In 1943, a chemist named Ernest Crocker was recruited to create a military-grade stink bomb.
Crocker had previously worked on developing poisonous gases for the military, and would
spend his life studying smells and flavors, so he was the perfect candidate to produce
this pungent weapon. The final formula included skatole (a compound that makes
feces smell like...feces), amyl mercaptan, and a variety of acids, resulting in a concoction
of smells evoking vomit, rancid butter, foot odor, and urine. Yuck. The unfortunate
technicians who designed the packaging would, reportedly, often end up covered in the stench.
If you thought this stinky weapon was going to be used to disrupt combat on the battlefield,
think again. The actual plan was to supply the stink bomb resistance groups,
who would use it to spray Axis officers to embarrass them and, in turn, reduce overall
troop morale. That’s why the weapon was called, and I am deadly serious, Who, Me?
Six hundred units were prepped for deployment, but the war ended before the spray saw any action.
Hi I’m Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com, welcome to the List Show.
Who, Me? is just one example of weird warfare from history. We’ve got an interesting mix
for you today, from weapons involving venomous snakes to ships made of ice. Let’s get started.
Long before arcade-goers started fishing stuffed animals out of a box in the crane game, there was
the Claw of Archimedes. This ancient weapon was used prominently when Rome attacked Syracuse.
It’s described as a sort of crane equipped with a claw-like hook that was able to lift enemy
ships into the air, causing them to capsize. Here’s a painting of the Claw of Archimedes by
Giulio Parigi, which seems to be a pretty literal interpretation of an iron claw. It was originally
devised by, you guessed it, Archimedes, and was used to defend Syracuse from the attacking
Roman fleet. Historians attribute many Roman losses to these machines, along with catapults
and other innovative weapons of the time. During World War II, the Nazis developed a
very strange cannon. Instead of launching a projectile, the Windkanone, as it was known,
was meant to crash low-flying enemy aircrafts with a blast of air.
The Windkanone was a 35-foot cast-iron tube with a 3-foot diameter. When fired, an oxygen-hydrogen
mixture exploded in the chamber, forcing a rush of air through the cannon. The wind was supposed
to disrupt aircraft up to 150 meters away but, as it turns out, even if you could target a plane,
blasting some air at planes didn’t do much damage. After all, planes are built to deal with pretty
high levels of turbulence, as we discussed in our episodes of Misconceptions all about flying. One
of the German wind cannons was mounted on a bridge over the River Elbe, but it proved rather useless,
and the weapon was eventually abandoned. That’s not the only bizarre weapon tried
out during World War II. In 1943, the British Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development,
which I’ve been assured is not a Monty Python sketch, was asked to develop a weapon that
could penetrate the Atlantic Wall, an extensive system of Nazi-built coastal fortifications.
The DMWD’s solution? The Panjandrum. The huge contraption consisted of two big metal wheels
connected by a drum-like axle, fixed with rockets on the wheels to propel the whole thing forward.
The Panjandrum was packed with explosives, so it was supposed to march menacingly toward the wall,
crash into it, and boom. Before it saw battle, it was tested on an
English beach. It was apparently very impressive… for about 20 seconds. At that point, the 70
cordite rockets attached to the steel wheels began to dislodge and shoot in all directions.
Generals reportedly ran for cover as a dog chased the rockets across the beach. And the chaos wasn’t
over! The Panjandrum charged around the beach out of control until it eventually sputtered out.
Unsurprisingly, this is one weapon that never made it onto the battlefield.
A U.S. Air Force research lab began looking into an infamous weapon in the 1990s.
Its goal? To make enemy soldiers sexually attracted to each other. Yeah. This “Love
Bomb” was a non-lethal psycho-chemical weapon that was proposed by the Wright Laboratory in Ohio.
It involved discharging strong aphrodisiacs over the battlefield to confuse soldiers and make them,
theoretically, develop intense feelings for the soldier next to them. The plans
for the love bomb were obtained by the Sunshine Project through a Freedom of Information Act,
and the Department of Defense has said the idea has since been squashed. The documents
described this pseudo-scientific weapon as “distasteful, but completely non-lethal.” Yikes.
Project Habakkuk was a plan by the British to construct aircraft carrier ships out of ice.
Yep, ice ships. This isn’t some Titanic/iceberg fan fiction—it really happened. The project was
led by Geoffrey Pyke and pitched to Winston Churchill, who was reportedly
very enthusiastic about the idea. The ice ships would theoretically serve a number of functions:
they could block normal, non-ice ships, launch offensive attacks, and most importantly, provide
a mid-ocean landing and housing area for aircraft. And since they were made of ice, they would
be much cheaper and easier to build than a ship made of steel. Plain ice, however, wasn’t cutting
it, so Pyke turned to a new method of freezing ice that involved adding wood pulp to the water,
making it significantly stronger. The material this new process created was known as Pykrete.
Still, problems persisted. The hull of an ice ship, alone, would need to be 35 feet thick
to stop a torpedo, which presented a bit of a challenge. Due to rising costs and performance
concerns, the project was eventually scrapped. During the testing process, however, the engineers
wanted to demonstrate the strength of pykrete to a group of admirals. Lord Mountbatten brought a
block of ice and a block of Pykrete into a meeting and placed them on the ground. He drew his pistol
and shot the ice, which shattered. When he shot the pykrete, though, the bullet ricocheted around
the room, nearly hitting a nearby officer. Oops. You probably remember hearing about Hannibal in
history class. No, not that Hannibal (though that is my favorite Hannibal). The one from
over 2,000 years ago who attempted to cross the Alps with his own war elephants. Well, it turns
out that mountain-scaling elephants weren’t his only foray into the world of animal warfare.
In 184 BCE, King Prusias of Bithynia put Hannibal in charge of his navy. It was apparently a meager
fleet, outnumbered greatly by the Pergamene ships under King Eumenes they were to fight.
Hannibal’s plan was to put a bunch of venomous snakes in earthenware pots that would be lobbed at
enemy boats, creating what can only be described as “snake bombs.” They were distributed to the
Bithynian ships and the captains were directed to focus attacks on King Eumenes’s ship.
How did they know which ship was the King’s? Well, as the story goes, an emissary was sent out under
the Classical equivalent of a flag of truce. After he gave the king a letter and left,
everyone knew what ship the king was on. That’s some Game of Thrones-level sneakiness.
When the rest of the Pergamene navy came to defend their King, Hannibal and his troops began chucking
the snake bombs at them, causing the enemies to find themselves suddenly ankle deep in pissed-off
snakes. They ended up retreating. Someone call Samuel L Jackson, I think we found the sequel
he’s been looking for. *snakes on a boat poster* The Cold War often focused more on espionage and
surveillance than on violent warfare. This led to Operation Acoustic Kitty,
a real CIA project launched in the 1960s. The plan: To use cats to spy on the Kremlin
and Soviet embassy officials. Cats. The most passive-aggressive animals on the planet.
In order for them to be able to spy on the enemy, the cats needed some upgrades. A veterinary
surgeon implanted a radio transmitter at the base of a cat’s skull, a microphone in its ear canal,
and a wire in its fur. In a test mission, the cat was supposed to eavesdrop on two men in a
park outside a Soviet compound in Washington DC. The cat reportedly ran into the street,
where it was immediately run over by a taxi. After Operation Acoustic Kitty was declassified in 2001,
former director of the CIA’s office of technical service Robert Wallace disputed this story,
claiming that the cat had the equipment taken out before ever attempting any missions,
and had lived a long and happy life. Either way, Acoustic Kitty cost around $20 million and
garnered zero new pieces of secret information. The Cold War also brought about a series of small,
concealed weapons, usually disguised as household objects. Lighters, pens, tobacco pipes, that sort
of thing. One infamous weapon that seems right out of a Bond film is the KGB lipstick pistol,
which is referred to as the Kiss of Death. We are not fans of violence here at Mental Floss,
but c’mon—that’s just good naming. The Kiss of Death was a 4.5mm single-shot
weapon encased in what appeared to be a small tube of lipstick, even featuring a red tip.
Its existence was first detected in West Berlin at a border crossing,
and one is now housed in the International Spy Museum. A terrifying weapon to be sure,
but not nearly as terrifying as the KGB Rectal Pistol which is… exactly what it sounds like.
And finally, let’s end with a very important piece of technology.
The T-1151 Dog Doo Transmitter. Designed to look like… well, you can probably guess from the name,
this surveillance transmitter was used during the Vietnam war in order to communicate covertly with
US military bases. It was used to pinpoint sites of interest and find soldiers in need of rescue.
The tool was approximately four inches long, making it easy to carry and hard to detect.
According to the Gale Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security, quote,
“Because the device gave the appearance of fecal matter,
it was often left undisturbed and thus it retained high efficiency as a homing beacon
even when planted days or weeks before a mission.” Isn’t history fun? And… gross?
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facts and strange history. We’ll see ya next time!