More True Facts: Operation X-Ray

History, Humans, Humor, MoreTrueFacts, Philosophy, TalesFromTheGrid

In 1942, a dentist convinced the White House to turn bats into tiny bombers. Project X-Ray involved strapping timed incendiaries to thousands of Mexican free-tailed bats. The plan failed when the “soldiers” escaped and burned down an auxiliary Army Air Base.

#TalesFromTheGrid is about not just one thing at this point. It started as a surreal thought experiment regarding absurdity (AI, algorithms, technology, rodents who accidentally went to medical school, and ruthless cats).

Born in that weird, vulnerable moment between being awake and asleep, this set of texts explores dream logic, surrealism, and the absurd.

And sometimes, this series features #MoreTrueFacts, which are very real stories about actual recorded human history—like the time we parachuted beavers into Idaho. Welcome to the facts, folks!

#MoreTrueFacts: Operation X-Ray (The Bat Bomb)

A a top-secret WWII weapon system using bats that was proposed by a dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams.

The Weaponry

The plan was to equip Mexican Free-tailed bats with tiny, timed incendiary bombs.

  • The Strategy: Because bats hide in dark, wooden attics during the day, the US military hoped to release them over Japanese cities (which were primarily made of wood and paper). The bats would nest in the attics, the bombs would detonate, and the city would ignite from the inside.

The “Test Flight” (The Backfire)operation x ray

During a test at the Carlsbad Army Airfield in New Mexico in 1943, some of the “armed” bats escaped their containers.

  • The Target: Rather than attacking a mock-up of a Japanese city, the bats did exactly what nature intended: they found the nearest dark, wooden structures—which happened to be the US Army’s own hangars and a general’s car.

  • The Result: The bats successfully “deployed” their incendiary devices, burning a significant portion of the US military base to the ground.

The Verdict

The project was eventually scrapped in favor of the Manhattan Project (you know the one, with Oppenheimer and hubris and devastation).

The military realized that bats are too chaotic to follow a mission brief—they don’t care about your “strategic objectives,” they just want a nice place to sleep.