Original subtitles

[beeping]

[dramatic music]

[David] Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"

weapons so big, so deadly, and so strange

that governments stop at nothing to keep them secret,

from the 511-foot super gun

with a target that's out of this world...

- Big Babylon will be the biggest gun in history.

- To an armed battalion of bats.

- Bats go into the attics, and the burning commences.

- And a KGB weapon designed to kill without a trace.

- There's no bang to draw attention.

There's no bullet to become forensic evidence.

It is the perfect weapon.

- These are the astonishing and sometimes terrible weapons

created by governments

and the people who work for them.

It's time to bring them to life.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[beeping]

It's 1956.

The USSR now has nuclear missiles,

and the U.S. faces the prospect of widespread destruction.

So when a former elevator repairman suggests

the only way to defend against the Soviet attack

is by blowing up the Great Lakes,

no one laughs.

Why?

Because the nation's top scientists realize

it's so crazy, it just might work.

[suspenseful music]

♪ ♪

[Hakeem] America is learning that the Soviets have

developed intercontinental ballistic missiles

that are armed with nuclear warheads

that can reach any part of America in a half hour.

[dramatic music]

Our missile interceptors

are not yet reliable enough,

so this is a real problem.

♪ ♪

[David] To defend the U.S. from Armageddon,

military planners turn to an unlikely hero.

♪ ♪

[Amy] Nicholas Christofilos is not

typical Pentagon material.

Born in Boston but raised in Greece,

he was a trained electrical engineer

who worked as an elevator repairman.

But he was always obsessed with physics,

and specifically, nuclear physics.

♪ ♪

[Sami] In the early 1950s,

Christofilos returns to the U.S.,

where he lucks out and is recruited to the lab

that created the U.S. hydrogen bomb.

Now, his bosses see that behind all that eccentricity

is in fact a brilliant mind.

So Christofilos starts helping to solve

the Soviet missile threat.

[David] His unconventional mind

soon conjures up a bizarre solution.

- Christofilos comes up with the idea

of using high energy electron beams

to shoot down these missiles

before they reach American soil.

[David] It sounds simple.

Focus fast-moving electrons into a beam,

train it on an incoming missile,

and when they hit it, the shock wave of energy

will destroy the missile in an instant.

- There will be no bang,

no explosion, no falling debris.

One second, it's here, the next second, it's vapor.

♪ ♪

[David] The U.S. government is intrigued.

Christofilos gets the green light to investigate

under the code name Operation Seesaw.

But accelerating electrons

to the speeds required for this beam

brings its own unique challenge.

[Hakeem] Christofilos needs to construct

a super long tunnel with magnets

that can accelerate these electrons

to these high energies.

This tunnel needs to be massive.

I'm talking hundreds of miles long.

How does he plan to achieve that?

A nuclear-powered underground borer.

The problem is, that hasn't been invented.

[David] Even by Cold War standards,

this is a wild idea.

But designing a nuclear-powered

boring machine isn't even the craziest part.

The real challenge is power.

- Christofilos's particle beam requires

an unimaginable amount of electricity,

literally more than the entire U.S. grid can provide.

And listen, this electricity can't be generated in advance

and stored in a battery.

It needs to be generated all at once

in the very same instant that the weapon is discharged.

[David] Christofilos decides

the only way to run his particle beam gun

is with water power.

He comes up with an idea:

blow up the Great Lakes.

- Christofilos wants to place giant trap doors

on the lake bed.

But beneath those trap doors,

he'll place giant turbines,

and beneath those turbines,

giant nuclear bombs.

So as soon as the Soviet missile is detected,

he'll explode the bombs and release the trap doors.

[dramatic music]

[Dan] All the water in the lakes,

6 quadrillion gallons,

rushes from the lakes

into the cavities created by the bombs,

turning the turbines on the way,

creating an epic amount of power.

♪ ♪

- According to Christofilos's calculations,

his plan will achieve more energy

than even the entire U.S. electrical grid,

and in only minutes.

♪ ♪

[Sami] When Christofilos presents the idea

to his colleagues, the room is stunned.

One of them actually says,

"My God, Nick, that might actually work."

So I guess if you had to pick between

saving the Great Lakes and saving the lives

of millions from nuclear Armageddon,

bye-bye, lakes.

[David] A serious plan is drawn up

to drain the Great Lakes.

But the problem for the government isn't

the ambition or the science.

It's the budget.

[Sami] By the late 1960s,

Project Seesaw has consumed $27 million.

But it remains little more than a collection

of lab experiments and theories.

Christofilos asks for another $300 million

to scale the project, but the Vietnam War is

eating up defense spending, so he doesn't get his funding.

[Dan] Project Seesaw is quietly shelved.

Its files are stamped classified,

and the Great Lakes live to see another day.

[dramatic music]

[David] Despite its failure,

Project Seesaw's theoretical work

paves the way for Reagan's Star Wars initiative

in 1983.

And only in 2010 is this remarkable project

declassified.

- Ideas like draining the Great Lakes

to power the particle beam--

it all sounds so ridiculous and so Hollywood.

But during the Cold War,

conventional thinking could only carry them so far,

and they needed people that came up with outrageous ideas.

- In the Cold War, the U.S. thinks about

blowing up the Great Lakes,

but in Vietnam, American military planners ask,

what if you could weaponize water in a different way,

by creating the mother of all monsoons?

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[Sami] In 1965,

the Vietnam War is intensifying,

and the U.S. military is desperate

to find a way to gain an upper hand.

Now, one way they try to do this

is to disrupt the Viet Cong's key supply route,

the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

[Hakeem] The Ho Chi Minh Trail

snakes through Cambodia and Laos

and is used to move all sorts of men and weapons

and supplies to the Viet Cong.

The problem is, no matter what the U.S. throws at it--

bombs, mines, chemical defoliants--

the supplies just keep on flowing.

- So the Pentagon gets desperate,

and they wonder,

what if they can flood the Ho Chi Minh Trail?

If they can somehow make it rain heavily above the trail,

then the jungle roads will be swamped

until they're impassable.

[David] Weaponizing the weather is a wild idea,

but the Pentagon knows who to turn to.

♪ ♪

[Amy] The Naval Weapons Center is

a military research organization in California.

It has been looking at ways

to promote rainfall from clouds,

partially to ease the drought in California,

but this is also something that could be useful in warfare.

[tense music]

[Hakeem] They've refined a technique

known as cloud seeding,

where they spray silver iodide into clouds

to make it rain, and it seems to work.

♪ ♪

- Watering farmland in California is one thing.

Using this tech to wipe out a supply route

halfway around the world,

that could cause a diplomatic disaster.

♪ ♪

[Amy] The Ho Chi Minh Trail runs through

Laos and Cambodia.

But because these countries are neutral in the conflict,

nobody wants the U.S. to be seen

messing with their weather.

[David] Military planners decide to go ahead anyway.

The operation is code-named Popeye.

- Operation Popeye is so secret

that even Congress is not briefed on this.

[David] In total secrecy, the U.S. Air Force

prepares to cloud seed on a scale

never before attempted.

- Now, the engineers have to figure out

how to actually get the silver iodide

into the clouds.

And the solution that they come up with

is to fill 40 millimeter cartridges with the material.

They put these cartridges into racks

that can hold 104 each.

And these racks are loaded onto planes.

And as they fly through the clouds,

they release the cartridges.

[dramatic music]

[David] In March 1967, the first flight takes off.

[Sami] A C-130 slips quietly up over Laos,

releases its canisters,

and the clouds open up, and rain pours.

♪ ♪

[David] More flights are sent up

and more clouds seeded with silver iodide.

- The Defense Intelligence Agency estimates

that it increases the rainfall by up to 30%.

- Roads wash out, and convoys are delayed.

Now, it doesn't shut down the trail completely,

but it does slow the flow.

And in war, that can be just as valuable.

U.S. pilots involved start using a new phrase,

"Make mud, not war."

[David] The deluge is only just beginning,

but Congress still hasn't been informed.

- When the monsoons return, they target

larger areas of Laos, North Vietnam, and Cambodia.

[David] By 1972, $21.6 million

has been spent on Operation Popeye.

[tense music]

And 47,000 seeding units have been dropped.

♪ ♪

All the while, the U.S. military has

kept this weapon concealed from the world.

But then a disgruntled official

reveals all to a journalist.

♪ ♪

- In 1972, "The New York Times" breaks

the story of Operation Popeye.

They report that the United States government

has been trying to modify the weather in Vietnam.

- The reaction in the U.S. Congress is outrage.

[Martin] We're dumping chemicals into the air

above nations that we're not at war with,

and this is a very provocative move.

[David] The political pushback is immediate.

- Popeye is shut down within 48 hours.

[Hakeem] The mission's planners are brought

to Congress for a hearing.

The hearing ends with a new law advanced

that strictly forbids

the modification of the environment

without first receiving permission from Congress.

[David] Operation Popeye remains the only time

the weather has ever been weaponized

on a live battlefield--

at least that we know of.

- Moscow often turns to poison to take out its enemies.

In 2006, a Russian defector dies

after drinking a cup of tea laced with a radioactive toxin.

In 1978, a Bulgarian dissident

is stabbed with a poison-tipped umbrella.

But before all that, one Ukrainian nationalist

falls victim to something even more sinister--

a cyanide gun hidden inside a newspaper.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[Andrew] It's 1957, and Moscow has a problem.

There are Ukrainian nationalists

in West Germany who are talking about revolution

and hell bent on independence.

[David] At the time, Ukraine is part of the USSR.

But these nationalists want an independent nation

not controlled by Russia.

One of their most important leaders is Stepan Bandera.

- He's essentially enemy number one,

as far as Moscow is concerned.

- Moscow wants him gone--

permanently gone.

[Greg] For Moscow to want to take out Bandera,

having to do so in West Germany,

this would be a violation of the highest order.

That could possibly kick the Cold War into a hot one.

- So they're looking for a way to get rid of him

that's untraceable.

♪ ♪

[David] KGB engineers are tasked

with creating the perfect weapon for the job.

- Killing people is easy.

Anybody can do that.

The challenge is to kill someone

and make it look like you didn't kill them.

- Shooting? Too noisy.

Bombs? Too messy.

So the KGB engineers decide to abandon

bullets and bombs for chemistry.

[David] Soon, they have their ideal solution:

a poison spray.

[Dan] They vaporize a killer compound

called hydrogen cyanide into a lethal mist.

If you inhale just a fraction of a gram,

you'll be dead in a matter of seconds.

[Sami] Hydrogen cyanide blocks the cell's

ability to use oxygen.

So to a pathologist conducting any regular autopsy,

the tiny dose is untraceable, and the cause of death

would easily look the same

as, like, a massive coronary failure.

[David] Creating the lethal spray isn't hard.

Creating a weapon to deliver it,

that's the real challenge.

♪ ♪

- An assassin needs to be right up close to the victim

to deliver it, or else any change in the wind

risks it blowing back in your face

or taking out an innocent bystander.

So to direct the poison,

Soviet engineers build a small metal tube

about 8 inches long, less than an inch wide.

And this tube needs to be positioned

as close to the victim as possible.

[dramatic music]

[Dan] You shoot it out

by pressing a spring-loaded metal bar.

That smashes the vial and causes the poison

to shoot out the end of the tube.

There's no bang to draw attention.

There's no bullet to become forensic evidence.

It is the perfect weapon.

♪ ♪

- The only problem is how to conceal the weapon

so an assassin can get close enough

to use it without drawing attention.

To do that, the Soviets reach for

the most ordinary cover imaginable--

a rolled up newspaper.

♪ ♪

- In 1950s Europe,

newspapers are ubiquitous,

so this makes them a perfect object

to hide weapons inside.

[Hakeem] The designers slot the weapon

inside of a rolled up newspaper.

They cut a slit into the newspaper

near the trigger for fingertip access

so the assassin can fire it without being noticed.

[David] Now the KGB just needs the right person

to use this new weapon to take out Stepan Bandera.

[tense music]

They pick Bohdan Stashynsky.

[Hakeem] Bohdan Stashynsky has been working undercover

for the Soviets since the early 1950s.

He's young, expendable,

and the KGB think that he's loyal.

So in September 1957,

his handlers give him the poison gun.

[David] When Stashynsky begins to surveil Bandera,

however, he hits a problem.

Bandera is always accompanied by a bodyguard.

- The original newspaper gun gives you one shot.

But if Bandera has a bodyguard,

the KGB is going to need two shots.

And they can't be walking around

with two rolled up newspapers.

That would be ridiculous.

So instead,

the KGB develops a double-barreled version

to take out two people.

The engineers get to work,

and they produce a twin pipe gun--

two barrels, two triggers,

and two capsules--

and Stashynsky is handed the new weapon.

♪ ♪

[Sami] Stashynsky spends months tracking Bandera.

One night, he waits outside of Bandera's apartment.

Miraculously, Bandera is alone.

His bodyguard is nowhere to be seen.

[Hakeem] As Bandera fumbles with his keys

outside of his apartment,

Stashynsky approaches.

He raises his newspaper weapon and fires.

[dramatic music]

However, he accidentally shoots

both streams of poison at once

instead of the one that he was supposed to.

♪ ♪

Bandera instantly collapses.

♪ ♪

[David] Bandera is dead.

But doubling the lethal dose of hydrogen cyanide

means it is no longer untraceable.

- Because Stashynsky fired both barrels,

the cyanide has left a more permanent residue

in his victim's organs,

and this is traceable in the autopsy.

It's clearly not a natural death.

- The authorities in West Germany

don't have any witnesses.

They don't have evidence of a weapon.

But that poison residue is enough to convince them

that this could be an assassination.

[dramatic music]

[David] The West German authorities

start to look for an assassin.

For two years, Stashynsky stays silent.

Then, the pressure becomes too much.

[Sami] Stashynsky cracks.

He surrenders to West German police

and confesses everything

in return for asylum and information.

Stashynsky is tried a year later,

and during this trial, he describes

the newspaper-wrapped poison gun in great detail.

♪ ♪

Suddenly, this strange and very unique weapon

is front page news all across the world.

[David] Stashynsky is found guilty.

In exchange for exposing the KGB's lethal tactics,

he is released after just five years in jail.

♪ ♪

Then he vanishes,

reportedly given a new identity

to escape the KGB's revenge.

- Some of the wildest weapons are dreamed up

in war rooms or secret labs.

Others come straight from the top.

In 1940, Winston Churchill floats

a wartime idea that remains classified for 30 years:

knock out German cities with a barrage of balloons.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[James] During World War II,

the skies above Britain's cities

are filled with hundreds and hundreds

of huge hydrogen balloons

tethered to the ground by massive steel cables.

♪ ♪

They're known as blimps and are a key part

of the UK's defense against the German bombers,

forcing enemy planes to fly higher,

making bombing less accurate.

♪ ♪

- One night in September in 1940,

you have a huge storm that sets in,

with winds of upwards of 40 miles an hour.

And these gusts rip dozens of these blimps free.

♪ ♪

[Hakeem] The balloons float

out across the North Sea,

and they begin to descend

once they're over Sweden.

And the cables that are hanging from the balloons

begin to bump into electrical components

in the Swedish power grid.

- They hit power lines, causing massive short circuits

and blackouts that plunge towns into darkness.

♪ ♪

- Where everyone else sees a diplomatic disaster,

Britain's prime minister, Winston Churchill,

spies an opportunity.

If a few stray balloons can wreak havoc in Sweden,

what might thousands do over Germany?

♪ ♪

[Sami] Churchill orders

the construction of thousands of free-floating balloons

with dangling conductive wires.

These are to be launched across the English Channel

and ride the jet stream

straight into the heart of the Third Reich.

[David] Churchill's idea is code-named Operation Outward.

Design begins in extreme secrecy.

[tense music]

- Naval engineers design

a latex balloon 8 feet wide.

♪ ♪

And trailing below each balloon,

they add 1,000-foot-long conductive wire.

♪ ♪

- If you launch enough balloons trailing enough wires,

some of them will hit some very valuable targets.

[dramatic music]

[Sami] The task of assembling these balloons

is given to the WRNS,

the Women's Royal Naval Service.

[David] In makeshift tents,

they construct these huge balloons,

fit them with their destructive trails,

and ready them for launch.

[Amy] The Women's Royal Naval Service

took advantage of the opportunity

to send a little bit of a message

to the Nazis as well, writing things like,

"Take this, you bastards," on the actual balloons.

[David] What this barrage of balloons needs now

is a launch site.

♪ ♪

- The perfect place to launch these balloons

happens to be at a golf club

in a town called Felixstowe.

It's very close to the English Channel

and continental Europe.

There's also a prevailing westerly wind

that will carry the balloons into Germany.

[dramatic music]

- On March 20, 1942, Operation Outward lifts off.

The balloons are set free to float eastward on the wind.

Now there's nothing Churchill can do but wait.

♪ ♪

[Hakeem] It's not long after

that British intelligence agents in Germany

report that the plan is working.

The balloons and their cables are striking the power grid.

They're starting fires, they're knocking out power,

and they are creating complete chaos.

The balloons are also infuriating Adolf Hitler,

something that Churchill is always excited to do.

♪ ♪

[David] Buoyed by success,

Britain's balloon factories go full tilt.

That summer, the British are launching nearly 1,000 a day.

Then the operation has its biggest success yet.

♪ ♪

[Sami] On July 12, 1942,

an Operation Outward balloon creeps towards Leipzig,

the fifth largest city in Germany.

The wind puts it on a collision course

with Leipzig's main power station.

The trailing wire hits a 110,000-volt

transmission line, and in an instant,

electricity leaps from the cable to the wire.

[dramatic music]

[Hakeem] Immediately, the site is up in flames,

and a chunk of Germany is plunged into darkness.

[Sami] It's estimated that this one balloon causes damage

that's worth at least $60 million in today's money,

so not bad for a balloon

that just costs around the equivalent of 100 bucks.

♪ ♪

[David] Launches continue until 1944,

when the D-day landings increase Allied air traffic

over Europe, and Operation Outward

is scaled back.

♪ ♪

- The final balloon is let loose

on September 4, 1944.

It's balloon number 99,142.

[David] The war ends in 1945,

but the technology is so cheap,

the Brits fear if they release the details,

someone could easily use it against them,

so Operation Outward remains buried

in government archives.

♪ ♪

It's quietly declassified

by the British government decades later.

♪ ♪

Then in 2016,

a British journalist tells the story.

- The British media goes wild for this story

of how this stroke of genius from Churchill

just wrought havoc on the German war machine.

- By 1988, eight countries on Earth

have managed to put a satellite in space.

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein

decides he wants to join the club.

To get there, he's not going to use a rocket.

He'll build the biggest gun on the planet.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[Sami] It's 1988,

and Saddam Hussein is in trouble,

because Iraq's enemy, Israel,

is about to launch its first satellite into space.

To level the playing field, Saddam wants

his own spy satellite in space.

♪ ♪

[David] The problem is,

Saddam doesn't have a space program at all,

and building one from scratch will take years.

So he turns to a quick fix shortcut.

- Gerald Bull is

a Canadian-born ballistics expert.

[Hakeem] This guy has been obsessed

with one idea throughout his career,

and that is building a gun so large,

it can fire a satellite into space.

He's peddling his ideas to anyone who will pay.

[David] It sounds like the perfect solution

for getting Saddam to space fast.

- Saddam gives him $25 million to work with.

But what Bull doesn't know

is that Saddam has a second secret plan.

Saddam imagines a gun so powerful,

it could fire a shell filled with chemical glue,

that, detonating near an enemy satellite,

would coat its lenses and blind it completely.

If his enemies can no longer spy on Iraq,

then Saddam believes he will also be able

to build whatever weapons he wants on the ground

without them knowing.

[David] Soon, Bull has a design for the gun.

It's called Big Babylon.

[tense music]

- Big Babylon is going to be massive,

the biggest gun in history.

[Sami] It'll weigh over 2,00 tons,

and its bore will be a meter wide.

So if it works, it'll hurl a 440-pound satellite

600 miles into the sky.

[David] 600 miles isn't high enough.

To be launched permanently into orbit,

it needs to reach a height of tens of thousands

of miles into the sky.

♪ ♪

- Even though Bull's cannon is big and large,

it's not quite enough.

So he comes up with a clever solution.

He attaches a three-stage rocket to the payload.

Each one kicks in at a particular altitude

that makes the projectile go faster and faster

until it reaches orbit.

[David] To put this innovative design to the test,

Bull's team construct a miniature prototype.

♪ ♪

[Sami] It's no normal prototype.

It's 150 feet long with a 350-millimeter bore.

It's a monster within its own right.

[David] They begin testing the prototype

with lead slugs bigger than basketballs.

♪ ♪

- The recoil on this thing is insane.

If you've ever fired a gun and felt that kick back at you,

you know that alone can leave a bruise.

This thing's kicking back several meters with every fire.

But as it does so, these slugs go sailing out--

they're flying at 2 miles per single second.

And it shows that this gun does, in fact, work.

[David] Saddam greenlights the full scale build,

but there's a catch.

Iraq is subject to international sanctions

designed to prevent the production

of this kind of weapon.

- Big Babylon requires specialized components

and composite materials

that the Iraqi engineers on their own cannot create.

- To get around sanctions, Bull creates a network

of secretive shell companies across Europe.

- Despite all of Bull's clever planning,

his work starts to come to the attention

of rival intelligence services.

[David] Israel, Iraq's military rival,

pays close attention.

[tense music]

By 1989,

its Security Agency, Mossad,

is reportedly tracking Bull's every move.

Fast forward to March 22, 1990.

♪ ♪

[Greg] Bull's visiting home in Belgium,

and one day, he walks up to his front door.

♪ ♪

A man emerges from behind him.

♪ ♪

The man pulls a gun

and shoots Bull five times.

[gunshots]

Twice in the head, three times in the back.

♪ ♪

- Gerald Bull is dead.

[dramatic music]

No witnesses, no suspects.

- Bull had $20,000 in cash on him.

And whoever killed him,

whoever fired five shots into the guy,

left that behind.

So it's clearly not a robbery.

This is undoubtedly a hit.

To this day, we don't know who killed Bull.

♪ ♪

[David] After Bull's death,

the weapon might have remained hidden forever.

But the Gulf War in 1991 changes all that.

- Soon after Bull is killed, the Gulf War begins,

and Saddam Hussein never has time

to get back to the project again.

♪ ♪

[David] After the war, UN inspectors in Iraq

find the remains of Big Babylon

and its baby sister...

♪ ♪

And the world discovers just how close

Saddam came to creating a super gun to reach space.

♪ ♪

In 1999, the full details

of Gerald Bull's involvement in Project Babylon

are released by the CIA.

♪ ♪

- Little Boy, The Cookie, Bouncing Betty.

It's like a rule with bombs.

The nicer they sound, the more you should worry.

In 1962, another weapon joins this deadly list.

The U.S. calls it the Atomic Watermelon.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[Sami] In the late 1950s in Europe,

Soviet forces outnumber NATO forces 10 to 1.

And as a result, the United States are

terrified of a Soviet invasion.

They especially fear the Soviets sending

thousands of tanks across what is known as the Fulda Gap.

[Martin] The Fulda Gap is a geographical feature

right along the border in Germany,

two open plain areas

that would make it easy for Communist bloc nations

to stream from east toward the west.

[Hakeem] If Russian tanks roll through the Fulda Gap,

there won't be enough time for America to scramble

its strategic nuclear bombers.

[David] U.S. military planners know,

if they want to protect the free world,

they need to find a way to defend the Fulda Gap.

[tense music]

For that, they decide

they need a brand-new weapon.

♪ ♪

- What the U.S. Army needs is a tactical

low yield nuclear weapon.

- It needs to be scary enough to make the Soviets

think twice about invading, but small enough

to race along the West German front line

at a moment's notice.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[James] In 1959, Los Alamos National Laboratory

engineers begin work to design

the smallest ever nuclear weapon.

♪ ♪

[Hakeem] Engineers use a new form

of highly-enriched plutonium 239.

This new miniaturized device

has an explosive yield

equivalent to about 20 tons of TNT.

That's similar to the largest conventional bombs

ever constructed, and it weighs only around 50 pounds.

That's less than 1% the weight of the Hiroshima bomb.

And this is a device that's less than 11 inches in width.

[David] Its size and shape inspire a nickname,

the Atomic Watermelon.

Now the military needs to see if this melon

can deliver the destruction they're hoping for.

[tense music]

♪ ♪

[Martin] There's a test detonation of the warhead

at the Nevada test site in July 1962.

This is designed to prove that the weapon system

is capable of functioning.

There's a bit of theater associated with this test.

There are bleachers that are built.

Those who are invited to attend the test

and observe it, they're given special goggles

so that they won't be blinded by the blast once it occurs.

There's a VIP seating area.

Robert F. Kennedy is there.

♪ ♪

[David] The target is a point

in the dry desert basin

nearly 3,000 meters away.

At 10:00 a.m., the weapon is fired...

[booming]

[soft music]

[booming]

And it works.

[Reporter] The round was set for a low height of burst.

It detonated perfectly,

releasing its lethal radiation.

- The launcher, the delivery system,

the warhead all work flawlessly,

exactly as designed,

and tests at the delivery site show radiation levels

that confirm that anyone within 200 meters

would have been killed instantly.

[David] The Atomic Watermelon is a success.

It's loaded into jeeps across West Germany,

ready to race to the front line.

- Over 2,000 Atomic Watermelons are manufactured

and distributed across Europe to face the Soviet threat.

Each weapon is handled by a five-man team,

who are only to use the weapon if they are faced

with an imminent threat of being overrun.

[David] Shooting a nuke

from a short range rocket launcher

comes with one very real risk.

[Martin] That five-man team will move forward

at high speed using the vehicle.

They'll fire the weapon,

and then immediately upon releasing it,

they will move as fast as possible

out of the fallout range of the weapon

so that they themselves do not become irradiation casualties.

[David] Despite the danger, the Atomic Watermelon

is judged such an effective deterrent

that it's deployed to other vulnerable outposts,

including Korea, Guam, and Hawaii.

- The Atomic Watermelon is a key part

of American defense for the better part of a decade.

But by the late 1960s,

it still hasn't been used in combat.

Plus, advances in missile guidance

have essentially rendered it obsolete.

So it's retired in 1971.

[David] The story of the Atomic Watermelon

remains buried in classified archives for decades.

[tense music]

Only after the end of the Cold War

are the full details revealed to the world.

♪ ♪

- It's 1942.

The U.S. is trying to find a way

to win the war in the Pacific

when a dentist writes to Franklin Roosevelt

with a plan to attack Japan

with bombs strapped to live bats.

Even crazier than that, the president says yes.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

[Dan] Dr. Lytle S. Adams is on vacation

at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.

He's a dentist, but he's desperate

to help the U.S.'s war effort against Japan,

and he's willing to do some out-of-the-box thinking

to make that happen.

[Martin] With the closing of sunset one evening,

large formations of bats issue from the cave

out into the air.

And it's that inspiration that will lead us

to one of the wackiest moments

in World War II history.

[Dan] Then he gets this great idea.

What if each bat were carrying an incendiary bomb?

[dramatic music]

[David] A bat bomb.

It sounds incredible, but Adams thinks

it could target one of Japan's biggest weaknesses.

[Dan] Adams knows that Japanese cities at the time

are built mostly of wood and paper.

So if thousands of bats carrying miniature firebombs

could fly into a Japanese city and roost in its crevices

and then ignite, you would create

an inferno that would level that city.

[flames crackling]

- Is it bizarre?

Absolutely, without a question.

But is it genius?

Maybe?

[David] An idea like this wouldn't usually land

on the desk of the U.S. government,

but Adams knows just the right person.

- There are plenty of people during World War II

who have wacky but brilliant ideas.

Not all of them have a personal relationship

with Eleanor Roosevelt, but Lytle S. Adams did.

[Sami] So he writes to President Roosevelt.

Amazingly, FDR is on board.

He actually says, "Sounds like a wild idea,

but worth looking into."

- Adams' bat bomb is fast tracked for testing.

It's code-named Project X-ray,

and Adams gets a promotion.

[Amy] Dr. Adams leaves his day job, and within weeks,

has assembled this crack team of mammalogists,

engineers, pyrotechnicians, and military officers

to figure out how to turn bats into bombs.

[David] Their first task is to find the right bat.

[dramatic music]

[Dan] The team settles on the Mexican free-tailed bat.

Those bats weigh about 10-12 grams each.

That's only as much as two nickels,

but experiments have shown that they can fly

while they're carrying an incendiary device

that weighs slightly more than they do.

So with enough bats, this plan just might work.

[David] Now Adams has a bigger challenge--

designing a bat-sized bomb.

- The team designs a small bomb about the width

of a golf ball that is ignited via a timer,

and it creates a 1-foot-wide

strip of napalm that can burn

for about four minutes.

[dramatic music]

[David] In June 1943,

they plan a test in the New Mexico desert

near Carlsbad Caverns.

But as it turns out, unlike bomber pilots,

bats don't obey orders.

- In one test where bat bombs are released,

the animals then fly into a hangar,

a hangar that was very much being used.

The bats fly into it,

the incendiary devices on the bats go off,

and they set the hangar on fire.

They also do the same thing

by flying underneath a general's staff car,

and they set it on fire too.

♪ ♪

[David] Bats have proven they're capable

of inflicting serious destruction

on the wrong targets.

What happens if they hit the right ones?

♪ ♪

To find out, the U.S. military builds a town,

a mock Japanese village in the desert.

Then they let the bats loose.

[plane engine roaring]

[Hakeem] The bats go into the attics and eaves

of this fake town.

The outcome is terrifying.

The napalm bombs go off,

and the burning commences.

[dramatic music]

Calculations show that this technique

is 2,000% more effective

than other incendiary bombs in use at the time.

[Sami] It seems that America is on the verge

of a new kind of warfare.

♪ ♪

[David] Plans are drawn up

to deploy the bat bombers in Japan.

They're to be placed in 5-foot canisters

and dropped from high-altitude planes.

But transporting the bats isn't easy.

- Adams comes up with a solution

of basically putting them into a stupor

by making them very cold,

the idea being that as they fall and reach warmer air,

they'll naturally wake up and go into roost

in eaves of houses and other buildings.

The problem is, the bats don't always wake up,

and those who don't just plummet to Earth

like little stones.

[David] Problems transporting the bats

means that by December 1943,

deployment still isn't expected for over a year.

In the meantime, the military develops napalm cluster bombs,

a far simpler and cheaper way

to rain down fire on the enemy.

- In theory, it's a good idea.

But in practice, can't really compete long term.

[tense music]

[David] In 1944, Project X-ray

is quietly scrapped.

[Sami] Adams returns to civilian life

and to dreaming.

And eventually, he becomes famous

not for weapons, but for inventing

a fried chicken vending machine.

As for the bat bomb, it's entirely forgotten

once the atomic age dawns.

[booming]

[David] The story stays hidden

for nearly half a century,

until one of the original handlers

is granted access to Project X-ray's files

to write his memoirs...

[dramatic music]

And the public finally learn about the time

a dentist tried to turn bats into bombers.

From bat bombs to missile beams,

when it comes to taking out their enemies,

no idea is too bizarre for a government to try.

Luckily, most are found out in the end.

♪ ♪