The Iceberg Aircraft Carrier
Faced with a shortage of aircraft carriers to fight German U-boats in the Atlantic, Winston Churchill championed this, one of the strangest ideas of WWII. Plan Habakkuk was as silly as its name suggests: the job was to construct an enormous man-made iceberg, put dozens of warplanes on it, then sail it into the Atlantic to do battle with Nazi subs. But the whole idea quickly sank for the most obvious reason: ice melts.
The Atomic Hand Grenade
This proposed mini-nuke would have worked by releasing super-excited elements called isomers. A baseball-sized grenade holding the energy of just one isomer would equal the equivalent of 20 tons of explosives. It would also weigh nearly 50 pounds. Issues of personal portability aside, the burning question is: could any soldier throw the atomic grenade far enough not to get killed by his own blast?
Salmon Attacker
In the 1950s, the U.S. Navy wanted fighter planes on all its ships, not just on aircraft carriers. The result was the XFV Salmon. Part helicopter and part conventional aircraft, and because its landing gear was located in its tail, the Salmon could take off vertically from a small platform on a ship then level off for normal flight. It seemed like a good idea... until someone realized there was no way a pilot could reverse the process and land it unless he had eyes in the back of his head.
The Other Pussy Galore
Back in the 1960s, the CIA spent $20 million trying to turn a cat into a spy. With a microphone in its ear and an antenna along its back, the plan was to let the kitty loose near the Soviet embassy in Washington, where it would hopefully encounter some Russians and pick up conversations containing useful intelligence...
But the idea went wrong on its very first try when, just seconds after being released by its CIA handlers, the spy cat was run over by a taxi.
Ads 2 - 30 Saluran TV Hanya RM30?
