Shortly after WWII, the US Navy decided to try to train dolphins to act like living torpedoes they could use against enemy ships. The military used animals during the war, mostly to plant listening devices or to use as eavesdroppers. Naturally, they wanted to see what other uses animals could be used for. The program ran from 1958 to 1971 and was called “Project Headgear. The program was uncovered by an author, Mary Roach while she was researching material for her book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War.
HOW IT WORKED
Bombs would be strapped to the shark, which would also wear a box on its head which had a compass and could communicate with controllers.
The sharks also had electrodes inserted into them connected to the box.
The box was programmed to monitor the shark, and if it seemed to swim off course, it would send out an electric shock of between 5-25 volts to one of the shark’s sides to get it to swim towards the desired target.
Revealing the project for MIT’S Undark site, she wrote she first came across it while ‘Reading a historical article on sharks in Marine Fisheries Review.’
‘The author, José Castro, quoted a newspaper piece saying that the goal had been to ‘convert the shark into a remote-controlled torpedo that could ram a ship while carrying a load of explosives.”
Although the discovery did not make it into her book, following its publication she met Michael Morisy, the founder of a website called MuckRock which specialises in helping people in the US file, track and share public records requests.
In the end the project failed because if the signals were too weak, the sharks would ignore it and if it was too strong, the shark would become disoriented and confused. Therefore, they shut down the project.