I ran across today even though I don't think it's real it sure made my day.






KAKAKA "SHIRLEY" AMPHIBIOUS PEDAL-BOMBER

The originality of Japanese aircraft design was never in question after the Shirley wobbled onto the scene, albeit briefly, in the closing months of the Pacific war. This light (75 lbs.), cheap ($1.49), last-ditch gesture of a desperate Japanese High Command was in fact little more than a bicycle of the air, its propeller turned by pedal power from the pilot. Towed behind a torpedo boat, the Shirley would sooner or later rise and fumble skyward, staying aloft exactly as long as its pilot's stamina held out and his sprocket chain stayed intact. Hopefully, a U.S. ship would soon be sighted; then, braving massive ack-ack fire as well as large birds, the fanatic suicide candidate at the controls, or handle bars, aimed toward his quarry and pumped furiously until directly overhead. Then, at the flick of a lever, the under slung wicker basket fell away and hit the deck below-and one rabid dog was disgorged to run amuck and wreak its mad havoc. The ravening animal, it was assumed, would take a few Yanks with it by the time the end came. Ingenious-but not ingenious enough; the dogs proved susceptible to seasickness en route to the target and every known Shirley mission ended in anticlimax with a dazed mutt vomiting among the gobs while a paper airplane slowly sank off the starboard bow

Maybe if were to scale it down we can drop rabid chipmunks instead. Certainly, a desperate design at desperate time. Kind of makes you think when trying to while trying to drop a rabid dog to armed ship how far is this poor pouch going to get. FYI, as a experiment, the US tired to use bats attached with a small fire bomb and planned to drop them over Japan and have them fly into buildings. During testing in the US, they did manage to burn down a few barns out in the country. That is about as far as they got.

1/8th scale = 40" wingspan with rubber power, lol....

That is one UGLY DUCKLING!!!

Gibbs

It was , I think it was yellow and had an exploding gas tank and it was called a Pinto

That information is STILL classified. You might want to remove who posted this so Homeland Security can't track you!!!

I heard the US wanted to use large balloons to float bombs over to japan.... novel idea

Actually, it was the Japanese who used balloons to transport bombs across the Pacific to attack the US using the winds aloft which blow west to east, not the other way. They did succeed in starting a few forest fires but the US authorities kept it quiet and the Japanese gave up the effort believing it wasn't working.

I've read about this a couple of times over the years but it was presented in one of the many documentaries on PBS I caught a year or so ago.

And now we find out about the UFO's not little green men afterall

The Jet Stream bombs from Japan, actually killed several people.

and where the only bombs that actually made it to the U.S. mainlandyou want to thank your lucky stars Hitler did not make his U.S. bomber!!! we got the hell bombed out of usgave a good bit back though,

what a sad way for humankind to go about their business, i often say, take protagonists up in space, let them see what they are trying to destroy, let them grasp the stupidity of itthen throw them out the airlock

Man - -I almost spit my coffee on the screen and keyboard hahaha

That's a good one, Paddle-Bomber OMG LOL

That is from a Bruce McCall article in a '60s "Playboy" magazine. He had a couple of beauties like that one.
This one was an Italian fighter, which had a reversible seat so the pilot could change directions as the country changed allegiances.
And a Soviet bomber... the blueprints were wrinkled, but as damaging government property resulted in an instant trip to Siberia, no one mentioned it..
And a Soviet helicopter.. it's major safety feature was too much weight to fly.