MORE STRANGE WAR FACTS...you may not have known

by Mark Powley
Sapmail, March 2001

Not saluting...waving
In Albert Speer's memoirs, and in a TV interview, Speer claimed that when he was visiting the Fuhrer Bunker late in the war, he looked over the ventilation system and thought about killing Hitler by introducing poisonous gas into the system. Speer then claimed that on a later visit he noticed changes had been made to the system which foiled his plans. the real story is said to be that Hitler, a vegetarian, suffered badly from intestinal gas, increasingly as the war had cut into fresh food supplies and he had to eat more canned foods. He tended to stink up the conference and other rooms in the bunker so badly that officers complained carefully to the SS officer in charge of bunker operations, requesting that improvements be made to the ventilation system. this officer contacted Speer who then looked over the system and suggested some changes. Way after the war, when Speer was released from Spandau prison and published his memoirs and gave a few interviews, this embellishment by Speer so incensed the same officer, then living in Austria, that he contacted a German magazine with his story and some documentation. So it would appear that, in the end, Hitler even gassed his own beloved SS.

German propaganda carrying storks
The Nazi German Propaganda Ministry toyed with the idea of using storks, which migrated to South America, as a means of delivering propaganda to these far flung countries. The proposal was to attach a collar with leaflets and some sort of timed explosive to release them over South America. The idea was summarily dismissed because wiser minds realised that the South American peoples liked the storks and were not likely to become more pro-German with propaganda leaflets and dead storks dropping down on them.

Holy flaming mammals, batman!
During WW2 the US military experimented with using bomb-carrying bats. The plan was to attach incendiary devices to bats, place them inside of special hollow bomb cases and release them from bomber aircraft above the target city. In theory, the bombs break open after being released, the bats would fly off seeking the nearest shelter (usually a factory of warehouse roof) and a timer would then go off on the bomb, causing major damage and fires.

Apparently the first tests were failures because at altitude the bombs got very cold in the bomb bay (big surprise there...) and the bats went into deep hibernation and didn't wake up before they hit the desert floor and made little bat pancakes. Low level drops were tried, but the bomb wouldn't open properly and there were 100% casualties again. Finally a pressurised, heated bomb case was developed, but the effects were unknown as the bats apparently all headed into local caves and were never seen again. by this time the Manhattan Project was well along, and it was decided that kamikaze bats were not going to be needed after all.

There was also a plan to combat Japanese surface shipping, which was proving very hard to hit with bombs, by landing a glider containing a rabid dog on the ship. this idea was also dropped quickly (but not before a lot of money was apparently spent on R&D) when it was pointed out that (1) someone on the ship would probably have a gun and would just shoot the damn dog, and (2) the pilot of the glider was now going to be stuck on a Japanese ship with an angry crew and a (probably dead, but bigger problem if alive) rabid dog.

The most bizarre idea put into actual practice was the airdropping of foxes that had been dipped in phosphorescent paint onto the Japanese island of Kyushu. Supposedly, if one saw the ghost of a fox, it was an omen of disaster, so the USAAF provided some 'ghost foxes' to spook the Japanese. Foxes have a reputation as 'magic' animals, and having a fox cross your path in some places is the same as the black cat in the West. Seeing the ghost of a fox running on its hind legs was considered an even worse omen, so the AAF complied by strapping the stuffed upper body of a fox onto the hindquarters of a live fox, then dipping just the hindquarters and dead fox into the paint. Doing best Jack Palance...Believe it or not!

More gems of knowledge gleaned from the Hyperscale Discussion Board.

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