14. Drumming Up Bat Recruits
Work on Project X-Ray picked up the pace in 1942, starting with confirmation that bats could actually carry the weight of small incendiary bombs. Female bats routinely carry their young, and load-bearing tests conducted at Moffet Field Naval Air Station in Sunnyvale, California, confirmed that the species can, indeed, carry its body weight or more in sustained flight. It was now time for the next step, so teams were sent to delve into caverns throughout the American southwest, to drum up bat recruits for large-scale testing.
The flying critters were captured by the thousands, and transported to research centers, where they were placed in specially constructed “bat houses”. With the test subjects/ recruits in place, it was time to develop the tiny bombs that would transform bats into weapons of mass destruction. The job was given to Dr. Louis Fieser, an organic chemist best known as the inventor of militarily effective napalm.
