In 1941, one of the weapons developed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was the dreaded rat bomb. The rat bomb consisted of the skin of a Rattus norvegicus or Rattus rattus stuffed with high explosives and a heat-sensitive detonator so that the resulting package looked like a stiff dead rat. The rat bombs were to be thrown into German coal piles for ships and locomotives. The fireman, in the course of his duties, would shovel the rat into the firebox and the rest would be history.
Unfortunately, the Germans discovered a shipment of unexploded rat bombs early on and became extremely diligent about not incinerating rats, so the project had little direct success. On the other hand, many thousands of man-hours were expended by the Germans looking for remarkedly rigid rodent remains.
Some of the rats were to be loaded with time-delay fuses instead of heat sensitive detonators.
You may be wondering why anyone would even shovel a rat into a firebox. You are sweltering in an overheated confined space with a stinking dead rodent on top of the coal you need to shovel. You cannot leave your post. You are going to be there for several more boring hours. There is a white-hot cleansing inferno right in front of you. Plus, you are bored stiff. What would YOU do?
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