Crackpot Holiday

Last August the National Inventors Council, a board of crackerjack inventors, scientists and industrialists, set out under the auspices of the Federal Government to encourage the U.S. public to submit new ideas for defense weapons. Since that time the board has scrutinized 29,300 inventions submitted to it. Some of them, accepted by the Army and Navy, have passed into the realm of military secrets. Others have remained just what they were: crackpot contraptions. Some of those which are not secret:

> 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.)

> Plans for a death-ray gun by a St. Louis inventor who landed in the hospital after the gun’s first testing.