You can't beat World War II for crazy technological innovations. People worked on anything from shark repellent to exploding rats to bombs that would drift across the Pacific ocean on the wind. Unfortunately, there were also cat bombs.


The problem with these bombs wasn't just that they involved the use of God's Cutest Creatures. The problem was that the logic that lead to their testing (they were never actually used) was so crazy that it approached a kind of aerodynamic alchemy. The Allies had a problem. Guiding a bomb, which was moving, through the air, which was moving, to a ship, which was moving, from a plane, which was moving, was no easy task. It was an important task, and so people entered into that horrific state of mind known as brainstorming, during which there supposedly are no bad ideas.


Someone from the American Office of Strategic Services, grandparent to the CIA, let their mind drift to cats. Cats always land on their feet, which meant they had to have some aerodynamic skill. Cats also did not like to get wet. Strap a cat to a bomb, then, and show it a giant stretch of ocean and a single dry boat, and it would head for the boat, guiding the bomb in with it. Someone else at the OSS bought that logic, and lo, the cat bomb was tested. The cats in question, they found, passed out half way through the drop and thus weren't even awake to guide bombs to their destinations - although how the cats would have managed it even if they were conscious is still a big question. The project was scrapped, and all that lingers of it now is the realization that when cats scratch the hell out of us and then demand to be fed, they're not being cranky, they're getting just retribution.

Via Oddee.

Top Image: Gage Skidmore