When the Allies Got Weird

Ice Aircraft Carriers, Bat Bombs, and a Dead Man's Briefcase

World War II is often remembered for its daunting presentation—huge battles, consequences and death tolls. But behind all of that, somewhere in a classified office, someone was unironically proposing to build an aircraft carrier out of ice. That someone, no matter how unhinged we may consider the idea, was very much taken seriously, and may have even received funding.

As we discussed in our article “Hitler’s Hailmary” documenting the Wunderwaffe weapons of Nazi Germany, WWII was stuffed full of the most bizarre conceptions to ever see the light of day. And yet, within that article, we barely even scraped the surface. While the history books were busy documenting the catastrophic occurrences of such a war, participating countries lurched at any opportunity to deceive and confuse enemies—seriously, any opportunity. This includes what we may now consider fringe ideas that are logistically impossible, but when you are fighting tooth and nail to win the largest scale conflict to ever grace the Earth, any idea can appear as a possible point of success.

To dig a little deeper into the insanity that was WWII, here are 4 operations from the Allied side that, in my opinion, show just how far the “good guys” were willing to go to win.