes made it impossible for any of the Japanese to see the bats or the fires. It's so stupid and racist that I hope it's not real.
SPEAKER_02 55:44
There's a lot wrong with that sentence.
SPEAKER_00 55:47
But does that, I mean, I don't know if it's true or not, but that does seem like uh uh a stigma or stereotype that Americans would have. Yeah. Back then.
SPEAKER_04 55:56
That's true.
SPEAKER_00 55:57
So um, that's not something I would ever say. Uh, it's not something I even agree with, but hey man, 1940s America, very different place. On top of Adam's stereotypes, he also believed that the Mexican free tell bat was placed by God. Okay, so God put these bats in this cave in Carl Bay, New Mexico for the sole purpose of helping America with the war effort. Eccentric, to say the least.
SPEAKER_02 56:27
Again, there's a lot going on with that statement.
SPEAKER_00 56:31
But yeah, this guy is checking all the boxes for being a good candidate for an episode of the show.
SPEAKER_02 56:35
He's a lot.
SPEAKER_00 56:37
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, he's very religious. He he was very emotionally charged when presenting his ideas that, you know, to protect our boys, protect the men, defending America, we want to bring these boys back home to their to their wives and their mothers, and all it would take is a few dead bats. And yeah, the propaganda he had was interesting.
SPEAKER_02 56:59
Crazy.
SPEAKER_00 57:00
Part three operation not a nut. That could be taken in so many different ways. Now that I look back at and read it.
SPEAKER_02 57:09
It's true. I wasn't gonna say it.
SPEAKER_00 57:12
Okay, so you were you were thinking it. Um, this has nothing to do with the month of November. So if you know, you know. In the months following Pearl Harbor, uh, Adams really did his research on the Mexican freetailed bat and even went back to the caverns a few times to collect a few of them and then run some experiments, like there were lift capabilities and flight patterns and whatnot. Slowly but surely he pieced together his proposal to FDR with such great detail and the schematics that it would be impossible for anyone at the government level to think this idea wasn't stupid. I mean, again, he mapped out everything. Yeah, diagrams, schematics, explanations, little footnotes and all sorts of stuff. In January of 1942, um, Americans from all over the place were sending their ideas to the White House, regardless of how crazy those ideas were. Adams being no different. The one thing about this kind of war is that her brain ideas were considered for at least a moment, just a moment. And you'd be shocked how many dumb ideas actually turn out to be great ideas when given the chance. In Adams' case's bat bomb idea, uh, went before the generals and was promptly shot down. He went up to all of these generals, a bunch of stars, and for some odd reason, no one that high up thought his bat bomb idea was feasible, logical, or just downright any good. I mean, I can't see anything wrong with this idea. I think it's brilliant, but yeah, these generals, man, they they didn't really want any part of that. Now, most normal people would kind of be like, Well, I had an idea, I got it out there, it got shot down. Um, I gotta move on with our life, my life, because like I've got a wife and kids, and people's teeth are are rotting out of their heads left and right. So, like, I gotta go back to dentistry, right? That's how most of us normal people would view it. But well, Adams ain't normal, and this guy's got connections, and he's got powerful connections. So, Adams was not gonna settle for being like if if we went before like the joint chiefs of staff and the uh and presented an idea, that is that is further along than what anybody in the army or armed services would ever get to experience in their lives.
SPEAKER_02 59:34
It's true. Like that's like uh that's quite the achievement already.
SPEAKER_00 59:39
Yeah, yeah. Like, oh man, you got heard by like three and four-star generals. Holy crap. Um, but Adams, man, no, he was not one to give up. He knew somebody that didn't work in the government, but was married to someone who was. He also knew that the wife of any government official would outrank any multi-star general behind a desk. So if you needed to outrank a general, you go to the general's wife.
SPEAKER_02 1:00:07
Honestly, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 1:00:08
Yeah. Adams wrote a letter outlining his plan, uh, which went on to espouse that the humble bat is the lowest level of life form on earth and completely expendable for the purposes of defeating the Japanese. He also felt that the Japanese were much higher in the animal list than the bat. Okay, so there's a dehumanizing uh phenomenon. Uh, while this is beyond racist by today's standards, during World War II, many Americans believe that the Japanese were like cowardly rats that must be exterminated at all costs, as though they were an infestation. You can just look up World War II propaganda and uh yeah, you'll uh you'll you'll see what I mean. They they do some pretty terrible depictions of the Japanese. Um, Adams went on to describe his plan in great detail and really focus on the mathematics of his plan. In short, bats are cheap and expendable. American men are worth a lot more and they're not as expendable. To send American men overseas to potentially get injured or killed fighting the monstrous Japanese. And now, as I'm saying this, just just think about all the air quotes that are in here, right? I I'm not I'm not agreeing with it. This is like summarizing Adam's true views on equality here. Um, you know, fighting the monstrous Japanese when we have millions of bats who probably would rather die than carry out their existence as some wretched winged creature whose sole job is to terrify humans, be anamorphized. I don't know if that's a word or not, but it sounded really cool. Uh, be anamorpized vampires and poop upside down that would accomplish more devastation at much less cost.
SPEAKER_02 1:01:54
This guy sucks.
SPEAKER_00 1:01:59
I think he's a few bats shy of a belfry here. Uh again, a little over the top. He's he's okay. I I got the best way to describe him. Dr. Adams is just like any other dentist out there, but just a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02 1:02:20
I stand by my previous statement. This guy sucks.
SPEAKER_00 1:02:25
Well, I don't I don't I don't think he sucks in comparison to the rest of the American sentiment at that time, but by today's standards, yes.
SPEAKER_02 1:02:33
Yeah, yeah, we would be familiar, but still.
SPEAKER_00 1:02:35
Hey, we need you to talk to HR. Um so here's what he actually wrote. And I'm not sure if this dude is like fully convinced and filled with resolve or simply just bat crap crazy. So this is actually from his letter uh to this high-ranking wife. Um the lowest form of life is the bat associated in history with the underworld and regions of darkness and evil. Until now, reasons for his creation have remained unexplained. As I vision in the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels, and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life. He really knows his rhetorical writing, man. Like, he's very persuasive. Um, so a fire attack by millions of bats, he continued, would render the Japanese people homeless and their industries useless, yet the innocent could escape with their lives. Yeah, he believed that if hey man, if you were on the enemy's side but you were good, like you would be spared. How you asked about the weather.
SPEAKER_02 1:04:03
You're putting an uncontrollable source or an uncontrollable substance on an uncontrollable source. How?
SPEAKER_00 1:04:12
But it gets worse. I know that politician's wife was none other than our other badass lady of the episode, Eleanor Roosevelt. And of course, the politician in question was Franklin Delanor Roosevelt himself. That is right. Dr. Adams was actually really, really good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt.
SPEAKER_02 1:04:37
I feel like this is a common occurrence. You get your way.
SPEAKER_00 1:04:43
Well, that's exactly what happened. Um, so like Eleanor made sure that her husband got this letter. And um shortly after reading the uh Bat Bomb proposal, um, that you know it came from the wife in chief, FDR greenlit the program. He thought it was brilliant. Probably not because Adams was so convincing, but probably because hmm, I think I trust my wife more than this dude.
SPEAKER_02 1:05:08
They also had a very interesting relationship.
SPEAKER_00 1:05:11
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 1:05:12
Um, I'm not gonna get into it right now, but I I I suggest you you read about it.
SPEAKER_00 1:05:17
Yes. Yeah, they were they weren't your typical husband and wife combo. Um they really spoke their minds and they did take each other's word into consideration. Um the vibe I got from reading about Roosevelt and Eleanor, it's not like it's not like Eleanor was put on this lower pedestal with FDR being on a higher pedestal. They were very direct with each other. Even if uh Roosevelt may have strayed from time to time from the uh the bed side of Eleanor.
SPEAKER_02 1:05:53
Oh yeah, he had a side piece. I think that's I think that's what gave her some leverage to go.
SPEAKER_00 1:06:00
Yeah. Yeah. And she was not a pushover. No, she wasn't going to be. She's not the oh, woe is me, or I'm just here to do my womanly responsibilities. It's like, if my husband can't win this war, then I will do it myself, kind of a thing. So and she didn't care, like, oh, well, I'm gonna do it because I'm a woman. No, I'm gonna do it because I'm Eleanor and I'm going to finish this off, kind of a thing. She would have made a really good vice president. So I actually I kind of wish she did go into politics more, but anyways, another episode for another day. So yeah, FDR greenlit the program immediately, and the program was now called Project X-ray. Uh, as he wrote to the Office of Strategic Services, Colonel William Donovan, this man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea, but it's worth looking into. And that is how you get a hare-brained idea put into action, uh, in case anyone was wondering what to do. Like, if you really want to know how you get an idea to the president and get green lit instantly, go to their wife, America. So, yeah, uh that is how you get a hare-brained idea uh put into action, in case anyone is wondering. In case if you have a hare-brained idea yourself, um, you always go over the president's head and go to their wife.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:22
Directly. If it's Jackie or Roosevelt or Mary or the other ones, those are the big three that are always in my head.
unknown 1:07:30
Or the other ones.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:32
Or Eleanor.
SPEAKER_00 1:07:33
Sorry, Michelle.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:35
Oh, shoot. I almost cursed. I'm sorry, Michelle. You're right. That's a big one. But yes, always go to the ladies if you need something done fast.
SPEAKER_00 1:07:48
And and if you are going to reach out to a more modern day first wife or first lady, uh, just uh try not try not to do it in a creepy way when you uh end up on the news for all the wrong reasons.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:58
Don't do that. I think writing a letter is a good starting point.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:03
And if both her and her husband think your idea is stupid, you know, just move on with your life.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:10
Yeah, and that's okay too.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:11
Yeah, no harm, no foul.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:13
The fact that your letter got that high is pretty good.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:16
Yeah, yeah. Take that as a win. And you will get something back. You you'll go. Yeah. Yeah. I I got a letter from uh uh Bill Clinton.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:24
There you go. See? You'll get something back.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:26
I wrote him in the sixth grade, and yeah, and I got a little letter back saying, Thank you for writing me, signed Bill Clinton. It helps when you're in the sixth grade and you're not 40, but uh yeah, and reaching out to a president's wife, but still.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:39
Um that looks bad, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00 1:08:42
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:42
So like maybe you'll have your wife reach out to his wife and and do that.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:46
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, or maybe maybe hop on their social media and make a comment, like, hey, I have an idea.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:52
That's the way.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:53
And given this political climate, you could probably do that and actually get pretty far. Not wrong. So we're gonna leave it there. This this will be a a two-parter. I wasn't planning on being a two-parter, but for some odd reason, man, I I didn't think I had that much written, but apparently I do. That's a good thing. Yeah, it's a good thing. Yeah, I I because I if you look at my sources, I don't really have like pages and pages and pages of sources. So I was really worried that I was gonna have to like find ways to drag this out.
SPEAKER_02 1:09:24
Hey man, if you're talking World War II and it's you and I, we're it's gonna go.
SPEAKER_00 1:09:28
Yes, yeah, and the other and the other subject area in in history is like the Civil War.
SPEAKER_02 1:09:33
And uh, that's gonna be a project. I promise, listeners, it's going to happen. It's just gonna take some time and uh for me to be confident in it.
SPEAKER_00 1:09:46
Yes, yeah, because yeah, it's uh we have very, very different views of that whole incident. But yeah, anyways, we're gonna leave it there. Uh be sure to head on over to thedaystomsterfire.com. I promise we'll get that thing updated, but yeah, you can find our massive library there. Uh we'll have links to um the episodes that we mentioned earlier in today's episode, so you can find all those in the show notes. And then yeah, do us a huge favor and uh try to find a couple of people that you think could benefit from learning from uh history's crazy bad ideas or good ideas that went sideways. Yeah, if you find somebody that could benefit from this podcast, be sure to uh spread the word. I have been doing this myself. I don't know if you've been doing this, Kara, but like my coworkers, they find out that I have a podcast. One, they treat me like I'm a celebrity, which is weird. And then two, I'm just like, hey, I'll show you where to find the show. And because we're on Spotify, we're on Amazon, we're on uh YouTube, we are everywhere. Yeah, I just show them where to go. Boom, they're they're locked in. So it doesn't hurt to help somebody like navigate where to go because a lot of people aren't into podcasts, so this is a great way to to introduce them to it. So uh we will try to get part two out shortly. Normally we have two weeks in between episodes, but this one I really want to keep part one fresh in everybody's minds. So when this comes out, I'm gonna try to have part two coming out shortly after, and we'll see what happens. All right. So uh, Carrie, do you have anything you needed to add before we end part one?
SPEAKER_02 1:11:28
No, I think we're good. Uh hopefully by the end of part two. I will have something done.
SPEAKER_00 1:11:33
Um that's yeah, a lazy bum.
SPEAKER_02 1:11:36
I know. I know. I actually worked on it a little bit today, to be fair.
SPEAKER_00 1:11:41
And and I can't be too critical because yeah, you are going for a higher degree, and you did do like what 10 episodes? Like I did. I did a lot between between Dust Bowl and then Prohibition and then um Great Depression. Yeah, yeah, that was about 10 episodes, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02 1:12:00
Uh four, four, eight, nine. Yeah, that's like ten episodes. You're right. Uh, but also summer break is coming up, so I will have some time. So I promise you listeners, if you're waiting for me, things will be coming. Just give me some time.
SPEAKER_00 1:12:15
Yeah, yep. So if you're tired of hearing me talk, Kara will be hopping back on here. And then we are working on um a thing where if you want to support us, you can. Uh, I don't have all the details yet, but we are working on something that uh could really, really help us. Uh we still are going to be ad-free. Uh, don't want to uh we don't need any more beef boxes, we don't need any more mattress commercials, we don't need any more um, you know, psychotherapy, online sessions, stuff like that. Those are we we all know those ads. Uh, but yeah, we're working on a way that if you are uh willing and able, you can support us and help support your favorite podcast. And in the meantime, please keep it a hot mess. Uh, watch out for bats. Don't uh don't piss them off.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:10
Yeah. Uh we we have bat stories that we'll tell you next episode, I promise.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:15
Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:16
Yeah, we have good bat stories and we'll save it. So just listen to the next one. Hang in there.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:20
You know, Carrie, you should really do a drawing of that guy that we saw.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:24
I should. We should reach out to that guy.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:26
That would be epic. That would be perfect for this show.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:29
Yes. All right. If you want to know what we're talking about, listen to the next episode. We will see you then.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:33
All right, guys. See y'all later.
SPEAKER_00 0:01
Alright, care. You've known me for a little while now, I'm assuming.
SPEAKER_02 0:08
I'd imagine so.
SPEAKER_00 0:10
Have I ever told you what I really like about a total war? No. Like the one thing I find absolutely lovable and enjoyable or enjoying about a massive world war.
SPEAKER_02 0:29
Women who are getting work and income for the first time in a long time.
SPEAKER_00 0:35
Or being able to play in like a national sport.
SPEAKER_02 0:38
Yeah. Like baseball.
SPEAKER_00 0:39
Other than just being a cheerleader, yeah, baseball.
SPEAKER_02 0:43
There's no crying in baseball.
SPEAKER_00 0:46
Crying? There's no crying in baseball. I know. The one so yes, there there is that. Um, but for the sake of today's episode, the one thing I really love it love about like humanity when they go into a massive, massive war, um isn't like the genocide, right? It's not not even really the politics. It's the amount of crazy ideas that are deeply considered.
SPEAKER_02 1:21
Yeah, that's fair.
SPEAKER_00 1:23
So, like, if you had a crazy idea and it's peacetime, you would never bring it up.
SPEAKER_02 1:31
Or you get laughed at.
SPEAKER_00 1:32
Or you get laughed at, or or whatever. But like, when everything hits the fan and like there's no telling how this war is gonna pan out, hey, you got a crazy idea? Let's try it out and see what happens.
SPEAKER_02 1:50
Yeah. Desperation.
SPEAKER_00 1:52
So, like, and I've and I feel like there's a lot of progress to be had in humanity when that happens. The downside is this like you say, like the American Civil War. Hey, how do we shorten up this war? The Gatling gun. Cool. So, like, let's move on into another era of humanity where we try to find ways to kill each other more effectively. But every once in a while, man, there's like some weird oddball idea that comes out of nowhere, and it's like, oh yeah, yeah, we gotta give this, give this a whirl. So I say we get into World War Two's bat bombs. Hello. Welcome to another day in your day's dumpster fire. Uh, I am your host, Ed. With me as always, is Kara. This is a oh, I uh I cut you off there. Sorry about that. Uh but if you're just stumbling on this podcast, this is a podcast where we look at all the times in human history where uh we think as a species we have the uh perfect, infallible, no way could this plan ever go sideways, and then five minutes later it all blows up in your face, and now you are left with a dumpster fire. So not really limelighting is a self-help show, but if you are in you know at some point in your life where you're like, man, I really screwed this up, or man, I like I don't know how I'm gonna get out of this. This show helps you take into consideration that there's people out there that screwed up a lot more than you have. Well, hopefully.
SPEAKER_02 4:05
I mean, unless you want to end up on the show in like 20 years, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 4:13
Come and come and talk to us in in a few years after and see if you're still in the news. Um but yeah, no, it's it's a fun show where we look at humanity's most fantastic failures, and uh I think this is like the fourth, my fourth episode in a row. I'm kind of doing a Kara like in a marathon.
SPEAKER_02 4:34
I don't know. How does it feel? Is it liberating?
SPEAKER_00 4:38
It's like people get to remember who I am, like I hogged it for long enough, it's all good. Uh yeah, yeah, I know, like you because you did Great Depression, and then before that you had like it was prohibition.
SPEAKER_02 4:51
Yeah, yep. We went through the entire interwar period for American history.
SPEAKER_00 4:57
Well, and then you also had Dust Bowl.
SPEAKER_02 4:59
Yeah, I did Dust Bowl too.
SPEAKER_00 5:01
Yep. So like so, yeah, like if you if you really look at say like Gallipoli and you look at Boston molasses flood, and then you look at Dust Bowl, and then you look at Prohibition and then Great Depression. Um your 1910 to 1945, uh like yeah, you should be set for that time period.
SPEAKER_02 5:26
It's pretty, it's pretty good. Yeah, we're pretty good. Yeah, I will say we're a little skimpy on like actual World War II stuff, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00 5:40
Yeah, yeah, because we try to find like the more wackier stories or the things where you know, like uh a female activist comes in and starts throwing axes at like mirrors and stuff like that. You know, like we try to find the more uh the more stuff that you typically don't find in your high school history class.
SPEAKER_02 6:00
Right. Like women with hatchets. Gotta love her.
SPEAKER_00 6:05
Oh, yeah. And we do have we do have a badass check of of our story today.
SPEAKER_02 6:11
We have an awesome lady of an episode today. That's exciting. I love that.
SPEAKER_00 6:17
Uh yeah, well, yeah. Only problem is is like, yeah, I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll get into it. Yeah, we'll get into it. So like sit down, buckle up, here we go. Uh, this episode's gonna be in a much, much different direction that I have been going lately. Lately, it's been like Bangladesh, Bankheist, right? 2015, or Enron, or you know, more recent-y types of episodes involving like technology and whatnot. Uh, here we're gonna go back to World War II. And I'm a middle-aged man, and I like to smoke meat on like on the on the grill, and I like to read up on World War II history. And I had somebody explain to me like that is the true sign of a middle-aged American man. They grill stuff and then they study World War II history.
SPEAKER_02 7:07
Sounds right.
SPEAKER_00 7:08
Has Gabe started doing that yet?
SPEAKER_02 7:10
Or no, no, no, he's not there yet.
SPEAKER_00 7:13
No, okay, so yeah, he's he's still he's still a young one.
SPEAKER_02 7:17
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 7:17
Even though I think he's only a few years younger than me, but still. Going back to like our intro here, we have a uh one of my favorite things about studying like massive, massive wars. And one of the coolest things about studying huge wars is this notion that we're when the world is literally on fire, any idea is considered. Because how many uh have you had times in your life, Kara, where you're like at work and you're like, okay, I have a really, really hare-brained idea. I don't know if it'll work or not, but I don't dare speak up because I'll just get laughed at. Oh, really? That's right. Yeah, because you're like a dungeon master.
SPEAKER_02 8:06
No, I'm a player.
SPEAKER_00 8:08
Oh.
SPEAKER_02 8:09
Um, but I had a stupid idea that I didn't think was gonna work, but I asked anyway. It got shot down, but I tried.
SPEAKER_00 8:21
Well, did your plan yesterday involve explosive bats? No, cool, yeah. Because that is that is what today's episode is all about. It is the wild and crazy idea of attacking Japan with explosive bats.
SPEAKER_02 8:44
Sweet.
SPEAKER_00 8:45
And I like to think of like you know, in Zelda, um, where they have like you go in the dungeon and they have the bats that are on fire, and they're like super annoying to try to kill because they light you on fire. Or if you play Ocarina of Time, it they burn up your shield.
SPEAKER_02 8:58
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 8:58
That that's what comes to mind here. But this goes so much further sideways. Let's uh let's get into it. So obviously, the best place is to start at the beginning, and I'm gonna gloss over this because I'm pretty sure most people know how how America got involved in World War II. I'd hope so. So, like, I like that is a dumpster fire in its own right. That like attack on Pearl Harbor may be uh something that I'll look into, but that one is that one's fun. It's like the Titanic, where there's so many like different theories as to why it got attacked, and some of these ideas are just off the wall crazy. Um, but let's start with part one, and each part of today's episode is going to be an operation because the operation or the project that we are looking into today is famously known as Project X-ray or Operation X-ray. So, part one here is Operation Do A Lot by Doolittle. And no, that's not a real operation, but yeah, we're gonna be talking about do little here. So Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Empire Japan commenced a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which was nestled on the south side of Oahu. Oahu. Oahu. Oahu. Yeah. Uh I my Hawaiian is terrible. Um, it's the one with Honolulu on it. Um, in fact, Pearl Harbor is just located west of Honolulu. If you go to Honolulu and you look to your west, you will see Pearl Harbor. It's kind of a fixture there. This attack is a dumpster fire in its own right and could be its own episode, but I'm not gonna dive into too much today on that. Uh, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories out there about the attack. You know, again, we're not gonna get into that because I've seen the conspiracy theories range from like communist plot to alien abductions to you know uh Roosevelt orchestrating it from the ground up. And it or my personal favorite in my previous job, did Pearl Harbor ever actually happen, or was it just uh uh a media frenzy? Yeah, if you could look at the uh the uh Kara's face right now, it's like, oh god, and you know those people that it makes me beyond angry, but it's fine. Continue on yeah, it because it you oh geez, don't vote. Um, so like to really kind of like look at this a little bit here, like the Empire of Japan, um, for the decades prior leading up to the attack on Pearl uh was modernizing like crazy from like 1900 to the 1940s, Japan really, really wanted to be like the other quote-unquote developed nations out there, like America, Britain, France, Spain. So, like they really wanted to be viewed as an equal partner player in the world, you know, political and economic forum. So the issue is that even though Japan had come a very long way and was extremely technologically savvy, the developed world really didn't take him seriously, right? They they were kind of like the little kids at the table. And Japan or the Japanese are they're very stoic, very reserved. They're not like the kind of people that are necessarily fanatical in terms of what we're used to seeing today. And as a result, they kind of got put on the back burner. So this caused a lot of resentment, right? Japan did a lot to modernize, uh, they weren't taken very seriously. Anybody who isn't taken seriously for whatever reason, they start building up a lot of resentment. And then America wasn't helping either, uh, because Japan was buying pretty much all of its oil from America. America was really kind of fiddling with the uh oil prices and really was kind of like leveraging oil to kind of control Japan. So it was like Japan became more involved and they got more of a military and more wanting to be like a world player kind of a thing, America would kind of strangle them or try to restrain them by messing with the oil. Again, I could go on for hours on this. This is a very, very complicated thing. I am glossing over so much stuff. I I do recommend if you really want to study like World War II from like a Japanese perspective. Uh, pretty sure if you're listening to this history podcast, you probably have already heard of like Dan Carlin's uh Hardcore History. He did like a four or five parter on Japan, and that is a masterwork of a history podcast.
SPEAKER_02 13:58
Yeah, it's very good.
SPEAKER_00 13:59
Oh, yeah, it is absolutely incredible. So, like, go study that or go listen to that because Carlin doesn't do like what I'm gonna be doing and go into some uh more uh lesser-known things that are kind of humorous and probably not worth mentioning in like 20 hours of of a podcast series. So, all that matters, Pearl Harbor got bombed the next day. Franklin Delano Roosevelt uh delivered his Day of Infamy speech.
SPEAKER_02 14:30
Day of Forever Living Infamy.
SPEAKER_00 14:33
Oh, yeah, it is that's a wild speech. Like it's a good one, yeah. Remember, I used to play it for our students, like right around 9-11.
SPEAKER_02 14:42
And I had to read it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 14:43
Yeah, reading it's pretty good because uh because we always hear the first part of it, we never really hear the second half of it. Where for like five or six minutes, Rosewell goes on to explain, like, oh, last night, you know, Japan attacked Guam, Japan attacked Micronesia, Japan attacked like Pearl Harbor was just like a uh a list of targets that Japan was targeting. They were busy on December 7th. They were really getting around out there, and so basically, Roosevelt was asking Congress to declare war. And I have here like an all caps, uh, for those who don't know, a president cannot declare war. A president has he's commander-in-chief and he has control of the military for a certain period of time, but he cannot single-handedly put a nation into a state of war, only Congress can do that. But he can certainly ask, and he he can definitely work work with his own political party, which pretty much dominated the uh uh both houses in Roosevelt's time. So when he was asking Congress to go to war against Japan, it really wasn't that hard of a sell. And so, like on December 8th, the House of Representatives voted 388 to one to go to war against Japan. And this is where our like our badass girl of the episode comes in. And I shouldn't say there's two. We have Eleanor Roosevelt.
SPEAKER_02 16:15
Can never forget, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 16:16
Like she she actually makes this whole this whole bat bomb thing happen. It is like her influence that kind of really gets the ball rolling on that, but I'll get there very shortly. Uh, the one dissenter was a representative uh by the name of Jeanette Rinken. She's a Republican from Montana, and she was a huge pacifist, and she felt that if I can't go to war, like if I mean if I can't go for you know my gender or age or whatever, then I ethnically can't send other people's children to go die. Uh, she did the same thing uh with World War I in 1917. She's like, if all of us are gonna vote to send other people to their desks, then we need to be able to do that, like be willing to do that ourselves. And if you're not willing to do that, then you shouldn't really be doing that. Nat, that takes a lot of courage. Yeah, it does. Because I can only imagine how what the response was from other Republicans and other Democrats, uh, you know, the 388 other people that voted to go to war. I can only imagine, like, you know, what the tweets would have been like. Yeah, I I have a lot of respect, uh, respect for that. So, and I have here like unfortunately, Representative Jeanette is our only badass lady of the episode. That is not true. We will be talking about Eleanor Roosevelt, but I did just want to bring her up because she's a fascinating figure in terms of like she's a Republican and she is from Montana, and she's like, no war. Let's let's try to work another way around this. But there's another one here, we'll get into it. Uh, one thing that was rampant on most Americans' minds, though, is like after the attack on Pearl Harbor, uh, Americans were pissed. And like overnight, the nation rallied. I remember my grandfather telling me how like the Japanese ceased to be human beings. Uh, the Japanese ceased to be somebody that you would even want to associate with. Um, it didn't help that they look a little different than say people from the Western side. But like, yeah, my grandfather, even up to like in his 80s, never really referred to Japanese, but he would always have some other derogatory term for them. And it's not because he hated him, it's because that's what he like, that's all he was surrounded in. That that's how all Americans refer to the Japanese as like these rats that need to be chased out and exterminated.
SPEAKER_02 18:57
Yeah, you you it starts to get um pretty ugly in in that regard. Um, the American attitudes towards the Japanese after Pearl Harbor happened was uh it was pretty ugly. It it got really bad. In tournament camps were set up. Um it yeah, it's it's not exactly the Americans' proudest moments in World War II. Yes.
SPEAKER_00 19:22
Yeah, no, I it it is definitely uh something that I'm not a huge it's a behavior that I'm not a huge fan of. However, given the time, I understand why people were upset.
SPEAKER_02 19:33
I understand why people were upset, but the fact that they took it as far as they did, I don't think is excusable. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 19:38
And to say that that Americans are the good guys, but you know, like the evil Nazis in the concentration camps and everything, like, yeah, but yeah, granted, America wasn't trying to exterminate a race of humanity, but they were still putting families in camps in less than ideal situations. Only and here's the funny thing is it's like there was actually no real confirmed case of Japanese espionage in America.
SPEAKER_02 20:05
Correct.
SPEAKER_00 20:06
It was just that, hey, these people look different, lock them up.
SPEAKER_02 20:09
Yeah, and it is a very interesting piece of history, piece of World War II history that I do suggest you look up. Um, read up on it.
SPEAKER_00 20:17
I've been to Manzanar, and is that the one that's in um It's in California. Oh, is it California?
SPEAKER_02 20:24
Okay, yeah, it's on the like the eastern side of the state. There's a book on it, it's called Farewell to Manzanar. Excellent book. Read it. But yeah, it's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00 20:33
Yeah, it is. It's uh again, it's kind of like a blemish on um American identity. But yeah, it was let's just say that America in the 1940s was a was a pretty different country than it is today, much the same way uh Japan back then was vastly different than what it is today. So um the Empire of Japan is not the Japan of today. It is a completely different mindset, it is a completely different set of priorities. So, like, I I remember teaching even in high school, and I remember we had some middle schoolers that were like, I don't even want to talk or be associated with a Japanese person today because of what they did back then, and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, hang on here.
SPEAKER_02 21:25
No, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00 21:26
That that's that's not how this works. That's not the point.
SPEAKER_02 21:28
That's not the point.
SPEAKER_00 21:30
Yeah, exactly. Kind of like uh, okay, yeah, we could look at the Catholic Church, right? And the Inquisition and the stuff that was going on in Spain with the Catholic Church and whatnot. That is not the same Catholic Church today, because I don't think the Catholic Church today would have anything to do with torturing people in the name of God for conversion.
SPEAKER_04 21:51
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 21:52
Like it just doesn't, it just doesn't sit well. So yeah, I always whenever I talk about stuff like this, I always want to bring that up. Okay, I'm gonna refer to the Japanese, but not as they are today, but as as the Empire Japan was back then. So Americans wanted to hit back at Japan, right? Hey, you surprise attacked us, we want to surprise attack you. And um that's kind of difficult, especially when you look at America going into World War II. Uh, didn't have the largest army, air force really wasn't up to spec. Uh, I think there was a total of four aircraft carriers, so it's not like America had in all categories of fighting a war, America was pretty um pretty laxed going into World War II compared to other nations. So, like, just getting out there and hopping in a plane and attacking Tokyo isn't something that you just do on the fly. Like, it took Japan over a year to plan out the attack on Pearl Harbor. So it's not like something that they just did, like, hey, you know what? Tomorrow, let's go bomb Pearl Harbor.
SPEAKER_02 23:05
That's not how that worked.
SPEAKER_00 23:06
Uh, the big thing is because there's a gigantic ocean that makes everything way more difficult. Um, in terms of preparedness, uh, Japan literally had America beat in every category. Um, Japan had a way more massive navy. Uh, they had a lot more uh men in their army. They actually had an air force. Like going into World War II, uh biplanes were still commonly used. Like uh it like the the planes that we see today in like the documentaries and stuff like that. Uh that's not the kind of military we had or the air force we had back in the uh in 1942. It was uh yeah, America had an awakening. Um Japan also had a an army that was way more experienced, primarily because of the atrocities that they were committing in China and Korea during that time.
SPEAKER_02 24:06
Yeah, we touched on that the end of the depression episode a little bit.
SPEAKER_00 24:11
Yeah, yeah, and even to this day, like there is still some resentment in that part of the world for what happened because the atrocities that were committed in China is brutal.
SPEAKER_02 24:21
Yeah, it was it's really bad.
SPEAKER_00 24:23
Um, which again, completely different Japan than what it is today. So, like the Japanese, uh top of having all of the better technology and a larger army and all that kind of stuff, um, their morale towards fighting was vastly different than Americans. And to quote Dan Carlin from his uh series on the supernova in the East, uh the Japanese soldiers were just like any other soldier, but just a little bit more. And yeah, it was it was proven that like the Japanese, uh, because compared to the Americans, they were shorter, uh, they were thinner. Uh, the Japanese weren't like these huge corn-fed Midwestern farmer boys. Um, their their strategy was just absolute unwavering nationalism. And like to die for your country is like, it's not just like the greatest honor that you could do. It is like the expectation. Like it, they were a tough, tough fighting force. And Britain saw that firsthand when they got involved years before. MacArthur got his butt handed to him in the first part of America's involvement in World War II. So, like, just getting out there and blowing the crap out of Japan, just it's not something that you can just do easily. So, America decided that something's gotta happen. Something has we we've got to be able to send a message to Japan and and show that America may be the underdog in in all this, and we're gonna come out on top. That is a huge American theme, especially in the literature, is like one man against all odds, right? The little guy rising to the top be the most powerful or whatever. And that's kind of what the famous Doolittle Raid was. So, again, the Doolittle Raid is a pretty complicated thing in its own right, but I'll go over it real quickly here. April 18th, 1942, about five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle, which that's an iconic name. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02 26:40
It's it's pretty solid.
SPEAKER_00 26:42
Yeah, yeah. Doolittle man, and this guy was a tough dude. Um, he commanded a 16 crew B-25 Mitchell bomber squadron. Um, and the B-25 makes its presence known in this this episode, too. Um, led like this bomber squadron that bombed various Japanese military targets, including Tokyo. And again, harrowing experience. They didn't have enough fuel to get back to the aircraft carrier, so they had to like fly into Japan and then ditch the plane and try to make their way back to America. Uh, 14 of the 16 crews eventually made its way back to the United States, uh, but it was like after the war and after they were taken prisoner by the Japanese and and all that stuff. Yeah, crazy, crazy raid, but it was designed to send a message to Japan and to the rest of Japan's allies that, like, hey, you got a sucker punch in on us, fair enough, but we'll get we'll we will exact revenge in some way. And what this really did for America when the Doolittle Raid happened, it and now here's the funny thing: the Doolittle Raid really didn't do anything. They bombed a few targets, like maybe a sensitive spot or two, but like when they bombed uh uh Tokyo, uh Doolittle thought that he was gonna get court-martialed for not hitting any more major target. I I think he took out like a grocery store, you know. It it really wasn't it wasn't like a uh it wasn't a type of attack that was gonna bring Japan to its knees.
SPEAKER_04 28:25
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 28:25
And so like Doolittle thought that when he finally got out of like Japan-occupied China and everything, that he was gonna get in trouble um for missing his targets. Uh no, he actually got promoted to the rank of like general. Um, he got like the Congressional Medal of Honor, and he be not he became known as an absolute war hero. Uh, same thing with the squadron. Uh, but what what the attack was really designed to do was attack this impression that many people had that Japan was unimpregnable, undefeatable. Like you're not gonna get a counterattack in on them. Um, Japan is like this mighty empire that is too hard to crack. And the Doolittle Raid did a lot to damage that vision. Um, a lot of after Doolittle Raid, a lot of people in America were like, okay, yeah, we're back. We're in this, we're going to take on Japan head on and you know, just kick him square in the nuts. Um, and this plan is exactly what Admiral, uh Rear Admiral Chester Nimitz was hoping for because they do a little raid then like increased the morale on the American side. One thing led to another, and then it leads to the Battle of Midway, which is like the largest naval battle in history in terms of what was involved. Yeah, again, that's like another episode. Midway is from is a dumpster fire on the Japanese side. All things considered. I've actually been thinking about doing some episodes like that. Like, hey, if it's a victory on our part, it was a dumpster fire on their part.
SPEAKER_02 30:07
The same way that's been a lot of wars.
SPEAKER_00 30:10
Yeah, yeah, and we don't really focus too much on the opposite side. We don't really focus on, like, hey, America defeated Japan in Midway, okay. But, you know, on the Japanese perspective, that was a huge dumpster fire for them. So I may actually do a few episodes looking at famous battles, but told from the perspective of the side that lost, because that is a dumpster fire in its own right. But the raid picked a rather unique American perspective known as the underdog, right? This is an American-made literature thing where, against all odds, one man will rise to become all of this, or to take over all this, or be undefeatable, or whatever. And Americans clung to that, especially when it was like a real life application here. So this also kind of like um sparked another side of America that we don't really focus too much on about World War II. And there's the idea that now suddenly for the war effort, everybody had an idea, everybody had a voice, everybody wanted to contribute in their own way, whether it was like working in a paper factory, or it was signing up for the forces, or you know, coming up with some hare-brained idea that would be laughed at before. And that's gonna lead us to part two Operation Dentist Overlord.
SPEAKER_02 31:48
Sounds like a sonic villain.
SPEAKER_00 31:52
Right.
SPEAKER_02 31:53
I kind of dig it.
SPEAKER_00 31:55
Yeah, you gotta have like the 90s like retro music playing in the background. Yeah, it's a little ding, ding ding, ding. Yeah, but yeah, in in part two here, uh basically, um, America was heavily ensconcing the idea that we don't care how crazy the idea is, as long as it works, it ain't a crazy idea. It it's so like when I was researching this, I saw all sorts of memes where it showed, you know, like some hillbilly doing something stupid, you know, fixing something in an idiotic manner. But the caption below it says, like, if it looks stupid, but it works, it ain't stupid. Like, fair, but it still looks pretty stupid. So let us be introduced to I don't know, the hero, the protagonist, uh I don't know, you'll see. This guy is weird. Um, we've got Dr. Uh Little, or I'm sorry, Dr. Lytle S. Adams. He was a dentist from Irwin, Pennsylvania, and he literally had a bat-brained idea, so crazy it might just work. All right. Dr. Adams is a very colorful person, uh, very eccentric, uh, very happy. Who's always he's like that dude that you always see, or that like, you know, you have that one co-worker that even it's if it's a Monday and it's an absolute poo show, like they're super happy and bubbly and excited to be there. And you just like, please shut up.
SPEAKER_02 33:33
Not in the mood today.
SPEAKER_00 33:36
So yeah, he he was kind of like that. Um, so yeah, very pleasant guy, but just a little out there, right? Kind of reminds me of that that history channel meme where that that dude's got like that messed up hair.
SPEAKER_02 33:47
Oh, the alien guy, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 33:50
He just looks all weird. He's kind of like that in terms of uh his ideas. Um, but yeah, he was a dentist and he went from drilling out teeth to becoming a wartime inventor. Um in 1934, to kind of give you an idea of what this guy was all about, he came up with the idea of using airplanes with long hooks that would fly over skyscrapers and it would snag bags of mail. Uh, it was like a skyhook thing. And so, like, yeah, the plan to fly over, say, Empire State Building or whatever, snag this giant bag of mail and then take it to the post office.
SPEAKER_02 34:26
Drone deliveries before the drones?
SPEAKER_00 34:29
Uh, yeah. Um the idea didn't take off.
SPEAKER_02 34:34
Right. I feel like that'd be a little hard to um orchestrate in 1934.
SPEAKER_00 34:40
Uh, yeah, yeah. No, it was uh yeah, it was it was a pretty um it was an idea a little ahead of its time, and the reason why I say that is because this idea was used in the second Batman movie. Remember when Batman to try to like get to that that Chinese accountant dude and and he he went back to Beijing from from Gotham City, and the Joker's like, yeah, Batman has no jurisdiction. So, like, how is he gonna get this this mob accountant out? And that was how he actually used uh Dr. Adams' crazy idea here, where when he finally caught the Lao or whatever his name was, he went to the top of the building, and then no, I'm sorry, he threw like a balloon out the window with like a cable on it, and then the C-130 flew over, snagged that cable, and then pulled Batman and the guy out. It was and it was actually called uh Skyhook, which is what um Dr. Adams actually had in mind. So nice, yeah. I don't I don't know. I kind of want to talk to Christopher Nolan, like you know, just call him up on my cell phone and be like, hey bro.
SPEAKER_02 35:53
Yeah, yeah, you know I'm like that.
SPEAKER_00 35:55
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he and I go way back. Um, I'd probably if I ever got him on the phone, I'd probably just hyperventilate and just hang out. Uh-huh. I got knees. Oh no. It'd be like the the the first time in my entire life when I asked a girl out to a dance, and I literally stood there on her porch for 30 seconds, hyperventilating.
SPEAKER_02 36:28
Nice.
SPEAKER_00 36:29
Yep. Yep. And then she eventually had to like calm me down and be like, okay, I think I know what you're gonna ask me. And she's like, the answer's still no.
SPEAKER_02 36:40
At least she let you down easy, I guess.
SPEAKER_00 36:42
Uh yeah, she just let me sit there for the rest of the night hyperventilating. That's probably what I would do if I ever got Christopher Nolan on the phone. Um, so yeah, the uh the the skyhook thing, right? Cool. Um, another idea that really caught my interest. Um, he came up with a fried chicken vending machine.
SPEAKER_02 37:04
Okay, I can get behind this. Let's elaborate.
SPEAKER_00 37:08
Yes, when I when I heard that he came up with this idea, I'm like, oh, this has got carrot written all over. Because every time I've been to a restaurant with you, you just get chicken tenders.
SPEAKER_02 37:16
All reliable. You can you can base the quality of the restaurant on their chicken tendies.
SPEAKER_00 37:25
Yeah, yeah. Every time we would travel or whatever, man, you you just down those chicken tenders. Like, you know, this place is known for its burgers, yes, but chicken tenders.
unknown 37:37
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 37:38
So again, the idea flopped, just didn't quite take off, right? So we're kind of getting an idea of Dr. Adams here. Uh I and I applaud it, right? You you you gotta have ideas. You only need one to work. That's fair, and it did like eventually. Uh I think it's in Japan, no, Australia. Um, they have BRB bot, bird bot, snacky fry, and KFC uh released a fried chicken dispensing machine to give out like free samples, and that was actually just like a few months ago.
SPEAKER_02 38:13
See, we're making progress.
SPEAKER_00 38:15
Yeah, dude, like Dr. Adams, look at you, man, going from root canals to chicken tenders.
SPEAKER_02 38:22
Just like 80 years before his time.
SPEAKER_00 38:24
Yeah, he actually lived a long life, too. Like, he uh um, yeah, he's he saw a thing or two. So when uh when Pearl Harbor uh took place, people like Dr. Adams came out of the woodwork to offer up some of the craziest ideas uh to fight the enemy that even Archimedes would be jealous of. And Archimedes had some crazy ideas, uh, and this is what I love about a world war. Um, not that like woo-hoo, I can't wait for the next world war. Uh no, I don't want to come across like a warmonger, but I do give a lot of respect for uh for like how a war can change a country's philosophies, and like one of those philosophies is like, hey, any idea is worth looking into. And so, like, you've got like any idea that like you would throw out today uh would get you thrown out of the conversation, but back then you've got such inventions as like the panchandrum, which is this is a British idea where they took a big heavy wheel, put a bunch of rockets on it so that it would spin really, really fast, and then let it loose, and then it could go over like minefields and and whatnot.
SPEAKER_02 39:36
Isn't that how Walt died in Breaking Bad?
SPEAKER_00 39:39
Uh, sort of.
SPEAKER_02 39:41
Close enough.
SPEAKER_00 39:42
Yeah, the Penjandrum is basically a rocket-propelled explosive wheel. Uh, the Krumlof, a bent rifle that can shoot around corners.
SPEAKER_02 39:52
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 39:52
That one's kind of cool. Like it's literally a 90-degree bent rifle. Okay. Um, explosive rats. That's uh that and they literally put explosive charges in its rectum and oh sent them off. Yep. Oh, pigeon-guided missiles. So that that I feel like that could be an episode in its own right. Uh wind cannons.
SPEAKER_02 40:15
Wind cannons. That sounds like a really big fart.
SPEAKER_00 40:17
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. It's like we could get like just a whole bunch of people loaded up on like taco hot sauce or taco ball hot sauce and just fire away.
SPEAKER_02 40:26
It sounds like something one of my brothers would say. Like all of them. Yeah. Blood related or not blood related, it doesn't matter. Like any of the six or seven of them would say that.
SPEAKER_00 40:42
Yeah, you give me a loaded up on some uh Taco Bell man, and uh yeah, we'll we'll take them all out. Um, yeah, I have no idea what a wind cannon was, but I'm assuming it's a type of gun that would burst out like a puff of air with high velocity or whatever. For me, I feel like it's just like it's a wind machine.
SPEAKER_02 41:02
I don't know. I just think of farts.
SPEAKER_00 41:04
Yeah, yep. Um, so then we've also got uh the um oh yeah, the 1350-ton uh Schwerer Gustav railway gun. Oof. So that's a uh that's a massive gun that the Germans created that could only be used on railways, yeah, and it takes like two to three weeks to set up.
SPEAKER_02 41:28
Yeah, we get pictures of that thing, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_00 41:30
Oh yeah, it is yeah, it it if it's not compensating for something in Hitler's personal life, I don't know what is like the World War II German guns, I guess.
SPEAKER_02 41:43
I don't I think left my brain. Um they're huge, especially early in the world, the war. They're massive for like I don't know why, for reasons.
SPEAKER_00 41:55
Yeah, well, like I said, maybe Hitler's compensating for something. I guess. But yeah, there were two things that the Germans were really known for in the war. We're talking German military. Yes, we know we were very well aware of the Holocaust part of it. The Germans had like some crazy guns, like cannons, and they were probably some of the best dressed in the war.
SPEAKER_02 42:17
Like there are accounts from World War One and World War II about German uniform and how impressive they were to people, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 42:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The the especially the officers, dude, they they really knew how to dress. It is but they they really did such an amazing job on how they dress that today militaries are like, okay, how do we dress our officers super, super cool and not have it look like a Nazi? It's true, it's yeah, uh they almost did too good of a job. We also have the Fugo balloon bombs, that's where uh you take those like Japanese uh balloons, we're not really balloons, they're like little mini hot air balloons, and uh they you would light this candle, and then it would be like a couple feet in diameter, go up, and then the wind would carry them over to America. And I believe there was a couple fires that were started either in the PW or in NorCal from one of these balloons.
SPEAKER_02 43:18
Wow, traveled far.
SPEAKER_00 43:20
Oh, yeah, it's actually pretty impressive. That is actually pretty impressive. Again, it didn't do much to uh the American war effort, but still. Um, and then of course we got like some spy weapons like the umbrella gun, um, or the beano grenade, which was a grenade and shaped and dressed to look just like a baseball. So because yeah, it had the stitching on it and everything. That's funny. Um, and for the purposes of this episode, and probably most famously, Dr. Adams's most noteworthy contribution to the war effort bat bombs. RIP'd all the bats. Yes, I I hate to say it, but bats were harmed in the making of this weapon. Yeah. So if you if you're sensitive about animal um cruelty and whatnot, just be forewarned. We're not gonna get super graphic about it, but uh yes, the idea was was pretty simple. Um, use bats to bomb Japan. Our intrepid dentist inventor guy had an idea that would be so devastating to the Japanese that if implemented correctly, uh it couldn't rival that of another project that cost two billion dollars back then or$36 billion today, and it would rival that, but it only cost like a couple hundred thousand dollars, and it would be on par or provide more devastation to Japan than the Matt and Manhattan Project itself. So, like, even though the Manhattan Project and um Dr. Adams they they had no idea that either existed, so we can't say they're actively competing against each other. However, though, the um yeah, the uh the two plans did go into effect, and uh the idea was like, okay, let's bring Japan down by firebombing them. Whereas like the Manhattan Project is like, let's bring Japan down by a big ass bomb.
unknown 45:21
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 45:22
And again, I don't I don't need to go into too much detail on the Manhattan Project. If you do want some more behind the scenes stuff of the Manhattan Project, go check out episode 17, uh Oppie's Demon Core. Um you can find that on the daysimesterfire.com. So, like, go check that out. Um, that's another thing. Add on to the list of 1900 to 1940s podcasting stuff that we've done.
SPEAKER_02 45:50
Our 20th century repertoire is pretty pretty good.
SPEAKER_00 45:53
Uh, yeah, yeah. No, we yeah, we've got this pretty much pegged. So, um, so yeah, but for those of you don't know, the Manhattan Project was basically the plan to build a nuclear bomb, right? The idea of releasing the power of the nucleus of an atom, and America could firebomb like towards the end of the war, America would send over thousands of B-29 bombers and in the course of a night, like destroy an entire city. The nuclear bomb was designed to do that level of damage to a city, but in like five minutes. So, like some would argue like, does did the nuclear bomb even exist? Yes, it did. Well, then why did they why did they only you then they used that earlier in the war? Well, because they weren't made yet. Um well, but the Americans had these firebombs, right? Yeah, well, and they were more devastating, right? Yes. Then why did we even need a nuclear bomb? Because a nuclear bomb was way more efficient, it could level a city in minutes.
SPEAKER_02 46:53
Yeah. So the argument was that the war in the Pacific was so bad and so devastating on both sides that the nuclear bomb would end it with less casualties and much faster. It was it's almost like a mercy.
SPEAKER_00 47:09
A mercy kill.
SPEAKER_02 47:11
Um, so that was the conversations that were going on in terms of whether to drop the bomb or not. Those conversations are still being had in terms of whether it was right or wrong to drop the bomb. Um, but that that is the core idea of it, I guess.
SPEAKER_00 47:28
Yeah. Yeah, the the basic idea was that in order for America to invade Japan, it would cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and it could take it could like double the duration of the war. Yeah. Whereas, like, because again, the Japanese soldiers, it's like any other soldier, but just a little bit more. And like the island hopping strategy uh was effective, but it was grueling. Yeah. And these, like the Okinawas and the Pele Lu's and like in Guadalajanal, like these were vicious, vicious fights that the nuclear bomb was intended to just bypass all of that. So jury's still out on the ethics of that. It is again a very fascinating thing. I would have loved to be able to talk to Truman and be like, hey, dude, what was running through your mind? Because that that that decision literally changed the world.
SPEAKER_02 48:19
Yeah, it did.
SPEAKER_00 48:20
The trajectory of humanity took a completely different course after that.
SPEAKER_02 48:25
It was one of the few technological advancements that changed the course of the world. It's that it's probably the most recent one now, for now. Currently, yeah. Uh before that, it was probably um machinery, steam, coal, stuff like that from the 1800s. Before that, it was the printing press. So you don't have very many of them. This is definitely one though.
SPEAKER_00 48:45
Yeah. Yeah, I'd say there's like four or five inventions that absolutely were paradigm shifting. And the nuclear bomb is definitely probably the most recent one.
SPEAKER_02 48:54
And we'll bring up Christopher Nolan again. He does a pretty good job painting that picture of Oppenheimer's um thought process.
SPEAKER_00 49:01
Yeah, I wonder if he's gonna cut us a check for like us promoting his show so much. I know he's movies. Movies, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 49:08
Yeah, that'd be good. At least a phone call.
SPEAKER_00 49:11
Uh yeah. Well, I'll call you. If it calls me, it's me hyperventilating.
SPEAKER_02 49:15
Anyway, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 49:17
Anyways, um, around the time that Pearl Harbor was being bombed, our dentist inventor guy, Dr. S. or Lytle S. Adams, he was in he was vacationing in southern New Mexico because you know, it's so fabulous down there.
SPEAKER_02 49:33
Well, New Mexico seems to be a very popular destination for people in the 1940s, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00 49:40
Yeah, because I mean it's nice.
SPEAKER_02 49:41
I like I like New Mexico, it's pretty it's it's pretty nice.
SPEAKER_00 49:43
Yeah, New Mexico is a yeah, it has its own vibe, it has its own uh vibe to it.
SPEAKER_02 49:52
Yeah, I've been to um Las Lunas and where they held the um project or the Manhattan Project, and it is very nice, the landscape's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00 50:03
I can understand why why they did it, but yeah, yeah, it's like the epitome of like Southwest, like the Wild West.
SPEAKER_02 50:09
100%, yeah, also the George O'Keefe Museum there, fantastic.
SPEAKER_00 50:13
Anybody know it is there.
SPEAKER_02 50:15
Oh, yeah, it's gorgeous.
SPEAKER_00 50:16
Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02 50:17
So anyway, sorry, sorry, good, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 50:19
New Mexico is like that one state in the Union that you would never think would have such an impact on World War II.
SPEAKER_02 50:26
So fun fact, New Mexico, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 50:30
But yeah, uh, Dr. Adams, he was vacationing around Carlsbad, New Mexico, and there is a uh there's a massive cave structure down there that they're still trying to figure out like how deep and far it goes. Uh, so yeah, he was spelunking or caving or whatever. And uh yeah, he was there, and he noticed like these bats are kind of cool, like these bats that hang out there. Um, they're kind of remarkable uh little critters, especially the uh Mexican freetailed bat. He noticed that like they could actually carry a lot of weight and uh they're very reliable. And uh he's like, hmm, okay. So while studying these bats during his vacation, because that's what a real nerd does, is study stuff like this on vacation. Um, I have no idea what kind of sort of life outside of dentistry this guy had uh to be studying bats in southern New Mexico. But hey man, you do you. Uh while he was there, he heard about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and uh obviously he got pretty upset about that, like many Americans did, and he started to piece together an idea that would be so dangerous and so devious, so perfectly planned that when implemented, the island nation of Japan would be burnt to a crisp. Or as I misspelled it here, Crips.
SPEAKER_02 51:54
That's an unfortunate misspelling.
SPEAKER_00 51:56
Yeah, yeah, that didn't dinks, autocorrect, didn't save me that time. So essentially, Adams had an idea of a bat bomb, and if I wasn't gonna get copyright struck, I would have put the uh 1960s Batman. Kapow.
unknown 52:18
Bang!
SPEAKER_00 52:19
Yeah, so here was the basics of idea. Take a bunch of Mexican freetailed bats, strap a little incendiary bomb with a tiny little timer on it, stuff about a thousand of them into a canister with a parachute, fly a bunch of bombers over Japan with these bat canisters, and then just drop them like a normal bomb. The canisters would slow their the descent via like a parachute or whatever, and the bats would fly out. Um well, I'm sorry, uh the bats would want to fly out because they were exposed to daylight and would want to find color cover. So it's a plan that you drop your bat bombs in the outside, they see all the light. Oh my gosh, we gotta go hide because it's too bright out here. The thousands of bats would fly all over the place, uh, especially the populated parts of Japan. So they would fly into like the rafters of houses, uh, stairways, wooden bridges, anywhere that would be a good spot for a freaked out, super confused Mexican freetailed bat in the middle of Japan would want to go, right? So they would kind of like spread out and then start hiding. Um, eventually the little timers would run out and the incendiary units would ignite, thus, causing the bats to catch on fire. Poor bats, and whatever shelter they were hiding in. So the idea was that these bats would go all over the place and then they would hide. The timers would then ignite, and our little bat turns into a little torch. And if enough of these bomb bat bombs were dropped over Japan, the entire country could go up in flames. That was the plan. What could possibly go wrong?
SPEAKER_02 53:54
Boy.
SPEAKER_00 53:55
Oh, yeah, that's Japan's defeat would be imminent, humiliating, and a lesson learned for the uh attack on Pearl Harbor, so to speak. That's the grand plan. Adams, as we'll see, is kind of an eccentric guy, um, especially with quite an imagination. He, along with many other Americans, had some stereotypes about Japan, uh the Japanese or Japan as a whole that were being used in the planning of this bat bomb. And my I remember my grandfather bringing this up too. The prolific vision of Japan um that people had was that like all of Japan's buildings were made of paper and or bamboo. Um and and to a greater extent, that is true. Uh, at the time, a lot of Japanese buildings were made of a specific type of paper walls and bamboo and stuff like that, but they were also a developing nation and they had a lot of brick buildings and and whatnot. But people back then just thought that all of Japan was built from like paper towels.
SPEAKER_02 54:59
The mass amounts of propaganda doesn't help either.
SPEAKER_00 55:02
Um, well, it was more had to do with the pictures that they were seeing in like newspapers of like downtown Tokyo and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02 55:09
Makes sense.
SPEAKER_00 55:10
And since the architecture is very different there than it is here in America, people just assumed that, oh yeah, it's uh paper culture. So I can't confirm that this was said, but I read somewhere that Adams believed that bats would be a perfect candidate for the task of burning down the paper culture of Japan. Uh, because the shape of the Japanese eyes made it impossible for any of the Japanese to see the bats or the fires. It's so stupid and racist that I hope it's not real.
SPEAKER_02 55:44
There's a lot wrong with that sentence.
SPEAKER_00 55:47
But does that, I mean, I don't know if it's true or not, but that does seem like uh uh a stigma or stereotype that Americans would have. Yeah. Back then.
SPEAKER_04 55:56
That's true.
SPEAKER_00 55:57
So um, that's not something I would ever say. Uh, it's not something I even agree with, but hey man, 1940s America, very different place. On top of Adam's stereotypes, he also believed that the Mexican free tell bat was placed by God. Okay, so God put these bats in this cave in Carl Bay, New Mexico for the sole purpose of helping America with the war effort. Eccentric, to say the least.
SPEAKER_02 56:27
Again, there's a lot going on with that statement.
SPEAKER_00 56:31
But yeah, this guy is checking all the boxes for being a good candidate for an episode of the show.
SPEAKER_02 56:35
He's a lot.
SPEAKER_00 56:37
Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, he's very religious. He he was very emotionally charged when presenting his ideas that, you know, to protect our boys, protect the men, defending America, we want to bring these boys back home to their to their wives and their mothers, and all it would take is a few dead bats. And yeah, the propaganda he had was interesting.
SPEAKER_02 56:59
Crazy.
SPEAKER_00 57:00
Part three operation not a nut. That could be taken in so many different ways. Now that I look back at and read it.
SPEAKER_02 57:09
It's true. I wasn't gonna say it.
SPEAKER_00 57:12
Okay, so you were you were thinking it. Um, this has nothing to do with the month of November. So if you know, you know. In the months following Pearl Harbor, uh, Adams really did his research on the Mexican freetailed bat and even went back to the caverns a few times to collect a few of them and then run some experiments, like there were lift capabilities and flight patterns and whatnot. Slowly but surely he pieced together his proposal to FDR with such great detail and the schematics that it would be impossible for anyone at the government level to think this idea wasn't stupid. I mean, again, he mapped out everything. Yeah, diagrams, schematics, explanations, little footnotes and all sorts of stuff. In January of 1942, um, Americans from all over the place were sending their ideas to the White House, regardless of how crazy those ideas were. Adams being no different. The one thing about this kind of war is that her brain ideas were considered for at least a moment, just a moment. And you'd be shocked how many dumb ideas actually turn out to be great ideas when given the chance. In Adams' case's bat bomb idea, uh, went before the generals and was promptly shot down. He went up to all of these generals, a bunch of stars, and for some odd reason, no one that high up thought his bat bomb idea was feasible, logical, or just downright any good. I mean, I can't see anything wrong with this idea. I think it's brilliant, but yeah, these generals, man, they they didn't really want any part of that. Now, most normal people would kind of be like, Well, I had an idea, I got it out there, it got shot down. Um, I gotta move on with our life, my life, because like I've got a wife and kids, and people's teeth are are rotting out of their heads left and right. So, like, I gotta go back to dentistry, right? That's how most of us normal people would view it. But well, Adams ain't normal, and this guy's got connections, and he's got powerful connections. So, Adams was not gonna settle for being like if if we went before like the joint chiefs of staff and the uh and presented an idea, that is that is further along than what anybody in the army or armed services would ever get to experience in their lives.
SPEAKER_02 59:34
It's true. Like that's like uh that's quite the achievement already.
SPEAKER_00 59:39
Yeah, yeah. Like, oh man, you got heard by like three and four-star generals. Holy crap. Um, but Adams, man, no, he was not one to give up. He knew somebody that didn't work in the government, but was married to someone who was. He also knew that the wife of any government official would outrank any multi-star general behind a desk. So if you needed to outrank a general, you go to the general's wife.
SPEAKER_02 1:00:07
Honestly, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 1:00:08
Yeah. Adams wrote a letter outlining his plan, uh, which went on to espouse that the humble bat is the lowest level of life form on earth and completely expendable for the purposes of defeating the Japanese. He also felt that the Japanese were much higher in the animal list than the bat. Okay, so there's a dehumanizing uh phenomenon. Uh, while this is beyond racist by today's standards, during World War II, many Americans believe that the Japanese were like cowardly rats that must be exterminated at all costs, as though they were an infestation. You can just look up World War II propaganda and uh yeah, you'll uh you'll you'll see what I mean. They they do some pretty terrible depictions of the Japanese. Um, Adams went on to describe his plan in great detail and really focus on the mathematics of his plan. In short, bats are cheap and expendable. American men are worth a lot more and they're not as expendable. To send American men overseas to potentially get injured or killed fighting the monstrous Japanese. And now, as I'm saying this, just just think about all the air quotes that are in here, right? I I'm not I'm not agreeing with it. This is like summarizing Adam's true views on equality here. Um, you know, fighting the monstrous Japanese when we have millions of bats who probably would rather die than carry out their existence as some wretched winged creature whose sole job is to terrify humans, be anamorphized. I don't know if that's a word or not, but it sounded really cool. Uh, be anamorpized vampires and poop upside down that would accomplish more devastation at much less cost.
SPEAKER_02 1:01:54
This guy sucks.
SPEAKER_00 1:01:59
I think he's a few bats shy of a belfry here. Uh again, a little over the top. He's he's okay. I I got the best way to describe him. Dr. Adams is just like any other dentist out there, but just a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02 1:02:20
I stand by my previous statement. This guy sucks.
SPEAKER_00 1:02:25
Well, I don't I don't I don't think he sucks in comparison to the rest of the American sentiment at that time, but by today's standards, yes.
SPEAKER_02 1:02:33
Yeah, yeah, we would be familiar, but still.
SPEAKER_00 1:02:35
Hey, we need you to talk to HR. Um so here's what he actually wrote. And I'm not sure if this dude is like fully convinced and filled with resolve or simply just bat crap crazy. So this is actually from his letter uh to this high-ranking wife. Um the lowest form of life is the bat associated in history with the underworld and regions of darkness and evil. Until now, reasons for his creation have remained unexplained. As I vision in the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels, and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life. He really knows his rhetorical writing, man. Like, he's very persuasive. Um, so a fire attack by millions of bats, he continued, would render the Japanese people homeless and their industries useless, yet the innocent could escape with their lives. Yeah, he believed that if hey man, if you were on the enemy's side but you were good, like you would be spared. How you asked about the weather.
SPEAKER_02 1:04:03
You're putting an uncontrollable source or an uncontrollable substance on an uncontrollable source. How?
SPEAKER_00 1:04:12
But it gets worse. I know that politician's wife was none other than our other badass lady of the episode, Eleanor Roosevelt. And of course, the politician in question was Franklin Delanor Roosevelt himself. That is right. Dr. Adams was actually really, really good friends with Eleanor Roosevelt.
SPEAKER_02 1:04:37
I feel like this is a common occurrence. You get your way.
SPEAKER_00 1:04:43
Well, that's exactly what happened. Um, so like Eleanor made sure that her husband got this letter. And um shortly after reading the uh Bat Bomb proposal, um, that you know it came from the wife in chief, FDR greenlit the program. He thought it was brilliant. Probably not because Adams was so convincing, but probably because hmm, I think I trust my wife more than this dude.
SPEAKER_02 1:05:08
They also had a very interesting relationship.
SPEAKER_00 1:05:11
Yes.
SPEAKER_02 1:05:12
Um, I'm not gonna get into it right now, but I I I suggest you you read about it.
SPEAKER_00 1:05:17
Yes. Yeah, they were they weren't your typical husband and wife combo. Um they really spoke their minds and they did take each other's word into consideration. Um the vibe I got from reading about Roosevelt and Eleanor, it's not like it's not like Eleanor was put on this lower pedestal with FDR being on a higher pedestal. They were very direct with each other. Even if uh Roosevelt may have strayed from time to time from the uh the bed side of Eleanor.
SPEAKER_02 1:05:53
Oh yeah, he had a side piece. I think that's I think that's what gave her some leverage to go.
SPEAKER_00 1:06:00
Yeah. Yeah. And she was not a pushover. No, she wasn't going to be. She's not the oh, woe is me, or I'm just here to do my womanly responsibilities. It's like, if my husband can't win this war, then I will do it myself, kind of a thing. So and she didn't care, like, oh, well, I'm gonna do it because I'm a woman. No, I'm gonna do it because I'm Eleanor and I'm going to finish this off, kind of a thing. She would have made a really good vice president. So I actually I kind of wish she did go into politics more, but anyways, another episode for another day. So yeah, FDR greenlit the program immediately, and the program was now called Project X-ray. Uh, as he wrote to the Office of Strategic Services, Colonel William Donovan, this man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea, but it's worth looking into. And that is how you get a hare-brained idea put into action, uh, in case anyone was wondering what to do. Like, if you really want to know how you get an idea to the president and get green lit instantly, go to their wife, America. So, yeah, uh that is how you get a hare-brained idea uh put into action, in case anyone is wondering. In case if you have a hare-brained idea yourself, um, you always go over the president's head and go to their wife.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:22
Directly. If it's Jackie or Roosevelt or Mary or the other ones, those are the big three that are always in my head.
unknown 1:07:30
Or the other ones.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:32
Or Eleanor.
SPEAKER_00 1:07:33
Sorry, Michelle.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:35
Oh, shoot. I almost cursed. I'm sorry, Michelle. You're right. That's a big one. But yes, always go to the ladies if you need something done fast.
SPEAKER_00 1:07:48
And and if you are going to reach out to a more modern day first wife or first lady, uh, just uh try not try not to do it in a creepy way when you uh end up on the news for all the wrong reasons.
SPEAKER_02 1:07:58
Don't do that. I think writing a letter is a good starting point.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:03
And if both her and her husband think your idea is stupid, you know, just move on with your life.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:10
Yeah, and that's okay too.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:11
Yeah, no harm, no foul.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:13
The fact that your letter got that high is pretty good.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:16
Yeah, yeah. Take that as a win. And you will get something back. You you'll go. Yeah. Yeah. I I got a letter from uh uh Bill Clinton.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:24
There you go. See? You'll get something back.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:26
I wrote him in the sixth grade, and yeah, and I got a little letter back saying, Thank you for writing me, signed Bill Clinton. It helps when you're in the sixth grade and you're not 40, but uh yeah, and reaching out to a president's wife, but still.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:39
Um that looks bad, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00 1:08:42
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:42
So like maybe you'll have your wife reach out to his wife and and do that.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:46
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, or maybe maybe hop on their social media and make a comment, like, hey, I have an idea.
SPEAKER_02 1:08:52
That's the way.
SPEAKER_00 1:08:53
And given this political climate, you could probably do that and actually get pretty far. Not wrong. So we're gonna leave it there. This this will be a a two-parter. I wasn't planning on being a two-parter, but for some odd reason, man, I I didn't think I had that much written, but apparently I do. That's a good thing. Yeah, it's a good thing. Yeah, I I because I if you look at my sources, I don't really have like pages and pages and pages of sources. So I was really worried that I was gonna have to like find ways to drag this out.
SPEAKER_02 1:09:24
Hey man, if you're talking World War II and it's you and I, we're it's gonna go.
SPEAKER_00 1:09:28
Yes, yeah, and the other and the other subject area in in history is like the Civil War.
SPEAKER_02 1:09:33
And uh, that's gonna be a project. I promise, listeners, it's going to happen. It's just gonna take some time and uh for me to be confident in it.
SPEAKER_00 1:09:46
Yes, yeah, because yeah, it's uh we have very, very different views of that whole incident. But yeah, anyways, we're gonna leave it there. Uh be sure to head on over to thedaystomsterfire.com. I promise we'll get that thing updated, but yeah, you can find our massive library there. Uh we'll have links to um the episodes that we mentioned earlier in today's episode, so you can find all those in the show notes. And then yeah, do us a huge favor and uh try to find a couple of people that you think could benefit from learning from uh history's crazy bad ideas or good ideas that went sideways. Yeah, if you find somebody that could benefit from this podcast, be sure to uh spread the word. I have been doing this myself. I don't know if you've been doing this, Kara, but like my coworkers, they find out that I have a podcast. One, they treat me like I'm a celebrity, which is weird. And then two, I'm just like, hey, I'll show you where to find the show. And because we're on Spotify, we're on Amazon, we're on uh YouTube, we are everywhere. Yeah, I just show them where to go. Boom, they're they're locked in. So it doesn't hurt to help somebody like navigate where to go because a lot of people aren't into podcasts, so this is a great way to to introduce them to it. So uh we will try to get part two out shortly. Normally we have two weeks in between episodes, but this one I really want to keep part one fresh in everybody's minds. So when this comes out, I'm gonna try to have part two coming out shortly after, and we'll see what happens. All right. So uh, Carrie, do you have anything you needed to add before we end part one?
SPEAKER_02 1:11:28
No, I think we're good. Uh hopefully by the end of part two. I will have something done.
SPEAKER_00 1:11:33
Um that's yeah, a lazy bum.
SPEAKER_02 1:11:36
I know. I know. I actually worked on it a little bit today, to be fair.
SPEAKER_00 1:11:41
And and I can't be too critical because yeah, you are going for a higher degree, and you did do like what 10 episodes? Like I did. I did a lot between between Dust Bowl and then Prohibition and then um Great Depression. Yeah, yeah, that was about 10 episodes, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02 1:12:00
Uh four, four, eight, nine. Yeah, that's like ten episodes. You're right. Uh, but also summer break is coming up, so I will have some time. So I promise you listeners, if you're waiting for me, things will be coming. Just give me some time.
SPEAKER_00 1:12:15
Yeah, yep. So if you're tired of hearing me talk, Kara will be hopping back on here. And then we are working on um a thing where if you want to support us, you can. Uh, I don't have all the details yet, but we are working on something that uh could really, really help us. Uh we still are going to be ad-free. Uh, don't want to uh we don't need any more beef boxes, we don't need any more mattress commercials, we don't need any more um, you know, psychotherapy, online sessions, stuff like that. Those are we we all know those ads. Uh, but yeah, we're working on a way that if you are uh willing and able, you can support us and help support your favorite podcast. And in the meantime, please keep it a hot mess. Uh, watch out for bats. Don't uh don't piss them off.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:10
Yeah. Uh we we have bat stories that we'll tell you next episode, I promise.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:15
Oh, yes.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:16
Yeah, we have good bat stories and we'll save it. So just listen to the next one. Hang in there.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:20
You know, Carrie, you should really do a drawing of that guy that we saw.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:24
I should. We should reach out to that guy.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:26
That would be epic. That would be perfect for this show.
SPEAKER_02 1:13:29
Yes. All right. If you want to know what we're talking about, listen to the next episode. We will see you then.
SPEAKER_00 1:13:33
All right, guys. See y'all later.
Something about massive total wars such as World War I and World War II that I find fascinating is that when the mindset switches to, "do whatever it takes to destroy the enemy," we start to see some fascinating tactics and inventions come about that would normally never be considered even in conversation. In other words, "I don't care how hairbrained your idea is, if it wins the war then we're on board with it." It goes back to the idea that if it's a dumb idea, and it looks like a dumb idea, and when implemented it behaves like a dumb idea, but it works... then it's a sound idea. We can't get a train of thought like that in a corporate meeting room or even the basement levels of a research and development department.
However, for episodes 72 and 73, an unknown dentist by the name of Dr. Lytle S. Adams, hung up his drill and laughing gas and decided to go caving in New Mexico for a vacation. Maybe he wanted to do some soul searching or find some sort of inspiration to improve his dental practices. The natural outcome of this change in routine was perfectly understandable: A bomb powered by explosive little bats, that could rain fire down upon the major cities of Japan! Seems legit...
Dr. Adams, much like many other folks in America during and after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 (admit it, you said in your head, "A day that will live in Infamy!) a sense of anger and even rage against the Empire of Japan for the sneak attack on American soil. Adams knew that he wasn't soldier material, but he was a thinker and he had an imagination. While in New Mexico he observed that the type of bat that resided in the caves there had impeccable flight characteristics that could be weaponized in a way that no enemy could ever guess.
The idea was simple, get a bomb shell, stuff it full of bats with little charges of napalm glued to them and drop it over Japan. The bats would fly out and find comfy places to rest in Japanese homes. From there a timer would set off the napalm charge and catch the Japanese house or building on fire. The idea was so crazy that it might just work and once it finally got its way to FDR's desk, the president thought that it might just be crazy enough to work and signed off on it.
The rest is history, or is it? The process of making the bat bomb was way more complicated than imagined and an elite team of engineers and experts needed to be compiled to work out all the details. The only problem is that Dr. Lytle failed to assemble such a team and instead ended up with a rag tag group of people of dubious skills and backgrounds to design and build this bomb.
These episodes are straight up dumpster fires from the beginning to the end. The question is not what could go wrong, but could anything go right!
Belly buttons: Yes, all bats have belly buttons! As mammals (besides those that lay eggs), they are connected to their mothers via an umbilical cord.
Extreme super-fliers: During flight, a bat's heart can beat up to 1,000 times a minute, and the Mexican free-tailed bat can reach speeds of up to 100 mph, making it the fastest mammal on Earth.
The ultimate "see" with sound: Many species use echolocation, emitting high-frequency sounds that bounce off objects and insects to perfectly navigate and hunt in total darkness.
The Explosive: Chemist Louis Fieser, who also invented military napalm, developed the tiny incendiary device, which weighed only about grams.
Accidental Testing Failure: During a 1943 test in New Mexico, armed bats escaped and set fire to the Carlsbad Army Airfield's control tower, hangers, and a general's car.
Browse through Kara and Ed's show notes for the episode below ⬇
Episode BAT. Bat Bombs of WWII
Part 1. Operation: Do a Lot by Doolittle
Sunday, December 7, 1941. The Empire of Japan commenced a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor which was nestled on the south side of O’ahu island which butts up to the west side of Honolulu.
This attack is a dumpster fire in its own right and will be a future episode.
There are all sorts of conspiracy theories out there about the attack which we aren’t going to get into because ultimately we know the outcome.
However, the Empire of Japan for the past few decades modernized like crazy and really wanted to be a part or at least considered on par with other developed nations like America, Britain, France, Spain, (Germany but with a bunch of *’s).
The issue is that even though Japan had come a long way and was extremely technologically savvy, the developed world really didn’t take Japan seriously. Which caused a lot of resentment and subsequent extreme nationalism.
America was also putting a strangle hold on its oil production and sales to Japan for a bunch of social and economic reasons.
I could go on for hours about the Japanese side of WWII and why they attacked, but this isn’t the episode.
All that matters is that Pearl got bombed, the next day Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Day of Infamy” speech to congress and to the nation asking our government to declare war.
A PRESIDENT CAN’T DECLARE WAR, PEOPLE!!!! HE CAN DO A LOT OF WARLIKE THINGS, BUT DECLARING WAR AND MOBILIZING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY TO PRIORITIZE WAR IS NOT IN THE PRESIDENT’S PERVUE. BUT HE CAN ASK CONGRESS WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT FDR DID.
By the end of December 8, 1941, the House of Representatives voted 388-1 to go to war against Japan
The one dissenter was Representative Jeannette Rankin (R-MT) who was a huge pacifist and felt that she cannot vote to go to war if she can’t sign up and she wouldn’t send anyone in her stead. She also voted against WWI in 1917.
Unfortunately Representative Jeannette is our only badass lady of the episode. I wouldn’t mind reading up on her background as she’s a Montana Republican and you know how they work. Albeit, democrats and republicans were slightly different back then compared to today.
However, one thing that was rampant on most Americans’ minds was revenge. America was fine going to war, but they really wanted to give Japan a taste of their own medicine, like a surprise attack on their homeland capital of Tokyo.
People didn’t care how much damage was inflicted in the early days of the WWII, just as long as they could send a message to Japan saying, “you hit us in our territory, we’re going to hit you back just as hard”
The issue is that Japan was a very hard country to attack… especially on a surprise basis.
The island of Japan is thousands of miles across the world's largest ocean. Japan spent months trying to plan its attack on Pearl Harbor, and admittedly, America wasn’t expecting much. Now that the Japanese had attacked America, Japan would be expecting a retaliatory response of some sort.
In terms of preparedness, Japan had America beat in every category:
Much larger navy
Much larger army
Much larger airforce
More experienced soldiers
Superior technology from aircraft, ships, and even guns and artillery
Established strategy and long term battle plans
Higher morale and drive to keep fighting
In fact America was so far behind the curve with its military, that the first year or so, America was getting its butt handed to it over and over again and some were beginning to think that America didn’t have what it took to fight against the Japanese Empire.
Introduce the Doolittle Raid
On April 18, 1942, about five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle commanded a 16 crew B-25 Mitchell bomber squadron that bombed various Japanese military targets including Tokyo.
The bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet which was insanely risky and in inclement weather and flew to Tokyo which burned up most of their fuel. The attack did minimal damage to Japan’s military capacity, killed about 50 people, injured 400 more and for the most part didn’t really do much else. After the bombers dropped their bombs, they flew to Japanese occupied China where they had to ditch their planes when they ran out of fuel and were promptly captured
14 of the 16 crews eventually made it back to the United States after the war and Doolittle himself was worried that he was going to be court marshalled for missing most of the important targets during the raid. Instead he was given the Congressional Medal of Honor and was promoted to Brigadier General!
The reason for all the praise is that the Doolittle Raid administered a lot of psychological damage to Japan. Japan, up to April of 1942 felt it was unimpregnable or invincible. Everyone envisioned Japan as a heavily armored samurai, incapable of being harmed or defeated. The Doolittle Raid damaged that vision.
Because of the raid, Japan felt it hat to act on its next phase of the war plan and attack Midway… which American Admiral Chester Nimitz was hoping for…
After the Doolittle Raid, Americans felt as though they could see the chink in Japans armor. This massive empire (I think surface area-wise, the Empire of Japan was the largest empire in history), wasn’t undefeatable.
The raid piqued a rather unique American perspective known as the Underdog.
The Underdog idea was a relatively new idea in American culture that shows that Americans no matter how small or “bottom of the ladder” they are, they can accomplish incredible things. It’s a “one man against all odds” idea that the imaginations of all walks of life stated to plot schemes that could bring down the Japanese mainland with one blow.
The Doolittle raid showed that it was possible to attack the heart of Japan, but instead of massive military force bombing Japan, there has to be a way where good old fashion American know-how and ingenuity can win the day.
And this is probably the only thing I love about a total war such as World War II: a mega war such as this opens the flood gates of eccentric people with unique ideas to come to the surface and offer their hairbrained creations and actually be taken seriously.
Part 2. Operation Dentist Overlord
Believe it or not, before the Doolittle Raid, Dr. Lytle S. Adams, a dental surgeon from Irwin, Pennsylvania had a bat brained idea so crazy, it might just work.
Dr. Adams is a very colorful person. Yes he was a dentist, but on the side he was a closet inventor and the dude had some interesting ideas.
In 1934, he came up with an idea of using airplanes with long dangling hooks to fly over skyscrapers to “snag” giant bags of mail to be taken to god only knows where. He even figured that it would be possible to transport people in this manner.
It was an idea that looked good on paper, but in practice, proved to be tricky. First of all the hooks would rip open the bags of mail as the plane flew over at 100+ mph thus making it rain mail all over the city streets. If those hooks could rip open giant canvas bags of mail… it could do a similar thing with water filled leather bags like human beings.
The idea was used in The Dark Knight movie as a way to exfiltrate Batman from China with a certain criminal who was helping mobsters in Gotham with their money…
Another idea Dr. Lytle had that really interested me was a vending machine that could dispense fried chicken.
That’s right, our hero of today’s story came up with the idea of having a vending machine fry chicken on the spot and dispense it on demand. At the time, the idea flopped, but today there are several different iterations of his concept either in production or development such as brb BOT, Birdbot, Snacky Fry, and KFC (Australia, it was built to dispense free samples of the Colonel’s best as recently as 2026)
When Pearl Harbor took place, people like Dr. Adams came out of the woodwork to offer up some of the craziest ideas to fight the enemy that even Archamede’s would be jealous of. At a time of war, every idea, no matter how strange, is entertained at least for a short period of time. During peace time, crazy ideas would get the inventor locked away in an asylum, admonished in society, discredited based on their day job, or voted in as a top CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Here are some of the more “interesting” weapon ideas of WWII:
Panjandum- rocket propelled explosive wheel
Krummlauf- a bent rifle barrel for corner shooting
Explosive rats developed for sabotage
Pigeon guided missiles
Wind cannons
1,350 tonne Schwerer Gustav railway gun
Soviet suicide dogs
Fugo balloon bombs
Spy weapons such as the umbrella gun and the beano grenade (grenade shaped to look just like a baseball)
And for the purposes of this episode and Dr. Adams’ most noteworthy contribution to the war effort: BAT BOMBS!
Our intrepid dentist/inventor had an idea that would be so devastating to the japanese, that if implemented correctly, it could rival that of another $2 billion ($36 billion today) project in terms of devastation… the Manhattan Project.
Hopefully by now, we’re for the most part familiar with the Manhattan Project. I actually did an episode on the Manhattan project called “Oppie’s Demon Core” (episode 17). Check it out on thedaysdumpsterfire.com.
But for those who don’t know, the Manhattan Project was the American initiative to develop the atomic bomb. The idea was to create a “device” that when detonated it would generate an explosion so massive that it could wipe out an entire city in one bomb. Towards the end of the war, America could eliminate entire Japanese cities in the course of a night with incendiary bombs, but the atomic bomb was designed to do the work of thousands of bombs in one session.
However, Dr. Adams had an idea that could potentially save American billions of dollars in an expensive R&D project, and millions of dollars in bombing runs.
However, I don’t think Adams was thinking about saving money with his idea, he wanted revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor and he combined his stereotypes of Japanese architecture with a specific bat he found fascinating while on vacation in New Mexico.
Ironically, New Mexico is where the Manhattan Project would be based. Who would have thought that NM would play such a pivotal role in ending WWII.
At around the time that Pearl Harbor was being bombed, Dr. Lytle S. Adams was vacationing in Carlsbad, New Mexico to check out the cave systems there. Carlsbad is home to the famous Carlsbad Caverns which is one of America’s largest cave systems that still hasn’t been fully researched yet.
There are a lot of critters that live in these caverns including a wide variety of bats. Lytle was especially fascinated with the Mexican Free-tailed bat.
While studying these bats during his vacation (not sure what sort of life outside of dentistry this guy has to be studying bats while on vacation) he heard about the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and very quickly started to hatch a batbrained idea that would be so clever, so dangerous, so devious, so perfectly planned, that when implemented, the island nation of Japan would be burnt to a crips
Essentially, Dr. Adams devised nothing else other than the “Bat Bomb” [insert batman transition sound]
Adams’ idea was this:
Take a bunch of these Mexican Free-tailed bats.
Strap a little incendiary bomb with a tiny little timer onto it.
Stuff about 1,000 of them into a canister with a parachute.
Fly a bunch of bombers over Japan filled with these bat canisters and drop them.
The canisters would slow their descent and the bats would want to fly out because they would be exposed to daylight and would want to find cover.
The thousands of bats would fly all over populated parts of Japan looking for attics, rafters, stairways, wooden bridges, or anywhere else that would be a good place for a freaked out confused Mexican Free-tailed bat in the middle of Japan to hang out while it figured things out.
Eventually the little timers would run out and the incendiaries would ignite thus causing the bats to catch fire and whatever shelter they were hiding in.
If enough of these bat bombs were dropped over Japan, the entire country would go up in flames! What could possibly go wrong! Japan’s defeat would be imminent and humiliating and a lesson learned for attacking Pearl Harbor.
Adams, as we’ll see, is a bit of an eccentric character with quite the imagination.
He, along with many other Americans, had some stereotypes about the Japanese that were being used in the planning of this bat bomb.
The most prevailing stereotype (and most Americans thought this, not just Adams) was that all of Japan consisted of buildings made of bamboo and paper and everyone was stacked up in these paper buildings for many stories.
He figured that one little burning bat could inflict unfathomable damage to Japan given that their entire culture is just paper.
I cannot confirm that this was said, but I read somewhere that Adams believed that bats would be a perfect candidate for this task because the shape of the Japanese eyes made it impossible for anyone to see the bats or the fires. It’s so stupid and racist that I hope it’s not real…
On top of Adam’s stereotypes, he also believed that the Mexican Free-tailed bat was placed by god in Carlsbad NM for the sole purpose of helping with the war effort.
He claimed that “the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour.”
He also was extremely paranoid, noting that the plan “might easily be used against us if the secret is not carefully guarded.” So the bat bomb had to be top secret!
Part 3. Operation Not a Nut
In the months following Pearl Harbor, Adams really did his research on the Mexican Free-tailed bat and even went back to the caverns a few times to collect a few of them to run experiments.
Slowly but surely he pieced together his proposal to FDR with such great detail and schematics, that it would be impossible for anyone at the government level to think his idea wasn’t stupid.
In January of 1942, Americans from all over the place were sending their ideas to the White House regardless of how crazy their ideas were.
The one nice thing about this kind of war, is that hairbrained ideas were considered for at least a moment. You’d be shocked how many dumb ideas actually turn out to be great ideas when given the chance.
In Adams’ case, his bat bomb idea went before the generals and was promptly shot down unceremoniously.
For some odd reason, no one that high up thought his bat bomb idea was feasible, logical, or downright any good. I personally cannot see why they would think that this idea was so terrible…
Normal people would just admit defeat and go home and tell our families that we did our best. To be able to present an idea to a group of generals this high up is more than what any military man could ever hope to achieve.
But Adams was not one to give up. He knew somebody that didn’t work in the government but was married to someone who was. He also knew that the wife of any government official would outrank any multistar general behind a desk.
Adams wrote a letter outlining his plan which went on to espouse that the humble bat is the lowest level of lifeform on earth and completely expendable for the purposes of defeating the Japanese.
He also felt as though the Japanese weren’t much higher on the animal list than the bat. While this is beyond racist by today’s standards, during WWII, many Americans believed that the Japanese were like cowardly rats that must be exterminated at all costs as though they were an infestation. Just look up the war time propaganda at the time and you’ll see what I mean.
Adams went on to describe his plan in great detail and really focused on the mathematics of his plan. In short, bats are cheap and expendable. American men are worth a lot and not expendable. To send American men overseas to potentially get injured or killed fighting the monstrous Japanese when we have millions of bats who probably would rather die than than carry on their existence as some wretched winged creature whose sole job is to terrify humans, be animorphized vampires, and poop upside down that would accomplish more devastation at much less cost.
Here is what he actually wrote, not sure if this dude is fully convinced and filled with resolve or simply bat crap crazy:
“[The] lowest form of life is the bat, associated in history with the underworld and regions of darkness and evil,” Adams wrote to President Franklin Roosevelt. “Until now reasons for its creation have remained unexplained. As I vision it the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare desecrate our way of life.” A fire attack by millions of bats, he continued, “would render the Japanese people homeless and their industries useless, yet the innocent could escape with their lives.”
That politician’s wife was none other than Elanor Roosevelt, and the politician in question was Franklin Delano Roosevelt! That’s right, when you can’t get what you want via military channels, then be very good friends with the First Lady of the United States and she can get things done for you.
The next thing Adams knew, his proposal was sitting in the oval office being read by FDR himself (actually, the president does very little in the oval office. There is another smaller more secluded room in the white house that the president works in that is much quieter and a more clearly defined door than the oval office).
Shortly after reading the bat bomb proposal that came from his wife in chief, FDR greenlit the program of making a bat bomb called Project X-ray as he wrote to the Office of Strategic Services Colonel William Donovan, “This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but it is worth looking into.”
And that is how you get a hairbrained idea put into action in case anyone was wondering what to do. MURICA!!!!
Part 4. Operation Project X-Ray
Now that Adams’ bat bomb project got the okie dokie from Roosevelt himself, the next step was to create an elite team of experts and key members of the science and engineering societies.
Adams immediately sought out to recruit the best of the best to work on his baby project of the Bat Bomb. I could only imagine what he told his patience why he was closing his practice even though Project X-Ray was top secret he could probably tell them the truth, “I’m tasked to head of a group of super brains and leaders of engineering to develop a bomb full of bats to burn down Japan” I’m assuming no one would believe him and he wouldn’t be called out for disclosing his new job.
Some of the key people he recruited with the skills needed to put something like a bat bomb together were:
Dr. Jack von Bloeker- a mammalogist from the Los Angeles Museum
Lieutenant Tim Holt- pilot turned movie actor a the age of 24
Brothers Bobby and Eddie Herrold- Bobby was an ex-hotel manager and Eddie was a workout enthusiast
Patricio “Patsy” Batista- claimed to be a gangster who worked for Al Capone back in the day…
Frank and Mark Benish- a random set of brothers
Ray Williams- a lobster fisherman turned Marine
Jack Couffer and Harry Fletcher- two high school students who worked in Dr. Jack von Bloeker’s lab part time.
Lastly, Dr. Theodore Fieser who was a Harvard chemist who had just recently developed the composition of napalm.
Out of the entire team, there were only two legit scientists, the rest were a bunch of dudes who were waiting to be a part of Deadpool’s “X-force” but settled on the next best thing which was to build a bomb full of explosive bats.
The hiring of two scientists and even their student interns makes sense, but the hiring of a former mob member or a lobster fisherman makes no sense and it didn’t to most of the people on the team and it really made no sense to the military folks brought in to help out and keep an eye on things.
However, Adams was very charismatic. He had a way of selling things to people in a way that people would inherently want to get on board with. His rhetoric was always ensconced in the realm of Pathos and he would play up human emotions. There is nothing wrong with that I guess, but it can get in the way of putting the right people in the right spot.
With the “elite” team of experts selected, the task was to start hammering out the specifics of how to build the bat bomb. Right off the bat (get it?) there were some issues that needed to be worked out:
What species of bat was going to be the best fit for the job?
This would also entail how the hundreds of thousands of bats would be captured.
Then came the issue of what sort of incendiary would be best used.
How will the bats wear the mini bombs and still be able to fly?
Keep in mind, timer technology was insanely primitive in the 40s and very unreliable. Talk to anyone who was a part of assassinating hitler in the Third Reich. Making a timed explosive was the bane of their existence.
Once selected, the bats would need to be collected and chilled to induce a hibernation phase. Once the bomb was deployed the bats would need to be headed up to activate their search for a new home.
How were the bats going to be transferred to the target so that they can wake up in time to do their duty to save democracy?
Then there was the matter of testing and supplying results that the military could actually use.
So let’s take each of these issues and see how this elite team of engineers, thinkers, lobster fishers and hotel managers faired:
The team selected the Mexican Free-Tailed bat as mentioned above. It seemed like Dr. Adams was truly a fan of these critters.
According to Feiser (who, based on how much reading I did on this case was the brains of the operation) the Mexican Free-Tailed bat was a good choice due to Adams’ extensive notes, especially in their lifting capabilities.
These bats could lift over double their weight which was going to be needed. A 10 gram bat could lift 20 to 30 grams.
The project was going to be housed outside LA so that millions of bats could be captured and moved to a nearby location such as Muroc CA (Edwards Air Force Base today). The military and Adams agreed that his team would be responsible for collecting 3,000 bats for testing purposes. The military would collect tens of thousands more bats for deployment in Japan.
Once again Dr. Feiser was put to use in determining what sort of “bomb” the bats were going to wear.
Originally the plan was to use red phosphorus which is some truly nasty stuff. Red phosphorus was used in match making and was simultaneously very reactive (will burst into flame being exposed to air) and very toxic especially to the bats. The latter didn’t matter since the bats were giving their all for the American war effort anyways.
Dr. Feiser decided to use his own creation: Napalm
Napalm is one of the worst things that has ever come out of the human race next to taxes.
It is made by mixing various gasolines like gasoline, benzene, or kerosene, with a soap or by mixing naphthenic and palmitic acids (hence the name NaPalm) Today its high grade fuel mixed with aluminum soaps or synthetic polymers like polystyrene)
Note! Do not make this crap at home!!!! It burns extremely hot and for a long time. Once it’s on your skin you’re going to have a tough time putting it out. It spreads easily like jelly and it sticks to everything.
Normally the stuff is kept in 55 gallon drums with a detonator attached and when dropped from an airplane, it can produce a wall of gelatinous flame nearly a mile long and a hundred feet high
It sucks up all the oxygen in its blast radius so if the fire doesn’t kill you, the smoke doesn’t choke you, the lack of air will suffocate you. This is one substance that rivals the nuclear bomb in its efficacy.
Feiser came up with the idea that a thimble sized container of napalm can be connected to a timer device that will set the capsule on fire at a specific time. Yes the “explosion” would be comparatively small, BUT the detonation would create enough fire to light anything on fire within a 1 foot radius and napalm will stay burning long enough to light any wooden structure on fire.
Now came the matter of getting bat and bomb to become one effective unit.
A.C. Gilbert, a company famous for making the ubiquitous toy, Erector Set, came up with and produced the timers needed for the bats. They key was to make them small enough and accurate enough to detonate when the bats got to the ground and settled into an unassuming Japanese house. It also had to be light.
To mount the little bomb to the bat, Feiser resorted to super gluing the 15 to 17.5 gram “bomb” to the bat. A weight well within the lift capabilities of the Mexican Free-Tailed bat.
The next step was to get the freshly collected bats from New Mexico and Texas to California. On the surface it seems like a weird minigame inside Animal Crossing where you run around a cave with a net and try and catch as many bats as possible. Then stick them in a container with prepaid postage to LA. However, in order for the bats to properly do their job, they needed to be in a hibernation state. So the bats had to be cooled since it was getting pretty warm in the South West United States.
To help with this problem of logistics, the Army came in clutch at Wright Field in Dayton, OH with a custom built refrigerated truck.
This truck had a special refrigeration mechanism that could be adjusted to any temperature needed. Since these early large refrigeration units weren’t super reliable or fast to chill things down, it was determined that the trucks would be set to the coldest setting prior to picking up the freshly caught bats to reduce fuel usage and the time for the truck to get to temp.
Now it was time to figure out how to actually “bombify” thousands of bats so that they can be dropped on a target all at once.
Our mega smart team put together the epitome of American ingenuity and planning. They planned to use a 5 foot tall metal canister with 1.5 inch holes drilled around the outside to let the bats do three things while in transit:
Start warming up from their hibernation truck travel
Be able to fly out of the canister after they wake up
Lastly but more importantly, breathe. Dead bats in a bomb are nothing more than a bioweapon of disease than an incendiary weapon of mass de-Japanification.
The canister could hold up to 1,030 bats and the B-25 bomber that was intended to drop these things could hold up to 25 shells. Therefore nearly 26,000 napalm wielding bats could be in the air in one B-25 bomber. Each bat was “clipped” to its niche inside the shell and a little wire stemmed from the napalm charge / timer combo to the perch the upside down bat was clipped to. The idea was that when the bat flew out of the shell, the wire would disconnect and arm the bat bomb and start the timer.
Once over the target, the shells would be dropped. At 4,000 feet a parachute would deploy thus slowing the rate of descent. In theory the bats would wake up over the target, fly out of the shell and start looking for a place to hang up for the night. Once they found a building, rafter, attic, or whatever domicile available, the bats would ignite and start tens of thousands of fires all over the place.
Note: today we have bombs, missiles, rockets etc which operate with surgical precision. Modern propelled explosives are laser guided, with GPS assist and all sorts of other top secret technology that when deployed the projectile can be guided to a specific window outside the target and only destroy that specific thing. In World War II, no one cared about precision. This is Japan that we’re talking about, many Americans wanted to see the whole country go up in flames regardless of the target. Accuracy was irrelevant just as long as the right country was being bombed.
Lastly, Adams and his team of super scientists ultimately reported to the Army. While the Army likes to see explosions and total destruction, believe it or not, they like numbers, figures, projections, and accurate results even more.
Once again Adams turned to Dr. Fieser (to be honest, I have no idea what anyone else on the team did. I’m sure they served a purpose of some sort, but what it was specifically is not determined…) to come up with some projections of destruction before the testing day which was going to be the middle of May of 1943!
Fieser concluded that a standard incendiary bomb could start approximately 400 fires after detonation. I am not sure where he got this figure from, but since Dr. Fieser seemed to be only 1 of a few people with working brain cells on this project I am going to trust his assumption.
However, the bat bomb, according to Fieser, could start up to 4800 fires with one pass. That is a 12X increase in destructive power.
In essence this bat bomb idea could be the middle ground between conventional bombs and the nuclear bomb that was being worked on at this time, but nobody knew about it of course.
It seemed as though Adams and crew had worked out pretty much everything pertaining to the bat bomb, and Fieser’s projections raised a lot of eyebrows with military leaders covered in brass and ribbons for actions performed nearly 30 years prior…
By May 15, 1943, Project X-Ray was ready to start testing.
On May 17th, Fieser and two officers from the Army’s Chemical Warfare Service arrived in SoCal and proceeded to Adams’ house for a pretest discussion of this insanely top secret project that literally no one should know about.
Upon arrival Fieser and the military men were absolutely flabbergasted by what they saw.
According to Fieser: “We were horrified to find that Adams had invited a large company, including ladies, to a dinner party in celebration of the initiation of field tests.”
Instead of being top secret, Adams did the exact opposite and decided to celebrate his accomplishment with a bunch of people who should know nothing about the project!
To make matters worse, Adams’ team was supposed to collect 3,000 bats from NM and TX remember? Well they only had 150… according to Adams it was mating season and bats had different priorities in mind instead of serving their country. It’s funny how human males are no different.
CWS Lt. Colonel R. Bruce Epler went into action and took the assigned B-25 bomber, some of Adams' men and some Army men and flew to Carlsbad for an overnight bat collecting marathon… and yes they stopped at the Nation Park Services building and acquired permits to collect the bats…
The next morning the plane returned to LA with a cargohold of 8 crates of thousands of screeching bats. With live testing right around the corner, the bats were loaded into the refrigerated truck (turned to max cold) so the bats could be put into an induced hibernation.
Even with the truck running at full blast, it was taking too long to get the bats to quiet down (they figured a quiet bat was a hibernating bat) and blocks of ice were positioned inside the truck with fans blowing on them. In very short order, the bats began to quiet down one by one until there was nothing but silence.
Part 5. Operation Bat Flavoured Popsicles
At this point, I think it’s the 19th at this point but, there is so much craziness ensuing I am losing track of my days… and it was time to test this bat bomb once and for all.
The team loaded up a 5ft x 30 inch shell with around 1000 snoozing bats.
However, Adams hadn’t finished a working metal shell for the test. Instead all he had was a cardboard mock up of the actual bomb.
Fieser hadn’t finished the safety wire mechanism yet and the pilots wouldn’t allow anything explodey on the plane without safety. On top of the bomb being constructed of cardboard and tape, the pilots only allowed the bats to have a small smoke bomb on them. That way when things went wrong the plane wouldn’t go up in flames. I think these pilots were among only a handful of dudes with functional logic.
The trusty B-25 that had been around for some time running errands and doing other things took the bat bomb to an altitude of 10,000 to 20,000 feet. The testing ground was Muroc, CA and the target was going to be a dried up lakebed just outside LA.
Once up to altitude, problems began to happen. The major one was that the cardboard bomb began falling apart and sleeping bat bombs fell out and started to roll all over the inside of the bomber. I guess they didn't, they didn’t have military grade, hi-spec cardboard back then for bomb making lol.
Much like a play, the experiment must go on. So the crew inside ran all over the inside gathering up armloads of bat bombs, manually armed them, and threw them out the window. Since the bats had been out of the cooling truck for some time at this point, they figured that bats would wake up at around 2,000 feet. I am not sure where they got that figured from or how they calculated it, but at this point I’m just along for the ride.
Adams, Fieser, the Army folks including Lt. Colonel Epler and an undetermined number of other onlookers that had zero top secret clearance were on the ground with binoculars waiting for the show to start.
Instead of seeing one large shell being dropped from the B-25, they saw handfuls of bats being thrown out of the fuselage in clumps of a dozen or more.
The Project X-Ray team figured that something went wrong, but at least this test would see how the detonation mechanism would work.
Seconds passed and at around the 2,000 foot mark, something was terribly wrong. None of the bats were waking up! They were just falling like little rocks. The plan was that the bats would wake up at around 2,000 feet and begin flying toward a covered location and once they settled down for the day wondering what in the hell was going on, the little bat bomb would go off and the spectators would see plumes of smoke emanating from wherever they landed.
Instead, the onlookers heard (not saw) minute, pffft, pooff, splat, plop, followed by little puffs of dust on the bottom of the lake bed. After about 10 minutes, the test was over with approximately 1000 bats splattered all over the ground.
Some men were sent to the lakebed to see what had happened and why the bats didn’t wake up and why the smoke bombs didn’t detonate.
A few of them returned to Adams and the Army men with some intact bats and it became very apparent what went wrong. The bats were frozen solid from the day before when they tried to chill the bats into hibernation. Their method of speeding things up worked too well.
According to our Harvard graduate, Dr. Fieser: “Eventually it became clear that the bats were not in hibernation but dead. Instead of freezing them to hibernation, we had frozen them to death the night before.”
While on the way back to the lab, one of the bat popsicles’ smoke bomb went off inside the car thus filling the cab with smoke nearly causing the car to crash. As frustrating and disastrous as this test had turned out, the key part of the plan worked, detonating a timed charge on a bat to go off at a specific time was a huge success. For Adams’ and his team as well as the Army folks, this was good enough to move on to the next test.
Part 6. Operation Mayhem
Lt. Colonel Epler decided to move on to phase 2 of testing, but decided to take some controlling stake away from Adams and his team. They were still going to play a major role, but this time with a bit more oversight from the military.
Epler wanted to see an actual shell get dropped from a bomb, fall to a height of 4,000 feet where a parachute to eject, thus slowing the descent and he wanted to see 1000+ bats fly out and head for cover and from there see plumes of smoke billowing out of wherever they landed.
To check all those boxes and maintain a more military presence, Epler moved everything to a freshly built landing field near Carlsbad NM replete with barracks, control tower, command building, hangars, and other military things.
Epler, only being a Lt. Colonel, told the full Colonel of the base that they needed to conduct a top secret experiment at his base and that he and his men would need to be excluded from the experiment as a result. So on the day of the testing, almost everyone was removed from the base.
Thankfully the full Colonel understood and even postponed the inauguration ceremony of the airfield for some time so this top secret test could be initiated.
Adams and (let's be real here, the real brains of the operation) Dr. Fieser hammered out a lot of details between the first test and this one.
An actual 5ft x 30 inch bomb shell was manufactured by Crosby company (this was the company founded by Bing Crosby and his brother to help manufacture supplies for the war effort) and it was a full fledged working prototype complete with parachute, timers to open up at 4,000 feet and little perches for the sleeping bats to hang out on.
A fresh batch of bats was collected days before instead of the day before. This allowed the refrigerated trucks to slowly cool the bats down to put them in hibernation without freezing the bats to death.
Dr. Fieser still hadn’t quite figured out the safety wire system so the pilots wouldn’t allow live ordinance on their plain, but smoke bombs were perfectly functional and more safe anyways. The last thing they needed was the whole base burning to the ground.
The day of the test actually went smoothly… for the most part.
The bomber got to altitude without any issues. The crew inside prepped the bat bomb to open the parachute at 4,000 feet. They checked to make sure the bats were in fact still alive and they checked to make sure the smoke bomb detonators were ready to go.
Adams, Fieser, Lt Colonel Epler, and for good measure, Marine Corps Generals Louis DeHaven and his brand new Jeep with all the stars befitting a general of his rank.
Eventually they all saw a tiny cylinder drop out of the bomber. Thankfully gravity decided to work that day and the bomb dropped straight down where at exactly 4,000 feet a parachute could be seen ejecting upwards and unfurling without a hitch. The shell slowed to a crawling descent as planned.
A few minutes later, Jack Couffer (one of the high school students brought onto the team) wrote, “Soon tiny motes began to flutter across the sky, flying in all directions, most borne northward in a fluttering clump by the breeze.” So far things were looking really good.
Investigators hopped into jeeps scurrying in all directions to track the bats as they looked for hidey holes.
They tracked some bats flying into a barn to hole up for the day. The investigators talked to the rancher asking if he had seen anything unusual, “Like bats flyin’ ‘round in broad daylight? Unusual like that?” the rancher asked.
The investigators were quick to ask for secrecy of the rancher as this was a top secret military project that could help end the war sooner. The rancher replied, “I got two sons somewhere in Europe fightin’ the Hun,” If you tell me that what yer doin’, however damned fool as it looks like to me, is a military secret, nobody’s goin’ to get me to say a peep even by puttin’ bamboo splinters under my fingernails and allighten’ fire to ‘em.” He then pointed to one of the bats wearing a dummy bomb sitting on the window sill just chill’n.
The plan was going perfectly! Back at the base bats could be seen flying into all the buildings on site and hiding in dark locations. No smoke could be seen yet, but that was by design. Fieser purposely devised the timers to take about 15 to 30 minutes before detonating.
To show his brilliance to the General, Fieser took one of the bats with a dummy bomb on it and pointed out the timing mechanism. He said it’s based on a copper chloride dissolved trigger. Once the copper chloride is administered, the timing wire corrodes at a control rate and once the wire is gone, then the trigger activates the smoke bomb.
In front of a bunch of photographers and witnesses, he injected some copper chloride into the bat bomb mechanism and within minutes a little poof could be heard followed by a plume of white smoke. The bat the bomb was attached to freaked out and flew away.
Adams and Fieser did the same demonstration to a dozen or so other sleeping bats they had on hand and like clockwork, they flew off to the military base to find cover.
This day couldn’t have gone better for Adams and his team. They were at the pinnacle of military genius that would bring Japan to its knees in bat bomb destruction.
About 30 minutes later people pointed out that smoke was coming out of the rafters of the barracks, then the control tower, followed by the supply buildings and finally the command building. Some investigators began laughing when they saw the general’s jeep start smoking.
The light hearted moment turned sour when someone asked if there were supposed to be flames inside the barracks? Everyone turned to see the barracks erupt in flames, then the control tower went up like a torch, the supply buildings were engulfed in flames and lastly, the command building erupted into an inferno.
Absolute mayhem broke out as people tried to find fire extinguishers… however it was evident that none were brought along because this test wasn’t supposed to have live incendiary bombs. All the men of Project X-Ray could do is just stand there watching while the military tried to put the base out in futility.
The general turned to Adams and Fieser after seeing his beloved new jeep explode before their eyes.
Without so much as raising his voice, or displaying any emotion, the general simply asked, “Gentlemen, is it safe to assume that not all the bats were fitted with dummy smoke smoke bombs?” When there was no reply from the dumbfounded men, the general continued, “I may not be an expert in these matters, but it does appear that some of these bats had live bombs on them.”
An hour later or two later, the freshly built base near Carlsbad, NM was nothing more than a pile of ashes.
Meanwhile 300 miles to the north in Los Alamos. Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer got the go ahead to start mass producing Uranium-235 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The Los Alamos lab itself was instructed to increase the speed of research and development of the first nuclear bomb in world history. Adams, nor Oppenheimer, had any idea of each other’s projects at this time.
Part 7. Operation Change of Plans
After the destruction of an entire military base in New Mexico, the Army decided to hang up Project X-Ray and see if anyone else wanted the research. Shockingly, the Marines wanted it.
The marines were in the thick of fighting the Japanese at the time of the bat bomb incident. Even though an entire military base got destroyed, they figured that the bat bombs potential would be beneficial.
The Marine’s assumption of the potential was further corroborated when an investigation found out that the fires that took down the base were not from the bats dropped from the bomber.
The bats that caused all the damage were the dozen or so that Adams and Fieser set off for demonstration purposes in front of the investigators and photographers.
You see, the bats in the bomb were in fact fully loaded with dummy smoke bombs. However, the dozen or so that Adams and Fieser used, weren’t expected to be in the plain and were thus never switched out with a dummy bomb but a live napalm version.
The fact that 12 bats could do so much damage was promising to the marines and they were happy to take on the project because imagine what would happen if thousands of these bats were set loose in Japan? Some even argued that the bat bombs would be more effective than the nuclear bomb.
It would have been an experiment of the ages to see what would be more effective, hundreds of thousands of little tactical bat bombs, vs the might of a nuclear bomb. The world will never know because by the time the bat bomb was deployable on the Japanese front, a nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima which vaporized tens of thousands of men, women, and children in seconds and another one was dropped on Nagasaki a few days later thus doing the work of divisions of napalm wearing bats.
As for Dr. Lytle Adams, he stepped away from military projects after the bat bomb initiative ran out for him in 1944. After the war he continued his career as an eccentric inventor and tried his hand at making an aerial seed dropping program to help rebuild the fauna of destroyed lands across the globe. He also pursued ecological engineering programs and spent his active years trying to fix the world rather than trying to burn it to the ground. He died on December 29th 1970 in Tucson, AZ at the age of 89 years old.
Dr. Louis Fieser went back to Harvard and studied organic chemistry. Throughout the decades he was asked if he ever felt bad about creating napalm, kind of like Oppenheimer’s feelings about his role in the nuclear bomb. For the most part he remained unapologetic about napalm, but he refused to do any more military related projects. He and his wife, Mary, wrote very successful chemistry textbooks. In 1962 he served on the Surgeon General’s 1964 report that showed the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. In 1965 he developed lung cancer himself and quit smoking and actively promoted the committee’s findings. He died in 1977.
Lastly, Lt. Colonel Epler continued to work on classified developmental technical work until his untimely death on January 28, 1944 in a plane crash at Elgin Field Florida. And yes, his plane was top secret.
While the bat bomb of WWII was a crazy and far-fetched idea with many humorous segments, Project X-Ray did show that a result in science is still a result especially if it ends in disaster. During WWII, America was not afraid of trying new ideas and the country knew that not all ideas are going to work but it’s important to understand that doing something is better than doing nothing.
Images:
The Project X-Ray team
What the Bat Bomb actually looked like
The Bat Cannister
Napalm explosion
Napalm survivor during the Vietnam War.
Sources
https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/bat-bombs-wwiis-project-x-ray/
https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/tag/Dr.+Lytle+S.+Adams
https://historynet.com/behind-lines-bats-hell/
https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1090bats/
https://allthatsinteresting.com/bat-bomb