Let Slip the Bats of War

“[The] lowest form of life is the BAT, associated in history with the underworld and regions of darkness and evil…until now reasons for its creation have remained unexplained. As I vision it the millions of bats that have for ages inhabited our belfries, tunnels and caverns were placed there by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence, and to frustrate any attempt of those who dare to desecrate our way of life.”

—Dr. Lytle Adams

“This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but it is worth looking into.”

—President Theodore Roosevelt

The new, as-yet unchristened Carlsbad, New Mexico Army Airfield auxiliary air base was going up in smoke and down in flames. 

The bats had done it. 

But had they truly?

The fires had been sparked by Harvard chemist Louis Frederick Fieser’s invention napalm, a gelled form of gasoline, coupled with dentist Lytle Adams’s war effort brainchild: bats carrying bombs.

The bats had not chosen to become bearers of this destructive light. It had been given to them by men. 

And why had this happened? For love, may be one answer given. Love of family. Love of country. Love of possession of autonomy. 

If love be the answer, what was the product of this love? 

War. 

War had caused this. 

Why is war fought?

For peace, might be said. 

War is not what anyone wants, is it? War is not started with the hope that it will be constant, forevermore. When a war starts, an end is hoped for. True? 

False, it may be argued. War is not a conscious invention of humans. Non-human animals war with each other: Chimpanzees. Ants. 

What is war? The dictionary defines war as 

1. open armed conflict between countries or between factions within the same country 

2. any active hostility, contention, or struggle; conflict

A war is often fought to protect a home, or a way of life. Is not the escape of the bats also a fight for a way of life? To return to their home in the Carlsbad Caverns of New Mexico, USA, is surely understandable, even right. 

Plucked from their home of generations, Mexican free-tailed bats have been packed into eight large crates and are being transported to the Muroc Army Air Base (later Edwards Air Force Base) near Los Angeles, California in a B-25 bomber plane. The uncounted bats inside are shrieking loudly enough to be heard clearly by all in the vicinity. 

Confined in a dark space with unnatural contours, the frightened bats struggle to crawl over, under, and around each other, searching for an exit. They emit pulses of high-pitched sound every few seconds. The wide world that has always taken shape in their minds’ eyes is no more. Their echolocation flings back glimpsed knowledge of a flat, hard surface wherever there are no other bats. Every one of them cries out at once in a disorienting babel. Their new, small world is jostled by unfathomable forces at random intervals.

After landing, the crates full of bats are placed in a specially-built refrigeration truck. Hours later, the bats are still audibly awake, but the project workers want them chilled into hibernation. Blocks of ice are located, wrapped in towels, and added to the interior of the truck. Fans are set up to blow colder air from the ice over the bats. The crates finally quiet around midnight. 

Cold seeps through the walls around them. Movements become sluggish. Heartbeats speed up, then slow down. They sink from consciousness…

The next morning, the now-still bats are fitted with weighted dummy bombs, attached to the bats’ chests with a surgical clip. The miniature napalm bombs have been made, but Fieser hasn’t perfected the safety mechanism yet, so the B-25’s pilot refuses to allow the real bombs on the plane. 

Flaccid bodies plummet, wings trailing uselessly. The small bodies strike the earth quietly.

The experimenters drop their first batch of bats out of the plane at 2,000 feet altitude. None of them fly, but plummet to the ground. It is surmised that the bats haven’t yet had enough time to wake up. The plane circles ever higher, periodically releasing more bats, until it is difficult for ground observers to see the aircraft. Finally, someone realizes the bats are not in hibernation, as they had thought. The bats are dead, frozen by the swift and intense increase of cold. They will never wake again, nor return home. 

Contorted wings stretch from brown, crumpled lumps, rotting in the sun. Bones jut into the sunlight as heat shimmers over the ground, further distorting the deceased.

After this failure, the project is moved to the newly-built auxiliary landing field on the Carlsbad, New Mexico Army Air Base. The new site is next door to the Carlsbad Caverns, and the team will now have much less of a struggle to replenish their bats with the caverns so close.

Once again a raid strikes them. Lights brighter than the sun flash about the cavern. Wings snag in strange things like substantial spiderwebs that trap fleeing individuals.

Now, the bat bomb housing is ready for testing. 1,030 bats are packed into circular trays with egg-carton-like compartments. The trays are then flipped upside down, so the compartments are oriented down, against the solid bottom of the tray below it. Curved pieces of sheet metal with holes punched in them are fitted around the trays, tapering on one end to form an aerodynamic nose cone. On the back, a propeller revolving a particular number of times will release the outer casing, and a parachute will open as the trays separate, though still held together by cables. The bats will be dumped out of their cubbies and onto the solid bottom of the tray below, and they can then launch themselves from the slowly falling platform. Assembled and ready for deployment, the contraption is five feet tall.

The next group of test subjects are not cooled so harshly, and this time they do wake and fly away at the desired time. Far away. The bats head away from the base, jeeps rattling over rough terrain below as the project workers try to keep track of how far the weighted bats can go. A group of significant size proves fairly easy to keep in sight, and the bats fetch up on a rancher’s property. The rancher agrees not to tell anyone about the highly unusual event consisting of bats, with rather obvious capsules hanging from their chests, holing up in his barn, his porch, and every other structure on his property in the middle of the day. 

This test is considered a success, but the project workers want to try it again right away, this time with cameras recording. Six limp, torpid bats fitted with real bombs are handed one by one to Louis Fieser, who slowly and deliberately arms each bomb with a syringe, injecting copper chloride into a chamber. The corrosive agent will eventually eat through the trigger wire enough to cause it to break. 

No one is paying attention to the bats themselves. 

With a flap, snap, and flurry of dry wings, all six bats take off, to the horror of all present. The hot New Mexico day has brought them out of their induced hibernation, and they are gone beyond reach. 

The six Mexican free-tailed bats stagger through the air over the auxiliary airfield, toiling to stay aloft as the bombs dangle from their chests. Even with the extra weight slowing them down, they are impossible for humans to catch. They search for a safe, hidden place to spend the rest of the day. 

One flutters into the empty barracks building. A second roosts in the framing of the observation tower. Each finds a suitable spot to shelter. A place where they feel safe. They will rest, and then try to find their way home.

Fifteen minutes later, the bat in the barracks dies in flames, and the building catches on fire. Not long after, the watchtower bat dies as well, and soon four other structures begin burning fiercely. A roiling mass of flames and smoke rises skyward. The conflagration spreads, and the entire auxiliary air base burns to the ground. 

“We made a little mistake out there.” 

—Louis Frederick Fieser

From the book Napalm: an American Biography

by Robert M. Neer

End of Chapter 3: American Kamikazes

Design and testing was complete by February 1944. Manufacturers and bat collection teams stood by to fulfill an expected initial order for 1 million bats, incendiaries, and timers. Then, suddenly and without definitive explanation—a historical mystery still to be resolved—the project was canceled after an expenditure of about $24 million in today’s dollars. “Uncertainties involved in the behavior of the animal,” NRDC chemist Harris M. Chadwell blandly wrote, created too many unknown variables. 

"[A] practical, inexspensive, and effective plan…"

—Dr. Lytle Adams