The remains of a secret military base where the US tested a light weapon in World War II

The history of the Second World War is full of anecdotes about tests of the most varied types of weapons.

A moor in England containing the remains of a B-29 bomber that crashed in 1948
The ruins of a Scottish mansion that housed Polish soldiers during WW2

Some of these weapons were reasonable, some were outlandish, and some may not have yielded the results expected. At Camp Bouse, a secret military camp in western Arizona (about 25 miles from the ghost town of Bouse, founded in 1908), the US Army tested a British-invented light weapon: the Canal Defence Light (CDL).

The initial British prototype of the CDL consisted of a 12.8 million candela carbon arc lamp (for the sake of comparison, traditional incandescent light bulbs have a luminosity of about 130 candela). The CDL was intended to dazzle enemy troops in night battles, and was therefore intended to be installed in the turret of tanks (the British used the Matilda tank and the Americans the M3 Grant).

The project was secret and relied on surprise to be more effective. The British planned to install the CDL in hundreds of tanks. Leaving aside the possible tactical advantages that the CDL offered on the battlefield, the disadvantage was that such an intense light gave away the position of the Allied tanks.

Camp Bouse was not only the site of testing of this secret luminous weapon, but also served as a training ground for the crews of six tank battalions. Its role in the war in Europe was rather limited, with a few CDL-equipped tanks being used in the operation to cross the Rhine and in the capture of the Remagen bridge.

Finally, their use was often typical of conventional projectors, and in some cases the CDLs manufactured by the Allies were even replaced by projectors captured from the Germans. The CDL baton was taken over by the projectors installed in post-war tanks, such as the M-48 and M-60 Patton.

Built in 1943, Camp Bouse was decommissioned before the end of World War II. Today, there are a few monuments that commemorate its presence in the middle of the Mojave Desert, as well as some old military vehicles located there (among them an M-60 tank and an M-109 self-propelled howitzer, both post-World War II).

Of the camp itself, only a few remains remain, apart from an American flag that still flies in the middle of the desert at the site of the military base's field hospital. A few days ago, Sidetrack Adventures published a video of their visit to the site:

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Main image: Sidetrack Adventures.