Spycraft - Melton [14]
OSS printers counterfeited currency and reproduced identity documents with “official” seals and forged signatures.40 Beginning in 1943, they issued hundreds of virtually perfect German stamps, pay books, identity papers, ration cards, and even Gestapo orders.41 OSS tailors created clothing so flawless the stitching resembled the genuine article from the country of supposed manufacture.42
No idea seemed too far-fetched for Donovan, whose motto became “Go ahead and try it.” The R&D lab created a soft metal tube with a screw cap that projected a thin stream of liquid chemical with a repulsive and lasting odor as a psychological harassing agent. When squirted directly on the body or clothing of a person, it engulfed them with the odor of fecal matter. The plan called for Chinese children in occupied cities to squirt the liquid at Japanese officers. Lovell dubbed it “Who Me?” 43
When a civilian dentist suggested to President Roosevelt that one million bats with tiny incendiary devices attached to them could be released over Japan to ignite a firestorm among houses constructed almost entirely of wood and paper, experiments leading to what would become known as BAT or Project X-ray were undertaken.44 Bats were clandestinely collected from Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico and transported to an OSS test site. Developers designed a parachute container to house the bats during their descent from a highflying airplane, while Division 19 engineers produced tiny (15 grams) incendiary and Time Delay Pencil devices.45 The initial testing at Carlsbad Air Base was both a high and low point for the project. The armed bats successfully, but accidentally, burned down a hangar after crawling into the rafters of the newly constructed building. 46
For a brief time the plan seemed to have potential. In large quantities, the price of the incendiary device and time-delay fuses were less than four cents per unit and the bats could be obtained at no cost during their hibernation cycle. The separate elements necessary for the project to work were all in place and tested, but military planners would not authorize a bat operation, declaring insufficient data existed about the processes needed to arm and transport one million bats for an air strike. The project was cancelled in March of 1944.47
Additional experiments were undertaken to use a larger animal, the common Norwegian rat, to deliver bigger payloads than the tiny bats. Tests showed that a rat could carry up to seventy-five grams of explosives attached to its tail. The rats, which normally live in buildings, factories, and warehouses, were thought to provide a way of introducing explosives into guarded installations.48 But, like the bat attack, this project also floundered in military planning.
Another unconventional project that failed, although it had been supported by the Chairman of the Senate Appropriation Committee, was the Cat Guided Bomb. The idea was to harness a cat to the underside of a bomb in such a way that the feline’s movements would steer the explosive to its target. In theory, when a cat was dropped over open water with a ship in sight, it would steer itself, and the bomb, toward the safety of the ship’s deck. Initial tests proved cats were ineffective and the concept died as quickly as the first test subjects.49 Another failed idea included plans to poison Hitler with female hormones by injecting them into the vegetarian Fuhrer’s vegetables.50
Some programs that approached