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Torpedo-Dragging Seals and 6 Other Real Ideas for the U.S. Military

2 minute read
Illuminated coils of projector used to create lase
Illuminated coils of projector used to create laser light, in 1963Fritz Goro—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
By Lily Rothman

Fans of science-fiction, lasers and guns were probably excited to learn on Wednesday that the U.S. military has successfully tested a laser ray gun. The weapon took many years and tens of millions of dollars to develop, but the future, apparently, is now.

Or maybe not.

Back in 1941, the U.S. government and the National Inventors Council put out a call seeking ideas for new weapons. Nearly 30,000 submissions came in and, as TIME noted back then, some of them were accepted for possible development by the Army and Navy. One of the ones that wasn’t accepted was a plan for a “death-ray gun” by an inventor out of St. Louis, “who landed in the hospital after the gun’s first testing.” Clearly, the 70-plus years that have elapsed between then and now were long enough for the death-ray gun idea to mature — but that wasn’t the only idea on the list of rejected weapons inventions. They included:

  • A bomb filled with skunk musk which, dropped on an enemy ship, would so nauseate the crew that the vessel could be boarded, towed to port, fumigated, and added to the U.S. Navy.
  • A shell filled with sneezing powder which would explode in the face of the enemy and incapacitate him.
  • A nozzle for the last coach of every railroad train to squirt black paint on the rails and make them invisible to enemy bombers.
  • A propeller, motor and wing attachment for trucks that would fly them swiftly to the scene of combat.
  • A tank fitted with an auger for drilling itself into the ground to lie in wait or hide from the enemy.
  • A submarine chaser composed of separately powered units linked together, which could wriggle through the water, coil itself around a U-boat, crush it.
  • A harness permitting trained seals to tow torpedoes to their destination. (Seal would flip clear just before contact.)

On the other hand, who knows what the future may hold?

See the story in its original format, here in the TIME Vault: Crackpot Holiday

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com