
The CIA was so impressed with OXYGAS that it envisioned plenty of other covert missions for dolphins. Someone at the CIA also put together a print (see the image at the top of this story) depicting OXYGAS dolphins slipping away from a submarine, towing bombs from harnesses attached to their snouts. Eventually, the CIA decided to use a modified boat to transport dolphins in and out of the water.
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It was more interested in the practical aspects of using dolphins, like how to fly a trained dolphin to and from a distant part of the world to complete a mission and how to get the mammal into the water to perform its mission. Meanwhile, Maritime Branch-the arm of the CIA that dealt in sea and coastal operations- was extremely interested in using dolphins (or what it called "unmanned systems"). In one document from February 1965, the CIA reported that "two dolphins are now routinely delivering simulated." The rest of the paragraph is redacted from public view. Although nukes were still too big for dolphins to reasonably carry, the rapid pace of miniaturization suggested it was only a matter of time. Nukes had grown smaller and lighter in the 19 years since the 10,000-pound "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It's also within the realm of possibility that the CIA had nuclear weapons in mind. Environmental Protection Agency) was cautiously optimistic: "Quite frankly this project has progressed more quickly than we anticipated, although unbridled enthusiasm is not justified at this time." ORD stated that, despite communications problems between handler and animal, and the need to determine a proper payload shape, it thought the CIA could perform a full-on test by January 1965.ĬIA documents never mention specific kinds of explosive devices, but the agency probably planned on using conventional devices like the limpet mines human divers relied on during World War II. The CIA Considered Using Lightning As a Weaponīy November of 1964, the Office of Research and Development (the scientific research arm of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was experimenting with dolphins for a far darker purpose: blowing things up.īack in 2019, the CIA released a trove of previously secret files that detail various undercover experiments, including the strange dolphin endeavor coined "Project OXYGAS." The agency introduced OXYGAS in the early 1960s, right around the time Flipper hit the big screen, to train bottlenose dolphins to attach explosive devices to enemy ships. In parallel-far from Hollywood studios, and buried in the covert world of secret intelligence-the U.S. That much was clear in pop culture with the television show Flipper, which depicted dolphins as smart cetaceans that could help humans.

In the mid-1960s, America befriended the dolphin. While the program never panned out, another designed to save human lives by detecting sea mines did.
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