Who me?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Who Me? was a top secret sulfurous stench weapon developed by the American Office of Strategic Services during World War II to be used by the French Resistance against German officers. Who Me? smelled strongly of fecal matter, and was issued in pocket atomizers intended to be unobtrusively sprayed on a German officer, humiliating him and, by extension, demoralizing the occupying German forces.

The experiment was very short-lived, however. Who Me? had a high concentration of extremely volatile sulfur compounds that were very difficult to control: more often than not, the person who did the spraying also ended up smelling as bad as the one targeted. After only two weeks it was concluded that Who Me? was a dismal failure. It remains unclear whether there was a successful Who Me? attack.

Who Me? was listed by the The Guinness Book of World Records as one of the two smelliest substances, the other being "US Government Standard Bathroom Malodor", used to test deodorants and air fresheners^[1]. Pam Dalton, a cognitive psychologist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, describes the smell of Who Me? as resembling "the worst garbage dumpster left in the street for a long time in the middle of the hottest summer ever".

A recipe for a kilogram (2.2 lb) of the same or equivalent substance in circulation on the Internet specifies 919 g (32.4 oz) of white mineral oil as an inert carrier, and 20 g (0.7 oz) of skatole, 20 g (0.7 oz) of n-butanoic acid, 20 g (0.7 oz) of n-pentanoic acid, 20 g (0.7 oz) of n-hexanoic acid and 1 g (0.04 oz) of pentanethiol as the active ingredients.