Editing Avon Park, Florida (section)

=== Operation Drop Kick ===
{{main|Operation Drop Kick}}

In 1956, the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] [[Chemical Corps]] released 600,000 uninfected [[Aedes aegypti|yellow fever mosquitoes]] from a plane from Avon Park Air Force Range over the city in order to test how efficiently the mosquitoes spread after conducting a similar experiment in [[Savannah, Georgia]] earlier in the year. The experiment was part of Operation Drop Kick, a series of military experiments to determine the practicality of employing mosquitoes to carry an [[entomological warfare]] agent in different ways. A day after the release the mosquitoes had spread between {{Convert|1|mi|km|abbr=on}} to {{Convert|2|mi|km|abbr=on}} in each direction and bitten many residents.

In 1958, the Chemical Corps conducted further tests from Avon Park Air Force Range and determined that mosquitoes could be easily disseminated from helicopters, devices dropped from planes, or by being deployed from the ground. Chemical Corps researchers found that the mosquitoes would spread more than a mile in each direction from where they were deployed and that they would quickly enter all types of buildings.<ref name="Osti">{{cite web |title=Summary of Major Events and Problems: (Reports Control Syrnbol CSHIS-6) United States Army Chemical Corps, Fiscal Year 1959 |url=https://www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/16006843-5BAfk6/16006843.pdf=PA103 |access-date=November 14, 2024 |work=[[Chemical Corps|United States Army Chemical Corps]] |pages=101–104}}</ref>

On October 28, 1980, the documents detailing the experiments were declassified as part of the [[Church of Scientology]]'s legal battles with the federal government under the [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|Freedom of Information Act]]. After the Church of Scientology obtained the documents, the group made them available to journalists.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Gilmore |first=Daniel F. |date=October 29, 1980 |title=Swarms of mosquitoes, the type notorious for transmitting yellow fever, were released in Georgia and Florida in the 1950s by the Army to see if the insects could be used as biological warfare weapons, documents show |url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1980/10/29/Swarms-of-mosquitoes-the-type-notorious-for-transmitting-yellow/5266341643600/ |access-date=November 14, 2024 |work=[[United Press International]]}}</ref>