Anticrop Biological Weapons Programs - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 218

The munition was also referred to as the “feather bomb” because of its
use of agent-impregnated turkey feathers containing, according to D. L.
Miller, “enough particulate matter dusted with agent to create 100,000
foci of infection within a 50 square-mile area.” 25 This munition gave the
US military its first limited anticrop biological warfare capability.
Work on the E77 anticrop balloon bomb was inspired by, and based
upon, a Japanese design tied to the deployment of a free-floating un-
manned balloon with a biological anticrop warfare payload. In the final
stages of the war in the Pacific some 9,300 Japanese balloon bombs had
been propelled by the jet stream at high altitude to carry incendiary and
antipersonnel agents over the Pacific to the North American mainland.
Adopting the feather dissemination method devised for the E73 cluster
munition, according to a US Operations Research Study Group report,
the 80-pound E77 antiplant bomb was capable of carrying sufficient
quantities of agent and carrier to “cause high levels of plant infection
when impact [was] on target crops.” 26 The weapon was designated as a
strategic munition, with a group assigned for its deployment to the the-
ater air command. However, subsequent developments in munitions saw
the emergence of another cluster munition, and the balloon bomb was
never deployed.
Larger in capacity but based on the same operational principles as the
E73 cluster bomb, the E86 weighed in at some 750 pounds. Procure-
ment was to be initiated in 1953 for the production of some 6,000 of
these munitions by 1958, but further development of this weapon system
ceased when munition requirements were reviewed in the first half of
the 1950s. Spray tanks similar in design characteristics to those used for
the large-scale dissemination of chemical agents during the Vietnam War
superseded these munitions. Neither agents nor munitions saw use in
wartime.
The anticrop BW programs can be traced to a conclusion in the UK in
1963 and in the US in 1969.
World War II adversaries, including Germany and Japan, and later Cold
War adversaries, including the former Soviet Union and China, had been
identified as potential targets during the anticrop BW activities, and it
was estimated that such weapons were capable of bringing about the
widespread destruction of staple food crops in both countries. 27