On December 7, 1941 Pennsylvania dentist Lytle Adams was in New Mexico on vacation when he heard of the Pearl Harbor attack. Fascinated with the bats he saw at Carlsbad Caverns he devised a bizarre idea of how to hit Japan back- millions of bats armed with incendiary devices which would destory entire cities! His idea only got to the National Research Defense Commitee due to his frienship with Eleanor Roosevelt who passed the idea to her husband FDR. The nutcase idea was then evaluated and approved for funding although the methods of storing the bats and deploying them had numerous problems. The bats had to be put in cold hibernation and a new incendiary had to be found b/c the bats could not carry a 2 lb device- the smallest available. So, napalm was substitued instead with the bats packed in circular sections of the main bomb casing and released at a specific altitude in sequential order. When set free, a spooled ribbon line would start the timer for 30 minutes until detonation. By that time the millions of bats would have sought darkness in the wooden Japanese buildings under every nook and crannie they could find. 30 minutes later and approx. 48,000 explosions would go off setting an entire city on fire! However, the project was abruptly cancelled right when it was almost ready for action. No reason was given but it is supposed that the atomic bomb project rendered the bat bomb idea useless. Mr. Adams continued his nutty ideas with patents for a fried chicken vending machine, seed bombs for barren land, and many other wacky ideas!

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