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The Bat Bomb Invention and Other Odd Facts from History and War

Khalid Elhassan May 10, 2020 33 min

11. Abandoning the Bat Bomb

Dr. Adams with one of his bat recruits. YouTube

Notwithstanding the promising test results, authorities pulled the plug on Project X-Ray in mid-1944, when they were informed that it would not produce a deployable weapon until 1945. That was deemed too slow a pace, and since the Manhattan Project was on track to produce a war-winning bomb by then, X-Ray was canceled after a two-year life and a $2 million expenditure.

To his dying day, Dr. Lytle Adams insisted that his Bat Bombs could have won the war, with fewer horrors than atomic bombs. As he put it: “Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.