Non Lethal Warfare

My late grandfather was in the army for most of his career. At one point in his career he was stationed at Pine Camp or Camp Drake in the New York area, my mother states they were living in Watertown, New York. This was around 43-45.

He was involved in some classified work that he never did talk too much about, but between what he did say and what my mother has told me, it was in the area of non-lethal warfare.

He told me once when I was younger what they were working on had to do with radar and the transmitting of sound. For example, they either had or were working on the technology to drive a truck so equipped into a field and transmit the sound of bridge building or railroad track repair to anywhere they desired to transmit it. Such kind of construction during the war was done at night for protection, the idea of this particular deception was to lure the enemy to an area where they thought they heard that some kind of construction or repair was going on, and then to initiate a surprise attack on the unsuspecting enemy.

My mother did not know about that particular project, but my grandfather did tell her that he was involved a contract the Army had with Dupont to devise a way to destroy buildings using sound.

The only other thing I remember about this is once my grandmother was talking about this time in their lives. Apparently, they lived very close to the base where all this was going on. My grandmother once stated that occasionally very loud sounds could be heard from the base, but that she had been informed by my grandfather that when any neighbors asked about the sounds, which they did, she was to deny that she had heard anything, and she was laughing about having had these kinds of discussions with her neighbors.