Operation Sea Spray
Published: August 19, 2026
Duration: 1:07:03
In September 1950, a United States Navy vessel spent eight days off the San Francisco coastline spraying clouds of live bacteria into the wind, and nobody on shore was told.
The operation was called Sea-Spray, and it was designed to answer a question that terrified early Cold War planners: could an enemy attack an American city with a biological weapon delivered from a small boat, invisibly, without ever being detected? The answer, recorded in a classified document called Special Report No. 142, was yes.
Forty-three monitoring stations around the Bay measured the result, and the Army concluded that...
The operation was called Sea-Spray, and it was designed to answer a question that terrified early Cold War planners: could an enemy attack an American city with a biological weapon delivered from a small boat, invisibly, without ever being detected? The answer, recorded in a classified document called Special Report No. 142, was yes.
Forty-three monitoring stations around the Bay measured the result, and the Army concluded that...