New efforts were then focused on designing a transpacific balloon, one that could be launched from Japan and reach the continental USA. Close to 300 were either found or observed in the U.S., according to Atlas Obscura. [19], The first balloons were launched at 0500 on November 3, 1944. The balloon bombs, however, presaged the future of warfare. The American government, however, continued to maintain silence until May 5, 1945. The . Why wetlands are so critical for life on Earth, Rest in compost? The Japanese used the jet stream to send a barrage of . They each carried four incendiaries and one thirty-pound high-explosive bomb. All rights reserved. After each question they answered yes. It was meant to be "revenge" for the Doolittle raids on Japan. In his book Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japans Balloon Bomb Attack on America, author Ross Coen called the weapon the worlds first intercontinental ballistic missile, and the silent delivery of death from pilotless balloons has been referred to as World War IIs version of drone warfare. The bomb that exploded . The women folded 1,000 paper cranes as a symbol of regret for the lives lost. Your Privacy Rights Vengeance Balloon Bombs in World War II. In the months of November to March, there were only 50 anticipated favorable days, and they expected to launch a maximum of 200 balloons from their three launch sites per day. As recently as 2014, aballoon was discovered in Canada, and it was technically functional. A mans world? The dastardly contraption was one of thousands of balloon bombs launched toward North America in the 1940s as part of a secret plot by Japanese saboteurs. [11] Engineers sought to make use of strong seasonal air currents discovered flowing from west to east at high altitude and speed over Japan, known now as the jet stream. The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. The Fu-Go balloon bomb. (U.S. Army Air Corps) Borne out of desperationand perhaps a touch of ingeniousnessthe Imperial Japanese Army in November 1944 began unleashing an estimated 9,300 "fire balloons" across the Pacific Ocean. The balloon and parts were taken to Butte, [Mont.] consternation and prevent the Japanese from discovering their mission's success. 129 McNutt Hall, 1400 N. Bishop Ave. Rolla, MO 65409-0230. The balloons continued to be discovered across North America on a near daily basis, with sightings and partial or full recoveries in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan (where the easternmost of the balloons was found at Farmington), Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming; as well as in Canada in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest and Yukon Territories; in northwestern Mexico; and at sea by passing ships. Just a few months ago a couple of forestry workers in Lumby, British Columbia about 250 miles north of the U.S. border happened upon a 70-year-old Japanese balloon bomb. On September 19, two Americans spoke with Lieutenant Colonel Terato Kunitake and a Major Inouye. The Japanese balloon bomb, in all its terrible splendor. Although balloon sightings would continue, there was a sharp decline in the number of sightings by April 1945, explainshistorian Ross Coen. [46] A nearby ponderosa pine still bears scars on its trunk from the bomb's shrapnel. Plus it was unclear whether the weapons were working; security was so good on the U.S. side that news of the balloon bombs' arrival never got back to Japan. He can be found online at www.christopherklein.com or on Twitter @historyauthor. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Sol recalls working on these interviews and just thinking my God, this one death caused so much pain, what if it was everyone and everything? [10] The balloons were constructed from four to five thin layers of washi, a durable paper derived from the paper mulberry (kzo) bush, which were glued together with konnyaku (Japanese potato) paste. Just after the war, reports came in from far and wide of balloon bomb incidents. It was hoped that the fires would create havoc, dampen American morale and disrupt the U.S. war effort," James M. Powles describes in a 2003 issue of the journal World War II. Japan halted the operation in April 1945. During WWII Japan launched its new war balloon weapon on America. What if we could clean them out? [10], Engineers next investigated the feasibility of balloon launches against the United States from the Japanese mainland, a distance of at least 6,000 miles (9,700km). In December, folks at a coal mine close to Thermopolis, Wyo., saw "a parachute in the air, with lighted flares and after hearing a whistling noise, heard an explosion and saw smoke in a draw near the mine about 6:15 pm," Powles writes. On Nov. 3, 1944, Japan unleashed some 9000 balloon bombs over a five-month period, all destined for mainland over the Pacific. I ran to one of the cars and asked is Dick dead? Elsie called to her husband back at the car. I put a hole in it and it went down. Not according to biology or history. Known as "fire balloons," these balloons were reportedly filled with hydrogen and carried bombs that weight as much as 33 pounds. Dottie McGinnis, sister of Dick and Joan Patzke, later recalled to her daughter in a family memory book the shock of coming home to cars gathered in the driveway, and the devastating news that two of her siblings and friends from the community were gone. A Japanese-launched balloon bomb like this one apparently exploded near Farmington in March 1945 during World War II. Unauthorized use is prohibited. The Fourth Air Force, Western Defense Command, and Ninth Service Command organized the "Firefly Project" with a number of Stinson L-5 Sentinel and Douglas C-47 Skytrain aircraft and 2,700 troops, including 200 paratroopers of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, who were stationed at critical points for use in firefighting missions. They were afraid of bacterial warfare.. This also helped prevent the Japanese from gaining any morale boost from news of a successful operation. To resolve this, engineers developed a sophisticated ballast system with 32 sandbags mounted around a cast aluminum wheel, with each sandbag connected to gunpowder blowout plugs. They also confirmed that there was no plan for biological or chemical warfare with the balloons. They launched over 9,000 of them into the jet stream hoping they would land all over the United States. [21], Two weeks after the discovery of the B-Type balloon off San Pedro, an A-Type balloon was found in the ocean off Kailua, Hawaii, on November 14. Following the end of the war, a team of American scientists arrived in Tokyo in September to create a report on Japanese scientific war research. The alleged balloon scrap could be evidence of a unique weapon in modern warfare: the Japanese Balloon Bomb. All rights reserved. [2] In 1933, Lieutenant General Reikichi Tada began an experimental balloon bomb program at Noborito, designated Fu-Go,[a] which proposed a hydrogen balloon 13 feet (4.0m) in diameter equipped with a time fuse and capable of delivering bombs up to 70 miles (110km). Which travel companies promote harmful wildlife activities? ", As described by J. David Rodgers of the Missouri University of Science and Technology, the balloon bombs "were 33 feet in diameter and could lift approximately 1,000 pounds, but the deadly portion of their cargo was a 33-lb anti-personnel fragmentation bomb, attached to a 64foot-long fuse that was intended to burn for 82 minutes before detonating. On Nov. 3, 1944, the first of more than 9,000 bomb-bearing balloons were released. Can we bring a species back from the brink?, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. [24] Through Firefly, the military used the United States Forest Service as a proxy, unifying fire suppression communications among federal and state agencies and modernizing the Forest Service through the influx of military personnel, equipment, and tactics. It looks like some kind of balloon. The pastor glanced over at the group gathered in a tight circle around the oddity 50 yards away. . After lumbering up a one-lane gravel road, Mitchell parked his sedan and began to unload picnic baskets and fishing rods as Elsie, five months pregnant, and the children explored a knoll sloping down to a nearby creek. Archie Mitchell and his wife Elsie packed five children from their Sunday school class at the Christian Missionary Alliance Church into their car and headed out on a fishing trip. When the balloons made landfall, there were no obvious clues as to where they originated. [6] On September 9, 1942, the latter was tested in the Lookout Air Raid, in which a Yokosuka E14Y seaplane was launched from a submarine off the Oregon coast. The project was stopped by 1935 and never completed. Sites marked with a black dot. Eventually American scientists helped solve the puzzle. Arakawa further found that the strongest winds blew from November to March at speeds approaching 200 miles per hour (320km/h). Against a scenic backdrop far removed from the war raging across the Pacific, Mitchell and five other children would become the firstand onlycivilians to die by enemy weapons on the United States mainland during World War II. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey. [7] The Oregon air raid, while not achieving its strategic objective, had demonstrated the potential of using unmanned balloons at a low cost to ignite large-scale forest fires. During World War II, the military thought the winds could save them once again since its scientists had discovered that a westerly river of air 30,000 feet highknown now as the jet streamcould transport hydrogen-filled balloons to North America in three to four days. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Japanese officers later told the Associated Press that they finally decided the weapon was worthless and the whole experiment useless, because they had repeatedly listened to [radio broadcasts] and had heard no further mention of the balloons. Ironically, the Japanese had ceased launching them shortly before the picnicking children had stumbled across one. At least eight were found in the 1940s, three in the 1950s, two in the 1960s, and one in the 1970s. [48] A carriage with a live bomb was found near Lumby, British Columbia, in 2014 and detonated by a Royal Canadian Navy ordnance disposal team. How a zoo break-in changed the life of an owl called Flaco, Naked mole rats are fertile until they die, study finds. Vincent Bud Whitehead, a counter-intelligence agent at Hanford, recalled chasing and bringing down another balloon from a small airplane: I threw a brick at it. The last few set sail around this time of year,. This prompted Army officers to contact military intelligence, commenting that the reporting included "a lot of mechanical detail on the thing, in addition to being a hell of a scare story". Terms of Use What the Japanese military lacked in technology, however, it made up for in geography. Japanese bomb-carrying balloons were 10 m (33 ft) in diameter and, when fully inflated, held about 540 m3 (19,000 cu ft) of hydrogen. For Rev. It was a tragic thing that happened, says Judy McGinnis-Sloan, Betty Mitchells niece. Map by Jerome N. Cookson, National Geographic; source: Dave Tewksbury, Hamilton College. In January 4, 1945, the Office of Censorship requested that newspaper editors and radio broadcasts not discuss the balloons. For two years the military produced thousands of balloons with skins of lightweight, but durable, paper made from mulberry wood that was stitched together by conscripted schoolgirls oblivious to their sinister purposes. Word of the Bly, Oregon, deathsand the strange mechanism that had killed them was overshadowed by the dizzying pace of the finale in the European theater. Balloon bombs aimed to be the silent assassins of World War II. [7], Also in September 1942, Major General Sueki Kusaba, who had served under Tada in the original balloon bomb program in the 1930s, was assigned to the laboratory and revived the Fu-Go project with a focus on longer flights. The silence was successful, as the Japanese only heard about one balloon incident in America, through the Chinese newspaperTakungpao. One of these bombs killed six . Japan launched nearly 10,000 such balloons from Nov. 3, 1944, to April 1945. Using that knowledge, in 1944 the Japanese military made what many experts consider the first intercontinental weapon system: explosive devices attached to paper balloons that were buoyed across the ocean by a jet stream. Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Japanese military launched more than 9,000 of the pilotless weapons in an operation codenamed Fu-Go. Most of the balloons fell harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean, but more than 300 of the low-tech white orbs made the 5,000-mile crossing and were spotted fluttering in the skies over the western United States and Canadafrom Holy Cross, Alaska, to Nogales, Arizona, and even as far east as Grand Rapids, Michigan. It wasnt until two weeks later, when more sea debris of the balloons were found, that the military realized its importance. "It . Upon retrieval, they noted its Japanese markings and alerted the FBI. But the eyewitness accounts of Archie Mitchell and others would not be widely known for weeks. Moments . Japanese fire balloon reinflated at Moffett Field, California, after it had been shot down by a Navy aircraft January 10, 1945. They discovered that a balloon could hypothetically travel on average 60 hours on this jet stream and successfully reach America. [8] According to U.S. interviews with Japanese officials after the war, the balloon bomb campaign was undertaken "almost exclusively for home propaganda purposes", with the Army having little expectation of effectiveness. These so-called "fire balloons" were filled with hydrogen and carrying bombs varying from 11 to 33 pounds, and were part of an experimental Japanese military offensive. (Inside Science)-- On March 10, 1945, five months before World War II ended in mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese accidentally came close to ending production of the radioactive materials needed for the atomic bombs-- using paper balloons. [8], Each launch pad consisted of anchor screws drilled into the ground and arranged in a circle the same diameter as the balloons. [36], In late March, the United Press (UP) wrote a detailed story on the balloons intended for its distributors across the country. In the months leading up to that spring day on Gearhart Mountain, there had been some warning signs, apparitions scattered around the western United States that were largely unexplainedat least to the general public. "When launched in groups they are said to have looked like jellyfish floating in the sky. While most are likely lost in the ocean, residents of the Pacific Northwest are advised to be careful when exploring uncharted territories. Additional launches followed in quick succession. Another bomb was espied a few days later near Kalispell, Mont. Citing the need to prevent panic and avoid giving the enemy location information that could allow them to hone their targeting, the U.S. military censored reports about the Japanese balloon bombs. Scientists just confirmed a 30-foot void first detected inside the monument years ago. Coincidentally, the largest consumer of energy on this power grid was theHanford siteof the Manhattan Project, which suddenly lost power. The balloon bombs were possibly viewed as a means of exacting some revenge for the extensive US bombing of Japanese cities, which were particularly vulnerable to incendiary attacks. And so ends a sensational chapter of the war, it noted. WARSAW, N.D. (KFYR) - The Chinese spy balloon isn't the first to cause a stir in the Upper Midwest. The reverse principle also appliedwhile the American public was largely in the dark in the early months of 1945, so were those who were launching these deadly weapons. According to Powles, "An investigation by local sheriffs determined that the object was not a parachute, but a large paper balloon with ropes attached along with a gas relief valve, a long fuse connected to a small incendiary bomb, and a thick rubber cord. The groundbreaking promise of cellular housekeeping. Witnesses remembered these giant jellyfish drifting off into the sky, Mikesh details. The bombs were ineffective as fire starters due to damp conditions, causing only minor damage and six deaths in a single civilian incident in Oregon in May 1945. While Archie was moving the car, Elsie and the children found the balloon and carriage, loaded with an anti-personnel bomb, on the ground. "It just made a big hole in the ground.". They did not yet know the extent or capability or scale of these balloon bombs. [12] Two submarines (I-34 and I-35) were prepared and two hundred balloons were produced by August 1943, but attack missions were postponed due to the need for submarines as weapons and food transports. Backup devices restored power to the site, but it took three days for its nuclear reactors to be brought to full capacity; the plutonium produced in the reactors was later used in Fat Man, the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki in August 1945.[42]. Yet overall, the military concluded that the attacks were scattered and aimless. As part of their report, they interviewed officials from Noborito who had worked on the Fu-Go program. His team of geologists knew it wasn't a type of sand found in North America or Hawaii. Japan's latest weapon, the balloon bombs were intended to cause damage and spread panic in the continental United States. In addition, B-29s had bombed the Showa Denkochemical plant, which heavily limited Japans hydrogen resources. Check out p ictures of the ghostly balloons here. On November 3, 1944, Japan releasedfusen bakudan, or balloon bombs, into the Pacific jet stream. Another bizarre explanation is that it was a balloon bomb launched by the Japanese. Japans bizarre WWII plan to bomb the continental U.S. by high-altitude balloons claimed its first and only victimsan Oregon church group in 1945. They confirmed that even if the war had continued on for another year, the balloons would not have been used in the upcoming winter winds. In the aftermath of the explosion, the small, lumber milling community would bear the added burden of enforced silence. [47], The remains of balloons have continued to be discovered after the war. The balloons would claim six American lives on May 5, 1945, but they were widely considered a military failure. Around 300 of them landed in the United States. After American aircraft bombed Tokyo and other Japanese cities during the Doolittle Raid of 1942, the Japanese military command wanted to retaliate in kind but its manned aircraft were incapable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. At the same time as Bly residents were absorbing the loss they had endured, over the spring and summer of 1945 more than 60 Japanese cities burned including the infamous firebombing of Tokyo. Cookie Settings, Photo courtesy Robert Mikesh Collection, National Museum of the Pacific War, Japans World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America, a military bomb disposal unit had to blow it up, Kids Start Forgetting Early Childhood Around Age 7, Archaeologists Discover Wooden Spikes Described by Julius Caesar, 5,000-Year-Old Tavern With Food Still Inside Discovered in Iraq, Artificial Sweetener Tied to Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke, Study Finds, The Surprisingly Scientific Roots of Monkey Bars. Omaha seemed relatively safe until one night in April when a Japanese bomb dropped in Dundee. Then, over the next four weeks, various reports of the balloons popped up all over the Western half of America, as Americans began spotting the cloth or hearing explosions. The team was co-headed byKarl T. Compton, a longtime scientific advisor to the US government, and Edward Moreland, a scientist hand-picked by General MacArthur. Atmospheric uncertainty made for an uncontrolled attack. All Rights Reserved. Published: Feb. 6, 2023 at 5:38 PM PST. When there were no reports of actual damage in the US, the Japanese media had made up fake stories about the weakening of American resolve. The balloons rose to about 30,000 feet, where winds aloft transported them across the Pacific Ocean. [39] The Fu-Go balloon was the first weapon system to have intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest-ranged attacks in the history of warfare at the time. "Distribution of the balloon bombs was quite large," says Nason. All in all, the Japanese military probably launched 6,000 or more of the wicked weapons. The balloon did not have any major consequences. The Japanese military had been tinkering with the idea of a balloon weapon since 1933, considering designs which would drop bombs or shower propaganda leaflets behind enemy lines after flying a fixed distance, as well as a balloon large enough to carry a soldier. [Courtesy: National . Map with recorded balloon bomb attacks. Hundreds were discovered up and down the west coast, and even as far inland as Indiana and Texas. Archie and Elsye had taken them on a Sunday school picnic up on Gearhart Mountain. Mitchell would go on to marry the Betty Patzke, the elder sibling out of ten children in Dick and Joan Patzkes family (they lost another brother fighting in the war), and fulfill the dream he and Elsye once shared of going overseas as missionaries. Experts estimate it took between 30 and 60 hours for a balloon bomb to reach North America's West Coast. [24] A report by U.S. investigators, based on interviews with Imperial Army officials after the war, concluded that there had been no plans for chemical or biological payloads. However successful censorship had been in discouraging further launches, this very censorship made it difficult to warn the people of the bomb danger, writes Mikesh. [45] The surrounding Mitchell Recreation Area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.
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