We all know the major stories and battles etc to come out of WW2, but there are definitely some oddball stories that many haven't heard.

Did you know that the US Govt actually experimented with using bats to firebomb Japanese cities? They no shit built bombs full of hibernating bats who had napalm devices glued to their chests, with hopes of dropping them over Japan and letting them roost in the wooden buildings there, to be time-detonated later and burn everything down. The guy who devised the plan stated "the bat was the lowest form of animal life, and that, until now, reasons for its creation have remained unexplained. They have been created by God to await this hour to play their part in the scheme of free human existence". President Roosevelt was quoted "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into" and personally greenlit the plan. This scheme was actually pretty far into the works when a bunch of the bats escaped and literally burned down the base they were being tested in. After that, the USAF turned the idea over to the US Navy and it never went anywhere.  
Bat Bombs

How about the dead homeless guy that the Brits dressed up like a military officer and washed ashore with pockets full of fake 'invasion plans'? They needed a ruse to trick Hitler into thinking their invasion of Sicily would actually be staged elsewhere, but they couldn't just plop a clearly combat-KIA corpse onto the beach, so what better use of a dead bum right? They spent weeks creating a fake identity/life for this guy, kept him preserved, and floated him to shore loaded down with bogus intel. In short, German intelligence fell for it, diverted forces to Greece (where the fake invasion was planned) and ended up with Italy toppled and minimal loss of Allied troops. Even later on, Hitler would assume actual real captured plans were fake thanks to the ruse. To top it all off, one of the chief architects of the plan was Bond-creator Ian Fleming.

Oh and it was called Operation Mincemeat

Or the Japanese officer who didn't realize the war had ended and hid out with a few of his squad in a remote corner of an island in the Philippines carrying out random guerilla attacks on the locals over the next THIRTY YEARS. He wrote off airdropped Allied leaflets telling him the war was over, assuming they were propaganda. He ignored similar notifications from the Japanese, assuming they were fake. He even ignored letters from his family urging him to stop fighting, assuming they were also Allied scams. One by one, Filipino cops picked off his squad over the years until he was the only one left. Well he finally surrendered to his original commanding officer (he refused to give his sword to anyone else) in 1974 after a Japanese hiker stumbled across him in the mountains and confirmed the war was truly over. Dude went home to Japan and no doubt was shocked to see 30 years of advancement in the absence of a war. Dedicated? Maybe. Totally insane? Probably. Either way it's pretty wild.

Hiroo Onoda


I love stuff like this. Share your interesting and oddball wartime trivia if you've got it.

31 japanese soldiers got stuck in a japanese-occupied island during WW2 that only had one woman. 11 of them killed each other over her.

https://www.koreaboo.com/stories/31-men-and-1-woman-lived-in-a-deserted-island-heres-what-happened/

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Now those are the kind of officers you want in your military.

I learn history from the YLYL thread too!

Operation Mincemeat movie

I think Hiroo Onoda was a moron and that it's stupid to celebrate him.

Anyone with half a brain would have made reasonable attempts to verify that the war was over.

Yeah there were a lot of pissed off Filipinos who were understandably upset that this guy was being given positive press despite basically murdering random local people on and off for three decades.

Even 80 years ago, men knew the power of trolling and memeing the enemy.

Yeah, that’s fucked. Should’ve put real effort into putting them down like animals after they ignored the first couple attempts to show them that the war was over.

That reminds me of the fake aircraft carrier which was really a merchant ship.  The purpose was for its escorts to shoot down Stukas.  After a while, a solo Stuka dropped a wooden bomb on it.

That was the pic that prompted me to make the thread ha

I’ll see your bat bomb and raise you a rat bomb.

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According to history, the Germans found one of the first covert shipments of rat bombs and then spent a lot of time/effort inspecting the coal ensuring one never hit the ship’s boiler

this freaking kills me. This is so good.   Just let them keep busting ass on the fake city then the fake bomb

He was trained in propaganda before he was deployed.  He thought the leaflets, recordings, etc. was propaganda to get him to surrender.  He wasn’t exactly in the most comfortable place on earth with humidity, mosquitoes, etc., and between his culture, training and relative isolation, after a few years he’s not thinking on the same wavelength as everyone else.  Dude was a bad ass, but unfortunately he proved this by spending many years accomplishing a goal that no one else was focused on.

What kind of weapons was he using for 30 years? Not his issue guns and ammo?

Good question, I don't have an answer.

I like the single wooden bomb story.

In New Zealand there are still bunkers scattered around beaches built in anticipation of a Japanese invasion that never came. When I was a kid I had the idea to go live in one if I ever ran away from home.

Russian "Dog" anti tank bomb

The Man That Never Was, I believe is about corpse to fool the Germans. Read it back in late 70's.

Didn't work for several different reasons.

One, dogs are cute and turning them into suicide bombers is going too far for a lot of people. Even soldiers ruled by psychotic communists.

Two, the dogs were trained to run under Soviet tanks. So when set loose they had an annoying habit of going the wrong way.

Three, even after all these issues were ironed out the Germans used flamethrowers to discourage the dogs from approaching their tanks.

At least that's the story I heard. Maybe the dog bomb failed for other reasons? All I know is that it's an idea that no one else has tried again since. Though I do recall hearing about a camel that was tied to a trailer with rockets in Iraq. They parked the camel in a crowded place, left the rockets on a timer and when they went off the camel would panic and run away with the trailer behind it spreading carnage in all directions.

It is, and was made into a movie in 1956.

Good movie, and has Gloria Grahame in it...

In true Arfcom fashion he was found with a functioning Arisaka rifle, several hundred rounds of ammo, multiple grenades, and the knife his mom had given him to kill himself with if he ever got captured.

All that build up to D-Day was interesting.  

The military enlisted the help of artists and theater people to put on a production to trick the Germans where the landings would take place.  Inflatable tanks, models and even sounds of mobilizing equipment broadcasted on loudspeakers.

Actually, he was still using issued guns and ammunition.  He had an Arisaka and sword, possibly a Nambu pistol if I remember correctly.  He was an intelligence officer and didn’t fight straight up combat, so he didn’t need as much ammunition as normal infantry.

He was examined after he surrendered and the doctors said he was in excellent condition.  Survived mainly on coconuts and bananas, but he and his men when he had them would have beef or other livestock occasionally.

USS Barb (SS-220) battle flag. Note the train bottom center.



That time a US Navy submarine got a confirmed kill on a train during WWII

The Cold War had some great weirdness as well (MKUltra notwithstanding).  

https://www.damninteresting.com/curio/operation-acoustic-kitty/

Operation Mincemeat is on Netflix.    

“Archer” did a parody episode on this guy (I believe it was him?). One of my favorites.

I don't believe the bats escaped and burned down the town.  I believe someone left a bunsen burner on, and that started the fire.

I also believe they tried to drop the bats, but instead of flying to under the eves of the houses, they just fell like stones.

It has been quite a few years since I read these stories, I may not be correct.

Dropping paradummies on this thread.  

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Hey OP, you should check out this guy's YT channel.

https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician

my uncle was killed after the war had been over for while by a  Japanese sniper. Left his wife and 2 year old son behind.

More Americans died training for D-Day during Exercise Tiger than died on Omaha Beach.

749 Exercise Tiger
2400 Omaha Beach.

Am I missing something?

Operation Starvation

I had heard of the second two but the first one is a new one for me! Really interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Bat bombs were legit, way more effective at setting fires than standard incendiary bombs.
Shame they never got used.

Yep and he kept it clean and functioning the whole time. Unlike alot of members on here who don’t clean their weapons alot  by their own admission

It was still in good shape when he surrendered

Camp X


There was a TV series called X Company based on a group of Camp X trainees. It may be available on streaming. It's a good watch if you enjoy spy thrillers.

Haha nice

I have been reading Adolf Galland's book (for those not in the know, he was the commander of Germany's fighter forces in WW2 with over 100 victories against Allied aircraft himself).

In the chapter I read last night he talked about the YB-40, which was a very heavily armed B-17 variant meant to defend US bomber formations before we got the long range escort issues sorted out. Apparently they were too slow and couldn't hang with the formation, also climbed slow AF. He said the Luftwaffe tried a similar concept with the HE-111 to try to break up the Allied formations, which also was ineffective for the same reasons.

He also described an idea Hitler insisted on them trying, where a 50 mm cannon was mounted on an aircraft (the Me410 or maybe a 110). It was a 10 rd repeater, the idea was the pilot could lob the shells into a formation safely outside their gun range. The system apparently jammed a lot, and the accuracy was impossible to achieve outside the 400 yds or so one could reliably expect to hit with normal aircraft cannon/mg.

That's expert level trolling right there.

He still had his issue Arisaka. It was in bad shape, but he still used it.

I remember reading his story when he surrendered.  It was on the news every night for a few weeks.

He was also raiding US bases for food.

He was heard saying:  "As God as my witness I thought bats could fly"

Part of the build up involved a shit ton of fake radio, telephone and telegraph traffic to convince the Germans that the invasion was going to take place anywhere but at Normandy. An entire communications center and supporting net was built to carry out the charade, while the actual commas system to be used on D Day was set up ready to spin up on the the actual date of the invasion. The guy who devised and executed both the diversionary and actual operational systems was COL David Sarnoff, Chairman and President of RCA who took a direct reserve commission in the Army Signal Corps at George Marshall’s request to head up the project. Both the diversionary effort and the D Day comm nets were pulled off remarkably well for operations of their size, earning Sarnoff the Legion of Merit in October 1944 and a Brigadier General appointment in December of 1945. Much of the diversionary phony invasion message traffic generated prior to June 6th, 1944 was developed in partnership with the allied signals intelligence services at Bletchley Park.

More crazy WW2 stuff.

Battle of Ramree Island  1000 Japanese soldiers eaten by crocs