The Gay Bomb and Other Absurd Military Projects (10 photos)

Paradoxical as it may sound, war is a powerful engine of progress. The defense industry concentrates the finest minds and most cutting-edge technologies. Yet in the desperate race for military superiority, engineers sometimes push boundaries a little too far, pitching ideas that hover on the fine line between radical innovation and sheer absurdity. Here are a few of the most outlandish military projects in history.





Bat Bombers

In 1941, an American dentist named Lytle Adams came up with a rather eccentric idea. While exploring the Carlsbad Caverns—home to a massive bat population—he conceived a scheme to turn the creatures into airborne munitions: attach tiny, timed napalm charges to them and release them over Japanese cities at dawn. The bats would roost in attics and under eaves (which, in wartime Japan, were predominantly wooden structures), after which the timers would detonate, igniting widespread fires.



Adams pitched the concept to the US government, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—who was involved with the Office of Strategic Services at the time—took a shine to it. The project was greenlit under the codename "Project X-Ray" and briefly became a key element of US military planning in the Pacific Theater.





A parachute-equipped canister designed to drop bats from an aircraft. As it descended, the container warmed up, automatically opening the lid to release the newly awakened arsonists.

After capturing tens of thousands of bats, the military began testing. During the very first trial, several armed bats woke up prematurely while being loaded into containers, flew into nearby wooden hangars, and burned them to the ground. The airbase commander’s personal car was also destroyed in the blaze. Ironically, the incident was taken as proof of the weapon's terrifying effectiveness.

According to the operational plan, ten bombers were to launch from Alaska and drop over a million bats across the industrial cities surrounding Osaka Bay. However, testing progressed slowly, and when it became clear that such a strike couldn't be mounted before the summer of 1945, the project was scrapped. Resources were redirected to atomic weaponry instead.

The Sun Gun



Thirty years before *Star Wars* hit movie theaters, Nazi scientists were seriously developing a orbital "sun gun" capable of incinerating cities, boiling seas, and scorching enemy troops alive. The concept drew on earlier work by Austro-Hungarian scientist Hermann Oberth, who in the 1920s had proposed putting a massive mirror into Earth orbit to illuminate entire cities.



Orbital experiments became theoretically possible once the Third Reich acquired V-2 ballistic missiles. German strategists envisioned hanging a giant mirror in space to focus sunlight into an intensely concentrated, devastating beam. The mirror was to be assembled directly in orbit: a spinning rocket would unfurl metallic cables to form a frame, onto which prefabricated reflective panels would be mounted.



Manned space stations were meant to control the mirror and point it at target areas. Power would be generated by steam engines aboard the stations, while onboard greenhouses would supply oxygen.

Naturally, Germany's defeat in World War II put an end to this outlandish scheme. Given the sheer scale of the vision, even today it would be a daunting undertaking for any single country.

The Gay Bomb

In 1994, the Pentagon invited proposals for non-lethal air-to-ground weapons. Researchers at a secret Air Force laboratory in Ohio responded with three outlandish ideas. First, they suggested dropping bombs filled with a substance that would cause severe, long-lasting halitosis—foul bad breath. Another concept involved packing munitions with pheromones to attract swarms of bees and wasps, stinging enemy troops into submission. And finally, the wildiest idea of all: loading ordnance with potent aphrodisiacs to trigger intense sexual arousal, leading to homosexual behavior among enemy soldiers.



Word of this peculiar research leaked to the press in 2004, sparking controversy over whether the US was violating international chemical weapons treaties. Gay rights activists were also outraged by the absurd assumption that homosexual soldiers would somehow lose their combat capability. In response to the backlash, the Pentagon insisted the idea was never actually pursued.



In 2007, the "gay bomb" was awarded an Ig Nobel Prize, which honors achievements in science and technology that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." Unsurprisingly, no military officials attended the ceremony to accept the award.

The Biblical Aircraft Carrier



Britain’s Combined Operations Headquarters was equally capable of grand thinking. Early in World War II, an inventor and officer named Geoffrey Pyke proposed building a ship whose sheer scale would utterly demoralize the enemy: a 2,000-foot (609-meter) aircraft carrier. For comparison, the largest existing aircraft carrier at the time—the USS *Enterprise*—measured 342 meters. And to make this colossal vessel unsinkable, Pyke suggested constructing it out of ice.



The project was named Project Habakkuk, after the biblical prophet who wrote: "Be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." The vessel was meant to serve as a floating airfield for anti-submarine aircraft hunting German U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. To keep the superstructure frozen, thousands of miles of cooling pipes circulating refrigerant were to run through it. The titan's top speed was estimated at a modest six knots.

Pure ice was quickly abandoned in favor of Pykrete—a frozen composite of water and wood pulp. It proved so durable that it could deflect pistol bullets. Nevertheless, six months later, the project was cancelled due to skyrocketing costs and logistical hurdles. A 60-foot (18-meter) prototype model built in Canada took three full years to melt.