Australia’s National Nine News ran a story by Bob Wurth on 29 November 2006 telling of a declassified psychological operations plan to drop the ashes of dead Japanese soldiers over the enemy.

Apparently, the Australian government had returned the ashes of four dead submariners who died in Sydney Harbor in 1942. The four young men had been cremated in Sydney with full military honors. Radio Tokyo and the Japanese press called the return of the ashes a chivalrous act that “greatly impressed” Japan. This interested the military propaganda section of the Allied Intelligence Bureau called the Far Eastern Liaison Office or FELO, based at Windsor and Indooroopilly in Brisbane.

FELO's director, Navy Commander John Proud, concocted a plan to cremate Japanese war dead from battlefields in New Guinea. The ashes would then be dropped along with aerial propaganda leaflets drawing attention to this “chivalrous act” and deploring the unnecessary waste of life. Proud believed that Japanese morale was declining and that the return of the ashes of more Japanese would impress the Japanese soldier that he is fighting gentlemen with military traditions like his own. Proud said:

This scheme may seem fantastic at first, but it has been inspired by the somewhat spectacular reaction in Japan to the action of the Royal Australian Navy in cremating the bodies of the Japanese who were killed in the submarines in Sydney Harbor, and returning the ashes to Japan. The cremating would, of course, be done on a comparatively small scale and “off the record” there would be no guarantee that the ashes were those of the person named on the label.

It would cause considerable embarrassment to the local commanding officers. If the leaflets were properly designed they would inform the troops of our action and the commanding officer would not dare to ignore the return of the ashes.

Allied Commander in Chief General Douglas MacArthur approved the operation.

Commander Proud and his FELO staff in Brisbane gathered the ashes of war dead and urns identical to those used in Japan. The propaganda leaflet was written tested. It said in part:

Allied commanders respect the traditional regard of the Japanese soldiers for the return to the homeland of the ashes of those who have been killed in battle.

"Little Beaver"

By the end of end of August 1943, the operation was ready. The urns and leaflets were attached to parachutes and loaded aboard the United States Army Air Force B-24 bomber "Little Beaver," tail number 42-40984 in Port Moresby. The aircraft was ordered to fly to Lae (the second largest city in Papua New Guinea, occupied by the Japanese is 1942) to drop the remains of the Japanese soldiers. Unfortunately, the operation was not a success. The bomber crashed in Papua, New Guinea on a steep mountainside near the Port Moresby Airport. A cable from Port Moresby dated 1 September 1943 reported:

For FELO. Airplane with Flying Officer Keogh and ashes overdue feared lost. Believed not to have reached Lae. Suggest send more ashes and leaflets.

That was the end of the program. Commander Proud tried to resurrect interest in his psychological warfare scheme and to drop more Japanese ashes, but it was abandoned by his senior officers, who thought the scheme no longer worth the effort and risk.

 

Incendiary Bats over Tokyo

In WWII there was a plan to drop bats from B-29 bombers over Tokyo with incendiaries tied to their bodies. The bats would fly into the eaves of Japanese wood and paper houses and the incendiaries would explode, burning the homes to the ground. The idea came from Dr. Lytle S. Adams, a dental surgeon from Irwin, Pa. On 12 January 1942, Dr. Adams sent the White House a proposal to investigate the possible use of bats as bombers. President Roosevelt sent a note to his aide William Donovan on 19 February 1942 that simply said “This man is not a nut.” His idea, after being sifted through a top-level scientific review, was passed to the Army Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) for further inquiry in conjunction with Army Air Forces. The original name of the operation to drop bats over Japan was Adam’s Plan. An alternative name was Bat.

 The experiment was dubbed "Project X-Ray." The Mexican free-tailed bat was selected. Though it weighed but one third of an ounce, it could fly fairly well with a one-ounce bomb. In March 1943, authority to proceed with the experiment came from the United States Army Air Force Headquarters. The test was to "Determine the feasibility of using bats to carry small incendiary bombs into enemy targets." Two sizes of incendiary bombs containing napalm were designed. One weighed seventeen grams and would burn four minutes with a ten-inch flame. The other weighed twenty-eight grams and would burn six minutes with a twelve-inch flame. In May 1943, about 3,500 bats were collected and placed in refrigerators to force them to hibernate. On 21 May 1943, five drops with bats outfitted with dummy bombs were made from a B-25 flying at 5,000 feet. The tests were not successful; most of the bats, not fully recovered from hibernation, did not fly and died on impact.

In another test, incendiary devices were placed on six sleepy bats. Before the scientists were ready the bats awoke and took off in all directions. Soon afterwards smoke was seen from an administration building, a control tower, and a barracks. Since no firefighters were present, the scientists expecting the test to fail, the various buildings were lost. Later they were all torn apart and quietly dumped. Nobody claimed knowledge of what happened.

By December 1943 the Marine Corps began similar experimentation. Using bats they started 30 fires. Twenty-two went out, but, according to Robert Sherrod's History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II, "four of them would have required the services of professional firefighters."

Catching the Bats
United States Air Force Picture – Briscoe Center

John Lisle'sThe Dirty Tricks Department: Stanley Lovell, the OSS, and the Masterminds of World War II Secret Warfare

The OSS’s Division 19 turned over the Bat Bomb to the Marine Corps, where it was rechristened Project X-Ray. The Marines conducted another full-scale test, this time on a replica Japanese village constructed for the occasion at the Dugway Proving Grounds, an Army biological and chemical weapons testing facility eighty miles west of Salt Lake City.

Incendiaries were attached to the bats and they were released by hand inside the Japanese houses. When they exploded, the houses quickly caught fire, just as intended. Two fire trucks then extinguished the flames before the blaze could spread beyond control. Based on the damage, it concluded that 3,720 pounds of Bat Bombs could start 4,768 fires, whereas the same number of M69 incendiary bombs would start only 160 fires.

The Bat Bomb
Notice the breathing holes for the bats inside the bomb

A “bat bomb” was developed that would allow the bats to emerge from hibernation on the way to the ground. 1040 bats were placed in 26 trays in a five-foot bomb. There were 40 separate containers in each tray that held one hibernating bat each. The bomb was dropped from 5,000 feet and slowed by parachute at 1,000 feet. The bomb then split apart and the trays opened like an accordion, held together by cords. As the bats awoke and flew off, a tiny thread-like wire attached to the tray armed the incendiary device. The timer was set for 30 minutes. During tests on 15 December 1943 the device worked exactly as planned and set fire to a mock Japanese wooden village set up in Utah. The military evaluators stated: “It is concluded that the bat bomb is an effective weapon.” There were plans to utilize the bomb in September 1944 but the program was suddenly cancelled on 16 February 1944. There was no need for bats to set Japan ablaze. The atom bomb was coming online. By that time, the project had cost the American taxpayer approximately $2 million dollars.

Watch Out for the Pigeons

There is an old joke that claims that statues fear nothing as much as pigeons. During WWII, there was a plan called Project Pigeon to use pigeons to drops things far more dangerous than their usual gifts from above. The animal behaviorist B. F. Skinner believed that he could train pigeons to steer a bomb or a “Pelican” missile to its target. The plan was rather advanced.

Pigeon guided bomb

The pigeon would be placed inside a bomb or missile connected to various electronics while the image of the target was projected on a lens in front of the bird. Three birds were placed in each bomb and it was a case of “majority rules.” If two pecked to the right and one did not, the bomb would slowly move to the right. Skinner used seeds to train the birds to continually peck at the center of the picture. As long as the birds did so, the bomb remained on target. The United States military invested $25,000 to fund an experimental program. The birds performed well and passed all the tests, but when the results were presented to the National Defense Research Council on 8 October 1944, the concept was declined as being just too weird. When Project Pigeon was declassified in 1948, the United States Navy revived the plan as Project Orcon, attempting to use the birds to guide missiles. The plan was scrapped for the second time in 1953. In recent years some rescue organizations have experimented with birds and relied on their superior eyesight to spot shipwreck survivors in a raft, but it is hard to say if pigeons could have actually guided a bomb to a target.

And MORE Pigeons

James M. Erdmann mentions pigeons in Leaflet Operations in World War Two (edited for brevity):

Some of the newer crew members of the 406th squadron were a bit chagrined about being assigned to a leaflet outfit. John Robertson remembers “it didn’t help our feelings to drop pigeons into the Ruhr Pocket.”

We went to the line one day and found a truck loaded with homing pigeons, each in a cardboard container with some German writing and a tiny parachute. [Once over the tareget] We took them in groups of ten or twenty and pitched them out the rear hatch. I recall some of the intercom byplay, too, a parody of the normal bombardier-pilot conversations as the plane neared the target.

Pigeoneer to pilot! Pigeoneer to pilot!
Go ahead Pigeoneer. Sir, everything looks O.K. in the pigeon bay.
Some of the Pigeon lights aren’t working, but I am sure the bombs are all out.

The original plan was to drop pigeons with tags on their legs with a questionnaire for any French patriot to send intelligence which would cause damage to Germany. The Germans would believe there was a French underground and waste manpower looking for them. Sefton Delmer, a British spy chief and propagandist came up with an even better idea. Why not drop some dead pigeons too with the questionnaire already filled out by a French Partisan with information. That would drive the Gestapo crazy. Another brilliant way to win the war!

I thought turkeys could fly

In the 1978 television comedy “WKRP in Cincinnati,” the radio station manager Mr. Carlson decides to take part in a Thanksgiving Day publicity stunt by dropping twenty live turkeys from a helicopter over a local shopping mall. The stunt turns into a disaster as the turkeys fall from the sky like rocks and the announcer does a parody of the famous radio broadcast of the 1937 Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst Naval Station, New Jersey:

Oh my God Johnny, they’re turkeys. Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement. Not since the Hindenburg tragedy has there been anything like this!

The punch line of the story comes at the end where the remorseful Mr. Carlson says:

As God is my witness. I thought turkeys could fly.

Why do we mention this television show? Because sometimes fiction becomes truth. In The Battle for Spain, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2006, we find the comment:

In the south, near Andujar, a detachment of 1,200 civil guards and Falangists was holding out in the mountain monastery of Santa Maria de la Cabeza under Captain Cortes. Nationalist pilots devised an original method of dropping fragile supplies. They attached them to live turkeys which descended flapping their wings, thus serving as parachutes which could also be eaten by the defenders.

A Fox in the Hen House 

Along with the bats, it is alleged that the office of Strategic Services also intended to attack Japan with glowing foxes. This story is told by Robert J. Kodosky in Psychological Operations American Style – The Joint United States Public Affairs Office, Vietnam and Beyond, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2007. Kodosky implies that the American government had incorrect beliefs regarding the Asian people, assuming that they were backward and superstitious. The OSS believed that Shintoists in Japan saw the fox, when illuminated, as a harbinger of bad times.

The plan was to first drop leaflet telling of the impending doom to follow. Agents would be issued reed whistles that sounded like foxes. Chemicals would be prepared that had a “fox odor.” Other agents would pretend to be possessed by the fox spirit. Finally, the actual glowing foxes would be loosed over Japan.  The OSS first experimented with fox-shaped balloons covered with luminous paint and later painted live foxes with a radiant chemical so they would glow in the dark. Thirty Glowing foxes were let loose in New York City’s Central Park as an experiment. Sightseers were terrified. The Sunday Tribune of 21 March 1948 said, “Horrified citizens, shocked by the sudden sight of the leaping ghostlike animals, fled from the dark recesses of the park with the ‘screaming jeemies’.” The war came to an end before “Operation Fantasia” could be put into operation. We don’t know if the foxes would have terrified the Japanese, but apparently they scared the hell out of New Yorkers.

We find another story about this strange OSS Morale Operations campaign in A Covert Affair, Jennet Conant, Simon and Shuster, New York, 2011:

Huddled on a barge and shivering in the predawn December fog, the dignitaries watched as the cage doors were opened and the animals, which had been dipped in phosphorous to make them easier to track, were dropped into the water... despite assurances that the foxes would instinctively head for shore, they promptly swam out toward the Atlantic and disappeared without a trace. “The professor may have been an expert on Japanese superstitions, but he was the class dunce on zoology.” A furious Donovan called off the fox project, but it lived on, in only at bibulous OSS meetings.

   

Soccer Balls

During the American intervention in Haiti in 1994 the military developed a plan to win the friendship of the local people by dropping soccer balls from helicopters to children below. It is alleged that the CIA bought 1,030 soccer balls, painted with crossed Haitian and American flags on each, and planned to air drop them over Port au Prince before the invasion. Somebody apparently did the math on the weight of a soccer ball falling at high speed from the sky and that plan was quickly cancelled. The last thing the United States needed was a dead Haitian child, killed by a falling soccer ball.

Soccer ball helicopter drop

Curiously, American PSYOP troops revived the concept in 2008 in Afghanistan. Once again, colorful soccer balls were dropped from low-flying Blackhawk helicopters. Once again, there were problems.

Inflating soccer balls prior to drop

Coalition Flags Soccer ball with Shuhada on Saudi Flag

There were three different styles of soccer balls and one depicted the flags of many Coalition nations to show the strength and Commitment of the Allied nations. However, the Saudi flag has the Shuhada (declaration of faith) written on it. Some Arabs felt that kicking the holy statement was heresy. Allegedly, the military apologized to the Saudis and the Afghans for the gaffe. I should point out in the Army’s defense that I was told by one soldier that this was not a military operation. He said that the soccer balls had been prepared and supplied by a private aid group, what we call a "non-governmental organization" (NGO).

Specialist Jessica Stephenson, a psychological operations Soldier assigned to the 362nd PSYOP Company, gives a soccer ball to a youngster during a humanitarian mission to southern Afghanistan villages on 17 August 2004

During Operation Iraqi Freedom the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division prepared soccer balls with their insignia (A black horsehead on a yellow shield) on one side and a map of Iraq on the other. The balls were certainly welcomed by the children, but a member of the unit said:

These were given to kids in Iraq. We were told to stop giving them out because the insurgents had threatened to kill anybody with them.

In Colombia, while waging the war against the guerrilla movement FARC, the government wrote messages promoting peace on soccer balls and floated them down the river toward the rebel encampments.

The military booklet: BUILDING BRIDGES: Commander's Guide to Face to Face Communication mentions soccer balls and mentions other gifts that can help to win hearts and minds. It says in part:

It addition to deploying personnel to augment the force, the Commander can bring expendable supplies that may assist the mission. These items are intended to establish or enhance rapport with some of those deserving (or difficult) target audiences. Whether used as formal gifts or free handouts, material items may have a big impact on your success in communicating with critical target audiences...Here are a few suggestions which may be squeezed into the corner of the last pallet, or in the top of an A-bag:

Host nation flags, small American flags, soccer balls, baseballs and softballs, Frisbees, school notebook paper, coloring books, pencils/pens/crayons, old T-shirts, patches and pins, and hackeysack balls

School Supplies

A Backpack for Afghan Students

This backpack baring the flag of Afghanistan was given out by PSYOP troops to Afghan students starting about 2003. The backpack was also given in later years, in both blue and black.

Blue and Black Backpacks in Sangin, Afghanistan
Photo by J.P. Black

U.S. Army Corporal Chris O'Brien, left, with the 312th PSYOP Company hands out a school backpack to an Afghan boy in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 13 November 2011

U.S. Army soldier passes out pencils to children.

Propaganda pencils AFC04aaNV3039

These pencils are printed in English because they were found in a "product book," used by American commanders to select items they wanted to use in their areas of responsibility. The actual pencils would be printed in one of the major languages of Afghanistan, probably Pashtu or Dari. In the product book this item was listed under "Novelties.

301st PSYOP Company and 3-7 Cavalry soldiers give away school supplies in Safia Bint Abdul Mutaleb School in 2007

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Sostenes Rocha, assigned to the 307th PSYOP Company, hands out pens to local children during a mission with U.S. soldiers assigned the 4th Infantry Division, to patrol the villages around Malajat, Afghanistan. The purpose of the mission was to gather information from the local population, and to distribute Psychological Operations flyers and radios.

There were numerous other gifts prepared for school children. A document titled Psychological Task Force "Afghanistan" produced in the first six months of their deployment to Afghanistan:

10,400 school bags, 10,400 colored pencils, packs of ten, 10,400 pens, packs of ten, 10,400 notebooks, and 5,000 erasers, packs of ten.

G.I. Joe

   

Of course this is not a GI Joe doll, but it is close. This is one of the most interesting items given to Afghan children during the American occupation of that country. Part of the PSYOP mission of consolidation is getting the public to back the local police and military forces. A lot of propaganda was prepared for the new Afghan Army and in this case a “Commando” doll with M4 rifle and fighting knife was distributed in the villages to promote the Afghan Commandos. One wonders what happens to a child found playing with such a doll when the Taliban enters the village at night.

Towels

“God is Great” Towel

We mention in this article that on several occasion cloth was used for propaganda. In some cases it was material for making clothes, in other cases for diapers or for wash cloths.

Since a towel is used over and over again and is a minor necessity, it stands to reason that they are a good medium for a propaganda message. We know of at least one towel printed with text during Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was brought back by an Army engineering advisor about 2008 from Camp Victory, the primary component of the Victory Base Complex which occupies the area surrounding the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq. Camp Victory itself lies approximately 5 kilometers from the airport.

The 12 x 30-inch hand towel was printed with the PSYOP message:

God (Allah) is great
We all love (heart) Iraq
God (Allah) is great

Unfortunately, no one realized that a religious Muslim would not wipe his body with a towel that has “Allah” written on it!   As a result, they were discarded by the very people the Coalition wished to impress and used only by non-Muslims. The campaign was quietly ended and many of the towels were later destroyed by incineration.

There is a second 28 x 56-inch bath towel features the convoy vehicle warning text used in Operation Iraqi Freedom in both English and Arabic:

CAUTION STAY 100 METERS BACK OR YOU WILL BE SHOT

Since half the towel is in English and this makes little sense as a propaganda product I am sure it was more a souvenir for the Coalition troops than an attempt to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

 

Rats

Near the end of WWII the Japanese hatched a desperate plan to drop plague-infested rats on the United States. The "Plague Research Unit" of the 731st Unit of Japan’s Kwantung Army in Manchuria was secretly engaged in germ warfare research using Chinese and Soviet prisoners as human guinea pigs. Plans called for the deadly rat bombs to be launched by balloons and carried to the American mainland by prevailing winter winds at an altitude of 33,000 feet. The flea-infested rats were to have been kept in ceramic pots which would have broken when the bombs detonated. According to the source, the only reason this plan was never put into action was fear of American reprisal.

The British also seem to have thought about the use of rats as a weapon. A rat-catcher by the name of William Walton claimed in 1955 that during the Second World War he was asked to provide two dozen rats a week to the British War Office. He was told that they were to be gutted and filled with high explosives. The rats would then be scattered around enemy territory.

Allegedly, the British would drop leaflets at the same time warning the people of the danger of rats infested with typhus and warning that any dead rats found should be immediately taken to the nearest high temperature factory furnace where the heat of the flames would be sure to kill all the infectious germs in and on the rat. Of course, the explosives inside the rat would then take out the furnace, and hopefully a good part of the installation. The British government denies that such a plan was ever considered.

SOE Explosive Rat

It appears that to some extent the British did go ahead with their plans. The Special Operations Executive published a booklet called “Descriptive Catalogue of Special Devices and Supplies.” One of the devices depicted in the catalogue is a dead rat with an explosive inserted inside its body. The booklet explains:

A rat is skinned, the skin being sewn up and filled with plastic explosive to assume the shape of a dead rat. A standard No. 6 primer is set in the plastic explosive.  Initiation is be means of a short length of safety fuse with a No. 27 detonator crimped on one end, and a copper tube igniter on the other end, or as in the case of the illustration above, a P.T.F. with a No. 27 detonator attached. The rat is then left amongst the coal beside a boiler and the flames initiate the safety fuse when the rat is thrown on to the fire, or in the of the P.T.F. a time delay is used.

British Researcher Lee Richards added:

The intention was never to indiscriminately drop these from aircraft but to be supplied to the resistance in regular container air drops. Only 100 rats were ever prepared and it seems dropped in a single container drop which was intercepted by the Germans. The capture of the rats actually turned out to be stroke of fortune. This from the official history of the SOE Camouflage Section:

“This device caused considerable trouble to the enemy, but not in quite the way that was intended. The container was found by the enemy before any of the rats could be used for operational purposes, but their discovery had an extraordinary moral effect and the device was exhibited at all German Military Schools, a wide search being organized to find the “Hundreds of rats” which the enemy believed were distributed on the Continent. The trouble caused to them was a much greater success to us than if the rats had actually been used. It is obvious that in the latter case no evidence would have remained, and the enemy would not have discovered their existence. It was a device with a limited operational use, and the happy discovery of it by the enemy was considerably more advantageous to us.”

Airborne Rodent – Oohrah!

Of course, we are so modern and forward-thinking today that we would never think of dropping rodents on a populated area. Well, maybe not. It was reported in late 2013 that because of the plague 2 million poisonous brown tree snakes on the island of Guam, the United States was dropping 2,000 mice implanted with a tablet containing 80 mg of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Apparently, the snakes are susceptible to Tylenol; the chemical interferes with the ability of snakes’ blood to carry oxygen. Within 60 hours the snakes, which grow to between 3 and 6 feet in length, are dead. When it comes to air-dropping rodents, what comes around goes around!

Coal Bomb

The Special Operations Executive was formed in July 1940 with the mission to “Set Europe Ablaze.” By 1942, 150 different articles had been produced at Station XI and Station XII based at Aston House, Stevenage. Explosives were also made to resemble coal. This coal would explode when shoveled into a furnace, or into the boiler of a locomotive. The American Office of Strategic Services issued the coal as a kit, shaped like a large piece of coal, but actually a hollow shell into which explosives were packed.

Thomas N. Moon and Carl F. Eifler mention this plan in: The Deadliest Colonel, Vantage Press, New York, 1975. Colonel Eifler commanded OSS Detachment 101 in Burma during WWII. He says:

Because different coal was used according to the country where it was mined, OSS had to make the “coal” in different sizes and colors. The engines in Burma however burned logs. The next step was logical. Logs were carefully stripped of their bark, hollowed out, and filled with explosives. When later thrown into a boiler, it did its job.

Once the Office of Strategic Services got into the war with their own Dirty Tricks section, they also worked on explosive coal. The high explosives that were made to look like coal were called Black Joe.

Dung Bombs and Sensors

Explosives were also shaped into sugar beets or cow dung.The dung would be dropped or left on the road where it would blow out the tires of any vehicles passing over it.

The Turdsid

The use of dung for clandestine operations reappeared in the Vietnam War when the United States allegedly developed listening devices that looked like water buffalo dung that could detect the vibrations of someone walking by.  These scatterable sensors (seismic intrusion detectors – SIDs) were small devices, mostly seismic. They consisted of a seismic detector, a transmitter, an internal antenna, and a battery in a fiberglass or plastic case made to look like animal droppings, a broken branch, a big leaf, or other kinds of forest litter. They were usually delivered by air. A low-flying aircraft would dump a batch of them out along a trail, road, or in a suspected base camp area. We don’t know if the story is true or not, but according to one legend the device, nicknamed “Turdsid” proved to have a major flaw. The Viet Cong routinely picked up buffalo dung to use as fuel in their cooking fires. Many of these expensive covert listening devices literally went up in smoke.

Because they were small, their batteries and transmitters were small. The battery life was not long, just a few days. The sensors are about 4 inches long and fashioned in the shape of animal feces. Each had a small pin attached to a piece of plastic that activated them. The Turdsid has three small circular mercury “coin” batteries, a vibration sensor and an ARFBOUY transmitter.  It is activated when a human walks close by. 

The report U. S. Air Ground Operations Against the Ho Chi Minh Trail, 1966-1972 adds that the sensors were first made to look like dog excrement, but when it was discovered that there were no dogs along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the sensors were changed to look like branches and pieces of wood.

The idea of turds being of military value did not start in Vietnam. During WWII, the Office of Strategic Services asked Carleton Coon, a Harvard anthropologist to gather roadside stones in French Morocco to be used as models for plaster of Paris-coated tire bombs. Coon couldn’t find rocks that were suitable, but he did find countless mule turds that littered the roads. Apparently they were suitable and later made into disguised mines that could be left on routes used by the enemy

Returning to Vietnam, the sensors are also mentioned in John L. Plaster’s SOG – a Photo History of the Secret War:

SOG recon teams hand-emplaced dozens of sensors, disguised as tropical plants. Others were airdropped from U.S. Navy Neptunes, and still more were delivered by U.S. Air Force helicopters of the Thailand-based 21st Special Operations Squadron.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail Interdiction program was the responsibility of a joint task-force of Army, Navy and Air Force commands. Operational identification was initially listed on DOD organizational charts as Joint Task Force 728. The initial sensor air delivery and attack portion of the program was managed by the U.S. Navy under the code-name Dual Blade, later changing to Dye Marker, and again to Muscle Shoals. Upon transfer of mission to the Air Force in June 1968 as part of the air war, the ground unit identification was changed to Task Force Alpha and the overall electronic warfare program of dropping sensors along the Ho Chi Minh Trail was known as Igloo White. The data was sent to and analyzed by Task Force Alpha personnel in the Infiltration Surveillance Center at Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base.

CIA Seismic Intruder Setection Device

The CIA Museum in Langley, Virginia has a seismic detector that looks like a turd. They don’t actually say that, but it is pretty clear what it is. The display is entitled “SEISMIC INTRUDER DETECTION DEVICE” The caption near the device is:

This Cold War-era motion detector was designed to blend in with local terrain. It can detect movement of people, animals, or objects up to 300 meters. The device is powered by three mercury cells and has a built-in dipole antenna and built-in 150 MHz transmitter, which relays the device's findings through coded impulses.

Jennifer Gabrys mentions a number of these very strange and dangerous gifts from above in her booklet, Airdrop, Book Works, London, 2004. There is some question about whether many of these drops actually occurred. The “explosive pens” story in particular may have been a black operation that was intended to scare finders of enemy airdropped propaganda and cause them to avoid picking up the items. She says:

Soviet aircraft dropped booby traps on German soldiers during WWII in the form of cognac bottles filled with inflammable liquid, explosive cigarettes, and decoy frogs that exploded when pressed. Anglo-American and German aircraft also dropped a flurry of booby-traps, including dynamite-laden fountain pens and pencils, explosive handbags, chocolates, and loaded dolls and toys. At the flick of a switch, the objects would detonate.

The concept of strange and exotic weapons and agents dropped from the sky has not disappeared from the many “think tanks” around the United States. For instance, declassified 1994 documents from the U. S. Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, indicate that it proposed to the Pentagon the study of the development of various chemical weapons that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops. The report is in a paper entitled, “Harassing, Annoying and ‘Bad Guy’ Identifying Chemicals.” The paper recommends dissemination of the weapons by spray tanks in airplanes or artillery shells.

The strangest plan was for the development of an aphrodisiac “sex bomb” chemical weapon that would arouse the sexuality of enemy soldiers in the field. The concept was to provoke widespread homosexual behavior among troops. Although the Army might deny it, it is safe to say that its general policy is slightly homophobic. The proposal says, “One distasteful but complete non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior.” Enemy soldiers having homosexual sex with each other in their fighting positions? They say that “all is fair in love and war,” but this might be going over the line.

There was also a plan to drop chemicals that would attract swarms of angry wasps, aggressive rats, or larger animals to enemy troop positions. Most insects and many animals produce aggressive warning chemicals (fight or flight) when the hive or nest requests defense, so it might be feasible to reproduce such odors. Of course, for such a weapon to work, it still required that such creatures be nesting nearby. The proposal goes so far as to recommend that the Army position multiple beehives along infiltration routes.

Another proposed project was the development of a chemical designed to cause extremely bad breath or body odor. Identifying enemy guerrillas is always difficult, so the ability to pick an insurgent out of a crowd of civilians by his halitosis or foul smell actually sounds feasible. However, picture the poor American soldier walking down a line of suspected terrorists and leaning toward a suspect as he exhales heavily. Interrogation brought to a new high!

A final proposal called for the production of a chemical that would make the enemy soldier's skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight. Some antibiotics already cause this kind of reaction, so such a chemical agent would probably not be that difficult to produce.

Part 3 – Air Drops that May Not Have Been the Best Idea

The killer Food Crate

Operation Provide Promise began on 2 July 1992. Twenty-one nations formed a coalition to resupply war-torn Sarajevo with food and medicine. The Bosnian Serbs remained belligerent and fired on coalition aircraft. They shot down an Italian transport killing the crew. When it became too dangerous to land at Sarajevo Airport, the cargo planes airdropped supplies.

Leaflets were prepared and dropped over Bosnia. They depict a Hercules C-130 USAF cargo plane in front of a faint United States flag. The leaflets picture crates falling by parachute marked with a bright red cross, and are written in Serbo-Croat text, in Latin script on one side and Cyrillic on the other side. The C-130 drops three containers labeled "500 KG." This leaflet was prepared because of accidents that occurred in Somalia in 1992 when President Bush found himself under tremendous pressure to send American troops to protect relief workers and the food shipped to the starving nation. He finally authorized the deployment of American troops in an operation called Restore Hope. Some of the starving Somali people are reported to have rushed mindlessly into the drop zone only to be crushed by falling food crates. The leaflet text is:

Danger! For everyone's safety, let humanitarian aid land before approaching.

Food or Bombs?

On September 11, 2001, terrorists of the al-Qaida (the Base) group, some trained and financed by Saudi Arabian exile-in-hiding Osama bin Laden, attacked the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC. President Bush immediately demanded that the ruling fundamentalist Islamic Taliban movement of Afghanistan turn over Mr. bin Laden for trial. President Bush declared a war on terrorism and stated that they would be found and attacked regardless of where they were hiding. American forces were deployed under "Operation Enduring Freedom." The bombing of Afghanistan began on October 7. Along with the bombing, the United States Air Force also dropped food packets for the Afghan refugees.

AFD39

A problem occurred when it was noticed that the humanitarian food packets were the same yellow color as the bomblets from the Cluster bomb units (CBU). Realizing the danger to children and civilians, the Pentagon immediately ordered leaflets produced and disseminated that warned the Afghans not to pick up the yellow cluster bombs.

The warning leaflet is AFD39. The leaflet depicts a hand reaching toward a food packet on one side and a short message explaining that this is safe. The back of the leaflet depicts a hand reaching for a bomblet, and shows bomblets in several forms on the ground. There is a skull and crossed bones at the center of the leaflet warning finders of the danger.

Who wants C-Rats?

In the American Army troops in the field are given a form of ration that in theory will last damn near forever. In the Korean War I was fed K-Rations from WWII. Then for many years I ate C-Rations. They were not admired much and the ham and lima beans was called “Ham and mother-fu*kers” by the troops. I did like the spaghetti and meatballs though. When I left the military we were eating Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). None of those dishes would win a Michelin Star.

Leaflet 8(2)2-59-68

The 1968 8th PSYOP Battalion leaflet mentions a campaign I never heard of. It is a rather plain all-text leaflet and normally I would not use it in an article but apparently it was dropped with C-Rations to Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army troops in the field in an attempt to get them to surrender. A note on the official translation says "Dropped with C-Rations," so the implication is that this was an airdrop operation. The leaflet message is:

Member of K-2 Battalion, Regiment 174

We buried 400 of your comrades who were killed in the battle of Dak To at Hill 875 and again on 2 February 1968 we killed another 100 when you were trapped at Thanh Canh. Only you know how many others you lost.

We know you are hungry so eat the food we are delivering, and then think. There is more food for you if you rally now. There is only death if you continue to fight…

Hide your weapons and approach the nearest GVN or US position with your hands raised. A new life awaits you so do not delay.

I spoke to some Vietnamese friends that tell me the official translation is terrible. Remember, this is not an Army document; it was prepared under contract to the DOD by Pacific Technical Analysts. The Vietnamese said the leaflet actually says:

Soldiers of the Viet Cong K-2 Battalion, 174th Regiment!!!!

400 comrades from the K-2 Battalion were killed on the Dak To battlefield, their bodies littering Hill 875 in the sun, while more than 100 other comrades fell into a trap in Thanh Canh on February 2, 1968.

The remaining comrades are now starving; so hungry they ate the leftover food that we left behind.

Friends, you will have enough to eat and drink, live easy, happy lives if you turn in your weapon and surrender. If you continue fighting, you will die from hunger, thirst, disease or wounds.

Hide your weapon and go to any Vietnamese or American Unit and you will be happily welcomed.

One translation implies the Viet Cong are eating leftovers they found, while the other implies that food was dropped on them. Which is correct? Who knows?

In 1969 the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense studied the effectiveness of U.S PSYOP leaflets in Vietnam. A sample of 1,757 Vietnamese was used to represent the target audience. They included the inhabitants of Viet Cong controlled areas, Hoi Chanh who had defected, and prisoners of war. The questions asked of the panels was the effectiveness of symbols, appeals both locally and national, and the vulnerability of certain groups. Leaflets were judged on a scale of very good, good, fair, bad, and very bad. One problem was to reduce the number of leaflets to a workable size. In this test, 798 leaflets were judged and the leaflets were reduced to 77. Unfortunately, the report did not explain why certain leaflets were good or bad. Leaflet 8(2)2-59-68 was rated SOMEWHAT EFFECTIVE by the panel. I thought they would like it more than that, they were getting free food. But then, it was C-Rats.

Duck, Here Comes a Box of Leaflets

On Point, the United States Army in Operation Iraqi Freedom says that it is possible that the first enemy combat death of Operation Iraqi Freedom was caused by a 9th PSYOP Battalion product. It seems that a box of propaganda leaflets released from a Combat Talon aircraft failed to break open because the static line broke. Apparently, the box came down from the sky like the house on the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz and hit an Iraqi soldier square on the head. Mark one kill for PSYOP.

Not the Beatle invasion of America

In February of 1970 the British Evening Echo reported a story entitled "The Day Hitler’s Beetles hit Britain." According to the article;

The Germans tried to destroy Britain’s potato crops by dropping bombs filled with Colorado beetles former British Museum official Richard Ford claimed for the first time. Mr. Ford, naturalist and author, said at his home at Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, that the first beetle bomb was dropped in 1943 on the island.

He said they beat the problem with the aid of teams of evacuee school children (during the war many British children were removed from the cities under bombardment and moved to the countryside). "They were pledged not to talk and then they helped me round up the beetles." He said. Mr. Ford, who is retired, added" "The whole thing was highly hush-hush because the Government did not want to cause alarm among the public". He personally had to deal with a similar bomb in Sussex.

This secrecy is reminiscent of the American failure to disclose that Japanese incendiary balloons were landing and causing fires on the west coast. The concept was not to let the Japanese know that their balloons were succeeding to make landfall. About 9,000 of the balloon bombs (Fugo) were launched against the United States starting in November, 1944. Each carried four incendiary bombs and one 33-pound anti-personnel bomb. It is believed that about 500 actually reached the USA, and they were discovered in 16 different states. A tight censorship was imposed to keep the Japanese from knowing where the balloons had landed and what harm they had done. However, on 5 May 1945, a woman and 5 children were killed near Bly, Oregon, while at a church picnic. It was that event that spurred the military to lift the veil of secrecy regarding the Fugos on 22 May, and is the only case of known fatalities from the balloon bombs.

 

Tennis and Golf Balls

During WWII the British Special Operations Executive received a request for tennis and golf balls from a source thought to be a British agent in Belgium. The balls would be used in an attempt to meet with King Leopold at one of the sporting events. They were promptly packed in a container and dropped over Belgium by the Royal Air Force. However, according to Lieutenant General H. J. Giskes, former German Chief of Counter-espionage in Holland, Belgium and Northern France:

Up to the end of the summer of 1942, the German counter-espionage service in Belgium captured about 30 enemy transmitters, most of which had been in touch with England for some time. One transmitter near Brussels was played back to the SOE in London from December 1941 until the spring of 1943 without being discovered.

Those tennis and golf balls were supplies that the Germans needed to amuse themselves, and had nothing to do with King Leopold.

The Ultimate Gifts from Above

In 1962, there was a movie called Mondo Cane that displayed bizarre rituals including a strange “Cargo Cult” that had sprung up after WWII in the far islands of the pacific. During World War II, on some islands, there were communities that had little, or no, contact with the outside world until American troops showed up. The tribal peoples were generally friendly to the Americans, and the U.S. troops were friendly, and generous. The locals had seen the giant American planes bringing supplies and wanted to bring them back and thus built mockups of air fields and even built mock planes out of grass and tree trunks. It was very sad and most movie-goers felt terrible that these poor people believed that by building an inviting airfield gifts would come to them.

However, for the last 57 years, the U.S. Air Force has air dropped Christmas gifts donated by military personnel and civilians on 68 isolated islands throughout the Central Pacific. The gifts include toys, medical supplies and all manner of goods. The annual “Christmas Drop” kept the belief alive in the bounty of the Gods. The transports parachuted the gifts, and the people below waved and smiled, and assured the aircrew that, if they ever got into trouble and had to come down on one of these islands, they would be well received. That would be a continuation of another tradition, for during the war, many downed pilots were found and saved by the natives, only too happy to help these men who had been so generous with their cargo.

Part Four - The CIA Experiments with Gifts during the Cold War

In this article we see that the American military dropped various gifts over friendly and enemy nations since WWII. The CIA had an interest in dropping gift over Albania back in 1954. I think perhaps they decided not to look at what the military had done, but instead decided to do their own experiments and reinvent the wheel. It does not seem to have worked out exactly as planned as reported by a CIA document dated 18 January 1954. It does make you smile though,

OBTUSE Progress Report, 15 December 1953 through 14 January 1954. The distribution of leaflets printed matter and small quantity of elected consumer goods via overflights and limited mail campaign.

There were no leaflet raids during this period due to weather conditions.

On 12 January an experimental leaflet and article drop was Carried out on OBATLANTIS at about 350 feet. (CIA Site in Greece).

Blank leaflets were successfully dropped, and the scatter was good. Several razor and razor blade envelopes, needle and thread envelopes, soap and comb envelopes flour bags, clothing bags, thread, and cigarette papers; one chicken by parachute and one rooster by free fall were dropped.

* The razor and razor blade envelopes burst in the air due to the weight of the razor and the quality of the paper envelope, therefore the articles were scattered widely making retrieving them almost impossible except by organized search.
* The needle and thread envelopes had a very good scatter.
* The soap and comb envelopes had little scatter but landed intact.
* The flour bags split upon hitting the earth and the flour spread out in nice white clouds.
* The clothing bags had little scatter.
* The thread, cigarette papers, and razor blade envelopes had a very good scatter.

OBOPUS is happy to report that the hen in the parachute and the rooster who sailed to earth on his own steam came through the ordeal in fine shape.

Is that a Friggen Beaver?

 

I hesitate to add this parachute drop because it is postwar, but how can you ignore beavers? William Fischer wrote an article titled "Why 76 beavers parachuted from planes after World War II" on the Grunge website dated 16 April 2024. He says in part:

In 1948, the Fish and Game Department decided to make parachutists out of some real-life animals — not ducks, but beavers. Beaver dams help to slow the flow of streams and rivers, minimizing soil erosion, and ponds formed by those dams replenish groundwater supplies. But beaver dams can also raise stream temperatures upstream and sap oxygen from the water in the long term. And beavers can do a number on crops and home gardens. Southwest Idaho was full of beavers, beavers with no conception of private property or the proper maintenance of sprinkler systems. The new homeowners started to lobby complaints about their rodent neighbors.

Central Idaho holds a protected region, the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness area. In that area is the Chamberlain Basin, a spot with plenty of woods and a prominent creek. It seemed like the ideal place to relocate the beavers. Elmo W. Heter came up with the idea of using military surplus parachutes to drop the beavers into their new home from a plane. It would only cost $30, or $379.30 in 2024 currency. Elmo Heter's final design for his beaver parachute crates used two wooden boxes with airholes and a hinge that would snap open on landing. The two-box system let Heter drop two beavers at once, a practice that seemed to keep the beavers from migrating too soon after landing.

The descendants of the 76 beaver parachutists are still in the Chamberlain Basin, and they've been credited with helping to keep the region, the largest roadless forest south of Alaska, thriving. The flight of the Idahoan beavers remained a successful but obscure operation until Idaho Fish and Game historian Sharon Clark was told the story by a former department fur trapper. Not only did he fill Clark in on the mission, but he also said that a documentary short had been made on it, a film apparently lost to time. Fascinated by the story, Clark set about finding the film. After a yearslong search, she finally got her hands on it in 2014, in a mislabeled and misfiled canister. Once it was digitally scanned, the film was put on YouTube, where it was quickly picked up by multiple news agencies and introduced a new generation to one of the wackiest success stories of postwar wildlife management.

The Greatest Gift of All

In this article we have shown numerous gifts dropped on nations all over the world in various propaganda campaigns. This must be the best gift from above of all time. Allied prisoners starving in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps: sick; dying of disease and malnutrition; their clothes in rags. And then, in the quiet skies above, the drone of friendly American aircraft overhead. No bombs being dropped this time. After 3 or 4 years of captivity, Christmas is here. Clean clothing, soap and razor blades; medicine and best of all FOOD. How miraculous it must have seemed.

We have illustrated just a sampling of the many strange propaganda items that were air-dropped. The author is always interested in hearing about others that were used during the wars of the last half-century. Interested readers are encouraged to write to him at sgmbert@hotmail.com .