Rare ‘exploding rat’ created by Allied spies in Second World War to bomb the Germans to sell for £1,500
British intelligence chiefs hoped to wreak havoc with the device which saw dead rodents stuffed with explosives
A RARE example of a Second World War bomb made out of a dead rat is expected to make £1,500 at auction.
British intelligence chiefs hoped to wreak havoc with the device which saw rodents stuffed with explosives.
Their plan was that they would be smuggled into France where Resistance fighters would place them in factories producing arms for the occupying Nazis.
They hoped the Germans would throw the vermin into factory furnaces - triggering huge blasts.
But in the event, the first batch of 100 Rat Bombs were intercepted by the Germans in 1942 and the plan was never put into practice.
It did, however, spook the Germans who feared some of the devices may already have got through.
Now an incredibly rare surviving example has emerged for sale for the first time along with an assortment of other concealed weapons used by secret agents in the Second World War.
It belonged to the British agent Jack Dickens who was dropped behind enemy lines to carry out acts of sabotage.
The device was found on his possession in 1942 and ended up in storage at a French police station. It is not known who intercepted it.
It carries a pre-sale estimate of £1,500.
Also being sold is a fountain pen that hides an assassin's metal spike.
It is valued at £3,000.
There is also a pocket-sized wooden coffin containing garrote wire used for strangling someone.
These items served as a chilling warning to individuals tempted to collaborate with the Germans and were left on their doorsteps by the French Resistance.
And there is an Army-issue razor pack which contained a hidden compass pointer on a cotton thread and a silk escape map with lithographed maps on both sides, covering Western Germany, Holland, France, Belgium and Switzerland.
This is worth £1,200.
The items are being sold by auctioneers Bonhams.
The United States developed similarly outlandish weapons during WWII including what were known as bat bombs.
The devices consisted of bomb-shaped casing with over a thousand compartments - each containing a hibernating Mexican free-tailed bat with a small, timed incendiary bomb attached.
Dropped from a bomber at dawn, the casings would deploy a parachute in mid-flight and open to release the bats, which would then roost in eaves and attics in a 20–40 mile radius.
The incendiaries would start fires in inaccessible places in the largely wood and paper constructions of the Japanese cities that were the weapon's intended target.
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"This particular example bears a tag suggesting it was used for training at a French police station, having been found in the possession of British agent Jack Dickens in 1942.
"Some of the disguised weapons are quite chilling when you look at them now but they highlight to do-or-die nature of SOE agents who operated in Nazi-occupied Europe."
The items are being sold on December 6.
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