Bizarre Weapons
The strangest and most unconventional weapons ever devised for warfare
7 facts in this category
What WW2 American project attempted to train bats to carry tiny incendiary bombs to set Japanese cities on fire?
Project X-Ray (the Bat Bomb)
The US actually developed a working prototype. During a test at Carlsbad Army Airfield, accidentally released bats burned down the generals car and the base commanders home. The project was cancelled in 1944.
What was the "Pigeon-Guided Missile" project developed by psychologist B.F. Skinner for the US military?
Project Pigeon (also called Project Orcon)
Skinner trained pigeons to peck at a target image displayed on a screen inside a missile nose cone. The pecking would steer the missile toward the target. The military found it too bizarre and cancelled it, though it technically worked.
What was the "Great Panjandrum," and why is it remembered?
A massive rocket-powered wooden reel filled with explosives, designed to breach the Atlantic Wall, that spun out of control during tests and chased British officers and journalists on a beach
The device, tested at Westward Ho! beach in Devon in 1943, shed its rockets and careened across the sand in an uncontrolled path. A newsreel cameraman captured the chaos. It was never used in combat.
What was the Schwerer Gustav, and why was it essentially useless despite being the largest gun ever built?
An 80-cm caliber railway gun weighing 1,350 tonnes built by Krupp that fired shells weighing 7 tonnes — it required 250 men to operate, took 3 days to assemble, and could only fire 14 rounds per day
Gustav fired only about 300 shells in its entire war service during the Siege of Sevastopol. It required an entire railway network to transport and was so slow to set up that it was nearly useless in mobile warfare. It was the most expensive weapon per use in the entire war.
The Soviet Union trained dogs to run under tanks with what consequence?
Anti-tank dogs were trained using Soviet tanks and often ran under Soviet vehicles instead of German ones, causing friendly fire chaos
The dogs were acclimated to Soviet diesel engines and were confused by German petrol engines. During the Battle of Moscow in 1941, the dogs reportedly turned around and dived under Soviet tanks, causing chaos in their own lines.
What was the Japanese "Fu-Go" weapon and how far did it travel?
Hydrogen balloon bombs designed to travel the jet stream from Japan to North America — roughly 5,000 to 6,000 miles
Japan launched about 9,000 Fu-Go balloons between 1944-45. Around 300 reached North America. The only WW2 combat deaths on the US mainland were caused by one of these balloons, killing a pregnant woman and five children in Oregon in 1945.
What was the "Bouncing Bomb" and what famous raid used it?
The Upkeep bomb designed by Barnes Wallis to skip across water — used in Operation Chastise, the Dambusters Raid of May 1943
The cylindrical bomb was spun backwards at 500 rpm and dropped at very low level to skip across water before sinking and detonating against a dam wall. It destroyed two major German dams in the Ruhr valley, flooding industrial areas.