Project X Ray: America’s Absurd Plan to Burn Japan Using 1 Million Bats

Before the atomic bomb, the United States military spent two million dollars on a top-secret weapon built around tiny parachutes, timed napalm charges, and exactly one million hibernating Mexican free-tailed bats. A dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams sold the idea to Roosevelt himself, and for two years the program quietly burned through funding, test ranges, and at least one Army airfield. Then the Manhattan Project changed everything. The full story of Project X-Ray is stranger than fiction.