If you are shopping for the spy who has everything, have you considered asking Santa to bring a silent, covert crossbow used by the daring agents of the Office of Strategic Services in World War II? The crossbows were issued out to daring spies of the OSS — the U.S.’s wartime intelligence service that eventually morphed into the CIA — as silent, easily concealable weapons for operatives behind enemy lines.
Santa can choose the small handheld Little Joe Penetrometer or maybe the Big Joe 5 shoulder-fired crossbow.
The bows are meant to be a silent combat system to quietly eliminate enemy combatants or assassination targets. But World War II-era testing found that the bolts came with the risk of a target who, once hit, would scream and yell and alert close-by comrades — compromising your mission.
The crossbows came out of a joint program between the American OSS and the British Special Operations Executive, or SOE, that created weapons for their spies to be discreet but deadly during World War II, sharing inventions and ideas throughout the war.
In the manual, the “World War II secret operations handbook: S.O.E., O.S.S. & Maquis guide to sabotaging the Nazi War Machine,” all the weapons were designed with one mission in mind.
“In addition to unarmed combat, secret operatives engaged the enemy using various devices: limpet mines; sleeve pistols as an emergency weapon; and crossbows for silent assassination,” reads an excerpt from the Handbook.
Of the over 26,000 items created for the OSS, three types of crossbows existed. The Little Joe Penetrometer, Big Joe 5, and the William Tell are different crossbow designs for different purposes.
Unlike a traditional crossbow, where the energy to launch the bolt is stored in flexible limbs, these crossbows have affixed limbs, and the energy delivery is stored in 50 rubber bands, released by a single trigger pull.
Historynet.com details the Little Joe Penetrometer as weighing a little over 2 pounds and looking like a pistol converted into a crossbow with vertical limbs (some versions had horizontal limbs).
It was borderline silent when it fired at 72 decibels, quieter than a suppressed pistol. The bow was capable of a 6-inch grouping at up to 20 yards, with a muzzle velocity of about 170 feet per second. Its bolts were able to penetrate through a uniformed soldier up to 30 yards.
According to SpyCraft101, the Little Joe Penetrometer was sent to the field for testing with Capt. Homer Williams of the US 6th Army’s special reconnaissance unit, known as the Alamo Scouts. They operated in the Pacific Theatre during WWII. Williams confirmed the small slingshot crossbow was powerful and accurate as advertised, but it could “allow the victim to flop around like a chicken with its head cut off, and might have made a commotion.”
The Big Joe 5, as its name infers, was the grandpapa of the Little Joe. This one is shoulder-fired, with a collapsible stock to make it more concealable. The Spycraft101 Facebook account said the Big Joe 5 was considerably heavier than the Little Joe at 10 pounds but packed a more lethal punch with 550 pounds of pull.
This bigger crossbow could fire 14-inch aluminum bolts with an effective range of up to 80 yards or a 17-inch incendiary flare with an effective range of 200 yards. The bow has a collapsible wire stock and foldable limbs, allowing it to be easily concealed.
Not much is known about the William Tell crossbow, but online images available show a slimmer version compared to the Big Joe 5.
It’s unclear if the bows were ever used in the field.
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