The Vietnam War was, at best, a colossal military failure for the United States and, at worst, a demonstration of the country’s willingness to commit atrocities of all kinds and consistently find ways to try to justify them.
But one good innovation did come from the war, and it was in the form of dick-biting dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy.
According to Max Hastings’ exhaustive Vietnam history, five bottlenose dolphins – named Garth, John, Slan, Tinker, and Toad – were deployed to Cam Ranh Bay to guard an ammunition pier and attack “swimming saboteurs” in the early ’70s. According to a brief at the time, the Vietnamese were “led to believe that the dolphin is trained to attack a male swimmer’s privates.”
“Led to believe,” huh? How else would these combat dolphins deter NVA soldiers should they come across them? Politely tell them to turn around and go back in the direction they came? No, these dolphins were ABSOLUTELY trained by the Navy to viciously attack, bite off, and most likely eat, enemy soldiers’ penises.
Now, just to be on the safe side, the North Vietnamese, according to the brief at that time, planned to counteract this measure by “employing female swimmers in the future.” For all of America’s military might, there was seemingly nothing with which the North Vietnamese couldn’t counter.
Of course, these dolphins were deployed during the early ’70s, and even their unit was not immune to the issues that plagued essentially all units fighting during this period. One of the five dolphins deserted, likely understanding how lost a cause Vietnam truly was.
Trained as part of the U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program (which at its peak contained more than 150 trained dolphins and belugas and nearly 50 sea lions), this appears to be the first time the dolphins were trained to brutally shred an enemy combatant’s penis. The program originally started in the early ’60s as researchers wanted to study dolphins in order to design better, more aerodynamic missiles. But once these military researchers discovered just how intelligent dolphins were, and how they could be trained to achieve certain objectives, the Navy simply decided to enlist the dolphins themselves.
Since the Vietnam War, the Navy’s dolphins have been consistently deployed around the world, often in the Persian Gulf to protect American interests and help detect and remove mines. The dolphins were even used as security during the 1996 Republican National Convention in San Diego, in response to the Summer Olympics bombing in Atlanta a month earlier.
The Navy, of course, emphatically denies that these dolphins are trained to actually injure humans or carry weapons. But with such overwhelmingly evidence of deception from our government and military for so many years, we all know better, don’t we?
I guarantee you there are still dolphins out there trained to bite off your penis. There were even reports during Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath that some of these military dolphins escaped in the Gulf of Mexico. And with these dolphins now loose in the ocean, there’s no telling how many other fellow dolphins, whales, or fish they’ve trained in the years since.
There could be an entire underwater army just waiting to strike, and none of us are prepared. As ocean levels rise in the years ahead, we’re all at risk of being wiped out by these bloodthirsty creatures, hellbent on getting revenge against their cruel masters.
May God have mercy on us all.
