Crazy Contraptions?

Question

Watched a program on UKTV History last night called "Crafty Tricks of War". It was brilliant. They were all real inventions during and immediatelly after the Second World War. They have Pigeon Guided Missiles, Cartwheel bombs etc. I have heard about the Tailor dummies in Iraq. Anybody have any other hair-brained ideas from the military that either nearly made it or were scrapped.

SERIOUS ANSWERS ONLY PLEASE
I AM NOT WANTING A BL00DY DEBATE HERE.......

Saw the exploding Rat. Spies would use it in Germany.
1.Take one dead rat
2. Pack with TNT
3. German foreman comes along and says..."what Iz Ziss dead rat doing here".....and chucks it in the furnace
4. BOOOOOOOOOOM

....RSWDEW.....

yeah i knew about the clicker. it features in the film "The Longest Day" just when the American does his clicker, he hears the reply, stands up and bang is shot. It is the german's rifle.

Answer 1

The USA strapped bombs to Bats and released them over Japan. The bats look for shelter usually in eves of houses. They did and when the Bombs went off many Japanese Houses went on fire. The Japanese put Bombs on Balloons and released them in Hopes that the Jet stream would carry them to the US, they did but the US kept it secret so it would seem to have failed. It did kill a kid in a scout camp one of the few US citizens killed on mainland USA due to the war.

Today: Mine depositing By Killer Whale and Dolphin!!!

Answer 2

The flail anti-mine vehicle. A drum with chains attached that spins and flails the gound detonating mines. A similiar tank unrolled a canvass tarp that made a road so vehicles wouldn't sink in the sand. The germans tried attaching a long hose to a tank the goat was to cross the channel under water by simply driving across the bottom. It actually worked the draw back was that the tanks kept getting stuck in the mud. Rice paper ballons from Japan they would drift clear across the pacific and end up in the pacific northwest. The idea was to start massive forest fires didn't work but did kill a few civilians that found a crashed one and it went off. Submarine towed ballistic missile silos for the V-2 missile. The silo would be towed on it's side until launch and then the bottom of the silo would be flooded so the silo stood straight up and then you would fire. Anti-aircraft shells that would explode white phosphorous above the planes the idea being the chemical would eat at the fabric parts of the planes and cause it to crash. Didn't work go figure.

Answer 3

Inflatable and wooden vehicles constructed to fool the Nazis into thinking there was a build up of troops in Kent during WW2. It gave the impression that the invasion would be over the Pas-de-Calais instead of Normandy.

The use of Native American Indians for communications in the Pacific. The Japanese codebreakers could not understand the language. A very good idea. Apparently, to this day, the code has still not been broken.

Answer 4

Russian Dog bombs: they took dogs and trained them to run under tanks with explosives strapped to them, however they trained the dogs on Russian tanks so the dogs instinctively ran under Russian tanks and blew up, by the time they got it sorted the Germans figured it out and started shooting every dog they saw.

German corner shooters: a device they was attached the the end of a rifle that was bent and allowed guns to shoot over walls or around coroners, however they affected accuracy and broke down/jammed very quickly.

American Ice Carrier: Aircraft carrier who's hull is almost 100% ice, the theory was ice does not sink, so even if hit the ship would remain afloat.

those are just 3 i heard of from ww2. oh and the clickers were called "crickets"

Answer 5

The man for you then is Heath Robinson

But the Military did consider some odd ideas... one was to cover an iceberg in a form of concrete called Pykcrete to provide runways for aircraft to cover the Atlantic gap, where Uboats could operate with realtive impunity. Geoffery Pyke was the man there

SOE had a raft of seemingly biazziare inventions (like exploding [dead] rats).

There were rumours of dolphins being trained for anti mine measures, dogs for anti land mine measures

I seem to remember stories about dogs beeing trained to place explosives under tanks.... but they story goes that when the dogs were used they went under the tanks they had trained on, rather than the enemies tanks... not idea if its true (I think it was either the germans or the russians).

Answer 6

The French Resistance also used exploding cow dung which they spread on roads used by the german military. I also remember during WW2 the Germans would drop innocent looking items during the Air raids, one I can remember was the pencil bombs. These looked like actual pencils, but when you picked one up, it would blow your hand off. These were aimed at the civilian poulation.The public was often warned, after German Air raids to watch for certain items that were dropped by the enemy after an Air raid. A German P.O.W who was a Luftwaffe pilot gave me a handkerchief which was issued to all their pilots. On the handkerchief, was a map of britain, to be used if they were shot down or if they escaped from the P.O.W. camp.

Answer 7

How about the "clicker" that the allies used on D-Day to tell friend from foe. Problem was it sounded just like the action on a bolt action rifle, used by both sides. In Vietnam, soldiers used C-4 explosives to heat up cans of food from their C-rations. The ultimate gadget, that worked and worked well, was the Trojan Horse.
I'm sure you know about the inflatable army in England right before D-Day that included a radio station and "lost" mail from loved ones.
Also, the U.S. tried to develop a long range, high explosive weapon that was deployed from a weather balloon at high altitude.

Answer 8

Have heard of a canny sapper in WW2 who held up a troop column by lightly burrying dinner plates. they were mistaken for a minefield and the germans halted until their own sappers were brought up to disarm the plates. don't know what their comment on the matter was

Answer 9

IEDS inside dead animals on the side of the road.

Answer 10

I think the OSS had exploding rats iduring the second world war but i don't know if they ever used any.