Project Capricious: The U.S. Military’s Plan To Stop Germany’s Afrika Korps With Goat Poop
Wikimedia CommonsThe minds behind Project Capricious suggested making synthetic, pathogen-laced goat poop to weaken the Afrika Korps.
There was no shortage of odd ideas during World War II. The Allied forces were facing a great threat, fighting on multiple fronts, and when the United States joined the conflict, the tides began to turn — partly due to the unique ideas of American military scientists. Of course, there were a few stinkers in the bunch, too, and in this instance, that’s quite literal.
Project Capricious was a plan devised in early 1942 to deal with German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in North Africa. The Afrika Korps proved to be a major threat to U.S. forces there, and a fear was growing that if they should prevail, Spain might join the Axis powers. The U.S. needed a plan to prevent that, and OSS Research Director Stanley Lovell believed he had it.
Lovell proposed using flies to spread sickness among Rommel’s troops in Morocco. But how could Lovell guarantee flies would carry a disease? He thought of the one thing flies are attracted to more than anything else: dung. As it turned out, Morocco at that time had a bigger population of goats than it did people — and goats are known to poop quite a lot.
But rather than infecting real goats with a disease, Lovell thought it would be better to create a synthetic goat poop that was loaded with pathogens, which would inevitably attract flies. These flies would then spread disease among the Afrika Korps troops. The U.S. planned to drop this synthetic poop from the air in the middle of the night, though there was the issue of innocent civilians potentially contracting the illness as well.
In the end, the goat poop plan was canceled after the Germans were withdrawn from Morocco to be deployed at Stalingrad.
After reading about these fascinating secret government operations, learn the intriguing history behind Britain’s Special Operations Executive. Then, learn about other covert operations executed by the United States.
