yes, but did they ever use it? On Japan soil? On this video is saying they made some barracks in fire.
Don't know about use in enemy territory, but they did start fires during tests. And with any wild animal they were unreliable.
The bat bomb was never used operationally on Japanese soil. The weapon's effectiveness in a combat situation indeed can only be speculated from test information, but of course opinions on the matter will differ. Official reasons for cancelling the weapon's development include the infeasibility of creating a workable time table from weapon development to military implementation due to uncertainties inherent in the project, namely the bats' behavior. Jack Couffer, a member of the Project X-Ray team developing the bat bomb at the time, suggests that it was likely the promising results of atomic bomb testing that finally did the bat bomb project in. Sources Bat Bomb: World War II's Other Secret Weapon by Jack Couffer
Given that the Atomic Bomb cost 2 billion and the B-29 development and production cost 3 billion, I doubt that the Atomic Bomb was the reason the measly 2 million dollar project was cancelled. Especially, since there were doubts that the A-Bomb(Fat Man) would even work. Although there were probably many more doubts that the "Bat Bomb" would work.
Could it be they stopped it due to mishaps during testing? Read somewhere the weapon was tested too near an army building. The bats roosted there and set it afire. At least we know it works!
One issue they had was that if you released the bats too high up they froze from what I recall reading. I think they had to go under 10,000 ft and depending on the season perhaps considerably under that. May have had problems heat wise at altitude even prior to release.
