OK, we all know about the Manhattan Project – a plan to build an atomic bomb. That one worked. Were there other projects that didn’t work? Did U.S. scientists attempt to time machine or something equally iffy?
Well, the most likely US candidate, the “Philadelphia Experiment”, has been comprehensively debunked. There remain, however, some questions concerning the success (or not) of various German programs of the late war era, aimed at investigating novel propulsion schemes for aircraft. Some of these may have been concerned with what would now be called anti-gravity or zero-point energy, but plausible documentation for the existence of these experiments is sparse, to say the least.
For a (somewhat maddenly organised) overview of this field, see the UK-published book “The Hunt for Zero Point”, by Nick Cook.
Also try a Google search for “Viktor Shauberger”.
There was an idea to build cargo freighters out of ice doped with sawdust.
The engines, cabins, etc, were to be modular, & bolted onto the ice hull as needed. If the ships were bombed, water & an on-board cooling unit would be used to repair the damage.
Project X-Ray was a program to equip millions of bats with miniature thermite incendiary bombs, place them in bomb-like carrying shells drop them on Japan’s cities. Oddly enough, the idea worked throughout it’s testing phases, & was ready for operational use. It was delayed 30 days, so that the Manhatten Project could get the first chance, & then abandoned. There was a book about this . I’ll look for the title later.
Not as far out, but there were plenty of bizarre projects that fizzled. Ballantine Books published a series of oversized paperbacks on WWII history back in the 1960s, and two volumes address these issues – Allied Secret Weapons and German Secret Weapons. There were some very peculiar ideas that probably never should have been tried. On the other hand, other ideas like jet planes, ballistic missiles, radar, and the atomic bomb succeeded. One of the oddest successes was the “Dam Buster” project. But i wrote about that in the third issue of Teemings
And read Dave Barry’s account of the attempt to use bats to deliver incendiary bombs to Japan! It’s collected in his book Dave Barry Talks Back
The Germans were probably the leaders in “far out” science. German Secret Weapons of the Second World War by Ian V. Hogg details many of them. They pioneered many of the weapons in common use today: smart bombs and cruise missiles to name but two. They also were working on what was called the “High Pressure Pump.” This was a super cannon which was supposed to be able to lob shells from France to England. Gerald Bull later worked on this for NASA as a way to put satellites into orbit cheaply until they cancelled the project. He then went to work for the Iraqis and tried to develop it as a military weapon. He was later assassinated by the CIA and his son supposedly has gone to Iraq to finish his father’s work.
I don’t have a cite, but I am pretty sure I remember reading that “Project X-Ray” was just a cover for the Manhatten Project and was never truly taken seriously.
Wrong!
and here’s a book on the subject.
Bat bomb : World War II’s other secret weapon by Jack Couffer
Apparently, it worked. And destroyed most of a US Army Air Corps base during an accidental release. 4 or 5 Flying Fortressses full of the bomb-like containers would have burned most of a city.
Slight nitpick: although no one was ever caught or charged, I believe Mossad is the organization most often cited as responsible for the assassination of Bull.
The British had some plans to for some kind of giant flame thower system to fry invading German soldiers on the beach.
The US gave up on a guided bomb concept - stuffing aircraft full of explosives and remote-piloting them into targets. A pilot would take off manually, and bail out at altitude after switching to the remote system. Joe Kennedy, Jr. was killed in one of these.
The US had to entirely revamp its strategic bombing strategy. The Army Air Corps believed heavily-armed unescorted bombers could fight their way to distant targets and destroy them with precision bombing. Weather and defenses proved them wrong.
A whole bunches pre-war technologies turned out to not stand up to the rigors of actual combat, notably the American naval torpedo.
The first American jet aircraft, the Bell XP-59(?), turned out to have worse performance than a Mustang. The Lockheed P-80, while improved, supposedly had markedly lower performance than the Me-262, though they never fought. (There were a few demo P-80s in the ETO in 1945 that never flew in combat.) There were quite a number of failed aircraft designs, including flying wings.
Then you have the Germans bombing the bombers… time-fuzed fragmentation bombs dropped from above the bombers defensive fire arc, intended to act as extremely accurate flak. It kinda worked, but not well.
The Germans also were working on proximity-fuzed air-to-air rockets, but never got the fuzes developed in time (these would’ve been nasty!)
The Me-163 Komet had, in one development effort, eight 37mm single-shot cannon burried in their wing-roots, four to a side, pointing upwards at diverging angles. The idea was to fly under a bomber fast, at close range, and the cannon would be triggered en mass by a photovoltaic cell as the bomber shadowed the fighter. The cannon were powerful enough that three or four hits would kill a large bomber. This worked a little, but never reached full development.
Concrete ships were tried, and sorta worked. They were found useful for making temporary harbors and sea fortresses. The Pricipality of Sealand is one of, if not the only, surviving remnants of these curiosities.
The Brits buried pipes under the water at inviting invasion beaches, for the purpose of pumping oil into the oncoming assault elements, which oil would then be lit-off by a flaregun. Ouch!
Yup, you’re right, and it looks like the reason Mossad whacked him was that the Iraqi’s had forced him to work on improving their SCUD missiles, not because of his work on the “Supergun.”
A few things from my library, some already mentioned, but with names to help you find out more…
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Aircraft carriers made of ice, designed by Geoffrey Pyke. The prototype was named Habbakuk. It was built on Patricia Lake. The mixture of ice and woodpulp used as the ship’s building blocks was called “Pykrete”
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The Panjandrum - picture two wheels of roman candles connected with a barrel of explosives. They were designed to roll across waterways and onto beacheads to blast their way through German coastal defenses.
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Natter Interceptors - German rocket propelled aircraft designed to fire small rockets at incoming enemy planes. The pilot and engine would then parachute back to earth.
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Horten flying wings. several models were built and tested.
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Sound Cannon - a German weapon that would produce killing noises using explosions of oxygen and methane
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Around the corner rifle. another German invention that would allow a rifleman to shoot 90 degrees around corners and from behind tanks while remaining protected.
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Infrared aircraft detectors - a German device to detect the heat signatures of incoming aircraft at night.
During World War II, the U.S. seriously looked into creating a fleet of remote-controlled flying bombs, using TV cameras to send back pictures of where they were flying. The project was scraped late in the war as impractical. A writeup of the project is included in the Radio Controlled Aircraft chapter of Linwood Howeth’s History of Communications-Electronics in the United States Navy.