Wednesday, February 26, 2014

"Send in the rocket cats!"

The mysterious illustrations from the 16th century that reveal bizarre plans to put explosives on PETS.
'Create a small sack like a fire-arrow … if you would like to get at a town or castle, seek to obtain a cat from that place.
'And bind the sack to the back of the cat, ignite it, let it glow well and thereafter let the cat go, so it runs to the nearest castle or town, and out of fear it thinks to hide itself where it ends up in barn hay or straw it will be ignited.'

6 comments:

Sean said...

Or better yet, try this with some of those PETA people.

Anonymous said...

Isn't that what Samson did to the Philistines, using foxes?

Anonymous said...

The idea for the V1 has its roots somewhere... Drones, Schmones. No need for Techno. Explore Free-Flight.

Anonymous said...

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WDX9rRuHcn8

There was a similar program by the US military during WWII- Aimed at using bats loaded with time fused incendiary devices to be air dropped over Japanese cities, where it was believed they would roost in buildings and efficiently torch them.

The first large scale test of these "bat bombs" resulted in the bats ignoring the designated target, heading right back to the airfield where they had resided before being loaded with firebombs and put into their delivery system. They did indeed proceed to roost in buildings there- And burned the place to the ground!

A couple of fission bombs deployed shortly after that debacle ended the program, which was probably for the best.

Anonymous said...

The US had a similar idea in WW2, except using bats! The theory was that releasing bats with incendiary devices attached over Tokyo would create a firestorm as the bats would find resting places in eaves in the wooden buildings.

Research was actually done and bats were collected/raised for the project. The Atomic Bomb came along first.

Anonymous said...

I read somewhere that the Soviets tried something similar in WW2 with dogs, whom they trained to run underneath tanks with explosives strapped to them with a tilt-rod detonator. It apparently worked very well until the first combat trial, when the dogs ran immediately under the tanks they'd learned to recognize in training: Soviet T34s.

Law of Unintended Consequences, indeed!

BoarHawg