3. The Inventor of Military Napalm Designed Tiny Bat Bombs for Project X-Ray
The pace of work on Project X-Ray picked up in 1942. First, there was a need to confirm a key concept necessary for the plan to proceed: could the bats actually carry the weight of small incendiary bombs? Female bats routinely carry their young, and tests conducted at Moffet Field Naval Air Station in Sunnyvale, California, confirmed that the species can, indeed, carry a load equal to or greater than its body weight in sustained flight. It was now time for the next step, so teams were sent to delve into caverns throughout America’s 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. Fieser eventually settled upon a design for a light bomb made of a guncotton case, filled with kerosene. A capsule attached to the bomb contained a timed fuse and trigger assembly, which was attached to the bat with a wire.
