Creative Ways to Conduct War

[Exsubmariner]

Hello everyone,
I received a PM yesterday about a weird weapon someone saw on the history channel. This got me thinking not only about weird weapons, but creative and novel ways people have conducted war in general.

One of the instances of creative warfare which comes to mind off the top of my head was thought up by the Mongols. They are most likely responsible for the first use of biological war in history, at the siege of Caffa. In true Mongol fashion, they wanted to leave none alive and with the plague decimating their army, well...

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It is probable that the Mongols and merchant caravans inadvertently brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The plague was reported in the trading cities of Constantinople and Trebizond in 1347. In that same year, the Genoese possession of Caffa, a great trade emporium on the Crimean peninsula, came under siege by an army of Mongol warriors under the command of Janibeg, backed by Venetian forces. After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army was reportedly withering from the disease, they might have decided to use the infected corpses as a biological weapon. The corpses were catapulted over the city walls, infecting the inhabitants.[4] The Genoese traders fled, transferring the plague via their ships into the south of Europe, whence it rapidly spread. According to accounts, so many died in Caffa that the survivors had little time to bury them and bodies were stacked like cords of firewood against the city walls.

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From my favorate encyclopedia.

So, feel free to post your favorites or your own creative ideas. Go.

[27offsuit]

Rollerball.

[kerowo]

Those bouncy bombs used to blow up dams in WW2.

[Fishwhenican]

I was watching Future Weapons last night and they had a bit about using the Barrett .50 BMG in a semi-automatic sniper rifle. What an awesome weapon! Can shoot accurately at targets over a mile away.

One of the military guys was commenting on how effective this has been in Afganistan and Iraq. It really strikes fear into the hearts of the opposition because they never know where one of these bullets might come from. It is like a big black cloud of death hanging over them and really hurts their moral!

[Blarg]

I always thought mining and sapping were creative ways to fight wars. Impenetrable fortifications could merely be dug under -- sometimes through very very long tunnels. A party from the beseiged fortification would then be led into the tunnel and showed where the explosives would be put to bring down a section of the walls. Were the fortification to suddenly acquire new open door(s), all would of course be quickly lost with hell to pay, so sometimes cities or castles were handed over without further battle from that point onward.

A pretty safe, bloodless way of getting things done.

[entertainme]

I love the story of the inflatable tanks, etc. used to mislead the Germans about D-Day:

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From 1943, a skilled team worked to create the illusion of a large invasion force being massed in Kent. Dummy tanks and aircraft were built of inflatable rubber and placed in realistic looking "camps". Harbours were filled with fleets of mock landing craft. To German reconnaissance aircraft, it all looked real, even down to attempts at camouflage.


Knowing that German intelligence would be trying to find out more, double agents planted stories and documents with known German spies. US General Patton was supposedly commander of the non-existent force. Pretend radio transmissions were broadcast, just as if a large army were busy being organised.


The hoax was successful beyond the Allies wildest hopes. German forces were concentrated in the Pas-de-Calais. The deception continued during and after D-Day. While the real invasion force landed in Normandy, Allied planes dropped silver foil to give the impression of massed planes and ships crossing from Dover. The Germans thought the Normandy landings were a diversion, and kept back reserves of tanks and troops in the Calais area - to counter what they thought would be the "real" invasion. By the time they realised, it was too late. The Normandy bridgehead had been secured, and Allied troops were fighting their way across northern France.

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[katyseagull]

My weirdest weapon is the Bat Bomb! My second choice would have been the catapult flinging dead bodies [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] (Hey, you gotta love that one!)

Bat Bombs
During WWII the United States had this idea to use bats as bombs to attack mainland Japan. The reasoning was that bats can carry more than their own weight in flight and can hide in secretive places. When I heard this I thought it was the weirdest idea in the world. I mean who is going to strap on tiny little bombs to all those bats? I had to look it up on the internet.

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The plan was to release bomb-laden bats at night over Japanese industrial targets. The flying bats would disperse widely, then at dawn they would hide in buildings and shortly thereafter built-in timers would ignite the bombs, causing widespread fires and chaos. The bat bomb idea was conceived by dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams, who submitted it to the White House in January, 1942, where it was subsequently approved by President Roosevelt.[1] Adams was recruited to research and obtain a suitable supply of bats.

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One operator injected the solution in the delay [mechanism], another sealed the hole with wax, and another placed the surgical clip that was fastened to the incendiary by a short string. . . . The incendiary was then handed to a trained helper who fastened it to the chest skin of the bat.

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wikipedia article on Bat Bombs

AirForce article

Bat of choice: Free-tailed bat, weighing about 9 grams

The inventor of military napalm actually helped out on the project by designing the incendiary devices for the army. Later, when the bats accidentally set off a major fire at the army base in Carlsbad, NM, the navy took it over renaming it Project X-Ray. Cool name huh?

Sadly Project X-Ray was never used. What a waste of $2 million dollars. Seems they decided to go with a quicker end to the war, opting for the atomic bomb instead of the awesome bat bomb approach. Shame.

[Zurvan]

During the Battle of Vimy Ridge during WW1, the Canadians used several new methods.

The first was a platoon attack, which is pretty standard in militaries all over the world now. Previously, it had just been a line of soldiers moving through the trenches. A platoon attack lays down 1 or 2 sections for cover fire on an objective (such as a machine gun next), while another closes in.

They added trailing sections, called "mop up" sections, to clear out any missed enemy troops in trenches. The main advance in WWI typically moved so quickly that they didn't have time to search for hidden enemy, and would often be attacked from behind.

They developed a new method of counter battery fire using flash-spotters & triangulation. They also loaded wireless morse code transmitters on observation planes to track artillery. Finally, they used machine guns in indirect fire to get bullets directly in to enemy trenches.

This is on top of the more standard mining they did under the ridge to blow up trenches, and hide the troops to be used for the attack.

Vimy Ridge was one of the great battles of World War I, and it is greatly under appreciated, because it was fought by Canadians

Wikipedia Page

[Dominic]

[ QUOTE ]
My weirdest weapon is the Bat Bomb! My second choice would have been the catapult flinging dead bodies [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] (Hey, you gotta love that one!)

Bat Bombs
During WWII the United States had this idea to use bats as bombs to attack mainland Japan. The reasoning was that bats can carry more than their own weight in flight and can hide in secretive places. When I heard this I thought it was the weirdest idea in the world. I mean who is going to strap on tiny little bombs to all those bats? I had to look it up on the internet.

[ QUOTE ]

The plan was to release bomb-laden bats at night over Japanese industrial targets. The flying bats would disperse widely, then at dawn they would hide in buildings and shortly thereafter built-in timers would ignite the bombs, causing widespread fires and chaos. The bat bomb idea was conceived by dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams, who submitted it to the White House in January, 1942, where it was subsequently approved by President Roosevelt.[1] Adams was recruited to research and obtain a suitable supply of bats.

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One operator injected the solution in the delay [mechanism], another sealed the hole with wax, and another placed the surgical clip that was fastened to the incendiary by a short string. . . . The incendiary was then handed to a trained helper who fastened it to the chest skin of the bat.

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wikipedia article on Bat Bombs

AirForce article

Bat of choice: Free-tailed bat, weighing about 9 grams

The inventor of military napalm actually helped out on the project by designing the incendiary devices for the army. Later, when the bats accidentally set off a major fire at the army base in Carlsbad, NM, the navy took it over renaming it Project X-Ray. Cool name huh?

Sadly Project X-Ray was never used. What a waste of $2 million dollars. Seems they decided to go with a quicker end to the war, opting for the atomic bomb instead of the awesome bat bomb approach. Shame.

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this is the greatest Lounge post ever. I love that there were actually "bat-bombs" in the world.

[LeapFrog]

What, no love for the pigeon guided missile Dom? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

edit: took me a sec to find my post

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WWII produced some pretty crazy ideas for new weapons, witness the pigeon-guided missile:

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During World War II, Project Pigeon (or Project Orcon, for "organic control") was American behaviorist B. F. Skinner's attempt to develop a pigeon-guided missile.

The control system involved a lens at the front of the missile projecting an image of the target to a screen inside, while a pigeon trained (by operant conditioning) to recognize the target pecked at it. As long as the pecks remained in the center of the screen, the missile would fly straight, but pecks off-center would cause the screen to tilt, which would then, via a connection to the missile's flight controls, cause the missile to change course. Three pigeons were to control the bomb's direction by majority rule.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon



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