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Subject: mad WW2 weapons
andyf    12/27/2006 8:14:48 PM
just got IL2-1946.. been playing with some of the crazy toys the germans thought up. I never would have thought it, but the wire guided AAM is workable. anyone else got a favourite daft-that works weapon?
 
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Softwar    Bird Bomb   12/28/2006 11:23:41 AM
Try the work of BF Skinner - with the pidgeon (guided) bomb for the US Navy.  Mount a bird in a sock inside the nose cone of a bomb.  Train him to peck at a target screen with switches behind the glass plate (up/down/right/left).  Link the switches to the tail fin controls.  Skinner had a prototype ready for testing when the Navy cancelled in favor of the radar guided BAT bomb.  The idea was sound and the pidgeons could actually tell the difference between two ships in the same class.
 
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YelliChink       12/28/2006 12:06:59 PM
Isn't the BAT BOMB a bomb carrying real live bats with incendiary injection in hibernation?
 
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Softwar       12/28/2006 1:04:54 PM

Isn't the BAT BOMB a bomb carrying real live bats with incendiary injection in hibernation?

The Bat was a conventional radar guided glide bomb.  It is a viewed as an ancestor of current anti-ship missiles.
"http://biomicro.sdstate.edu/pederses/asmbat.html"

ASM-N-2 BAT

The ASM-N-2 BAT was a relatively simple glide-bomb constructed of steel and plywood (12.3 feet long with a 10.0 foot wingspan), with a gross weight of 1,700 pounds, including it's 1,000-pound charge. Though designed primarily an anti-shipping weapon, it was also used as a gunnery target. At least 4 of the 2580 ASM-N-2 BAT airframes that were built remain intact; one had been displayed at the Planes of Fame Museum (Grand Canyon AZ- Yellow @ right below), another at the Admiral Nimitz State Historical Park (Fredricksburg, Texas), one at the Smithsonian Institution, a cut-away demonstration Model on display at China Lake, and the newly refurbished BAT at NIST (Gaithersburg, MD).
 
Not to be confused with the Bat Bomb (using live Bats to set a city on fire) ...

On January 12, 1942, Dr. Adams sent to the White House a proposal to investigate the possible use of bats as bombers. In those days, well-meaning citizens were proposing all kinds of warfare ideas, most of them impractical. However, this idea, after being sifted through a top-level scientific review, became one of the very few given the green light. It was passed to the Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) for further inquiry in conjunction with Army Air Forces. The official CWS history states simply: "President Roosevelt OK'd it and the project was on."

 
 
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