Often times throughout history we see major wars that although bloody and often times unnecessary,
led to great innovations that have become central to the progression of humanity. World war 2 was
no different and led to key inventions such as radar technology as well as major innovation
in areas such as communication and aircraft optimisation. That said however, not all of
these projects were created equal and there are an innumerable amount of failed inventions that
are buried by the sands of time. One of these of course was called the Death Ray or Ku-Go ray,
an ultimately doomed project that was taken very seriously by the Japanese until the war was over
Rooted in credibility, the initial premise for a so called Death Ray was first coined
by Nikola Tesla, who conducted multiple experiments all based around what he
intended to be a defensive weapon that would be able to shoot down hundreds
of planes at a distance on 300 kms away. He also claimed that with enough energy,
any country no matter how large or small, could create a wall of power,
that would make it impregnable against small armies, aeroplanes and other means for attack.
After presenting his thesis to the league of nations and then to the leading powers of Western
Democracy sometime around 1934, he was flat out rejected as they did not believe it possible to
produce the enormous amounts of energy needed to even begin to undertake a project like the
one Tesla was proposing. Tesla however, still sparked some curiosity throughout the US media,
and when articles about what he called his peace ray surfaced on the New York Times
and New York Sun, it caught the attention of Japanese correspondents in the United States,
who then re wrote the articles and published it in Japan where it gained a lot of public attention.
It remained in the public view all the way up to the late 1930’s where Japan was preparing for war
with America, and was then actually commissioned to be built by Japan’s best physicists, as the
Imperial army were hoping to gain the upper-hand on America before the war had even started.
Inspired by Tesla, the goal of the Japanese was to create a magnetron that would emit a high
powered beam intended to be able cause both major psychological and physical problems to masses of
enemy soldiers, which would then, the Japanese hoped, lead to death. They also believed that
through this same principal, they would be able to stop internal combustion engines from working,
therefore theoretically being able to down enemy planes without so much as a single shot.
The Japanese Government was extremely pleased with the potential of the project,
and so they decided to funnel in 2 million Yen into, which was around abouts 500,000 US dollars
in 1940. The project was then codenamed Ku-Go and trials went ahead right away.
At first, their death ray experiments at a range of around 80 inches away
was able to cause stationary rabbits, groundhogs and monkeys lung bleeding,
and at a range any closer than that could destroy brain cells in animals. They also
had minor successes with stopping exposed engines from working with the death ray, however if the
engine was even slightly protected by a hub of some sort, it wasn’t able to penetrate.
After 5 and a half years of trials and testing, the furthest was killing a rabbit in a cage
after 10 minutes at a distance of 30 meters of 100 feet. A caged groundhog took twice as long
to die. It was evident that this project would at the time in 1945 have no use on the battlefield,
as soldiers were always moving and plane engines were protected. With that said,
the Japanese still had drawn up plans in 1945 to continue to innovation of the death ray,
however this point of course was never reached as Japan capitulated on the 2nd of September 1945.
So what do you all think? Tesla’s idea of a peace ray was pretty much converted into
that of a Death Ray by the Japanese, and even the Nazi’s dabbled in making something similar,
however most of the research was lost in the latter parts of the war. Do you think that
with enough time this project could of ever developed into something big and replaced
the Nuke or was it always doomed to flop? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below