Blake Hall
At some point during the Vietnam War, one military engineer said to another, “Hey, what if we gave soldiers super bright flashlights so they can literally blind the enemy into submission?”
“You know Bucky, that’s so crazy it just might work.”
It didn’t work.
Tongue-in-cheek dramatizations aside, the Army really did build giant lamps during the Vietnam War to defend against and execute nighttime ambushes. To take full advantage of the jungle terrain and the cover of darkness, American soldiers needed a way to illuminate the battlefield without giving away their positions. When regular flares failed, enormous flashlights seemed to be the answer.
The U.S. Army’s Limited War Laboratory developed several prototypes of the ambush flashlight concept, including one that emitted light at 300,000 candlepower. That’s three times as bright as direct sunlight at noon.
Unfortunately, many performance issues held back the project. The flashlights were not durable enough to survive the jungle, they sometimes burst into flames while still packed away and they could only provide light for a limited time frame.
The ambush light project fizzled out completely when the Vietnam war ended, and the development of night vision gear made the prototypes obsolete.
