Their deaths caused the military to break its silence and begin issuing warnings to not tamper with such devices. After several hundred tests, the Japanese released the first balloon bomb, named fugo, or "wind-ship weapon," on November 3, 1944. The second battalion of 700 men in three squadrons operated six launch stations at Ichinomiya, Chiba; and the third battalion of 600 men in two squadrons operated six launch stations at Nakoso, Fukushima. Each balloon was loaded with four incendiaries. Military personnel who arrived on the scene observed that the balloon had snow beneath it, unlike the surrounding area, and concluded that it had lain there undisturbed for weeks until discovered. Archie Mitchell, and a group of Sunday school children from their tight-knit community as they set out for nearby Gearhart Mountain in southern Oregon. [14], In late 1942, the Imperial General Headquarters had directed the Navy to begin its own balloon bomb program in parallel with the Army project. [20] The best time to launch was just after the passing of a high-pressure front, and wind conditions were most suitable for several hours prior to the onshore breezes at sunrise. Long COVID patients turn to unproven treatments, Why evenings can be harder on people with dementia, This disease often goes under-diagnosedunless youre white, This sacred site could be Georgias first national park, See glow-in-the-dark mushrooms in Brazils other rainforest, 9 things to know about Holi, Indias most colorful festival, Anyone can discover a fossil on this beach. 7777https://youtu.be . I got out there and I start tromping all over that thing and got all the gas out of it. A huge explosion rocked the placid mountainside. At the end they all were dead except Archie. Like most in the community, the Patzke family had no inkling that the dangers of war would reach their own backyard in rural Oregon. Engineers hoped that the weapons impact would be compounded by forest fires, inflicting terror through both the initial explosion and an ensuing conflagration. 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. They appeared from northern Mexico to Alaska, and from Hawaii to Michigan. By the end of May 1945, however, the military decided in the interest of public safety to reveal the true cause of the explosion and warn Americans to beware of any strange white balloons they might encounterinformation divulged a month too late for the victims in Oregon. One of these bombs killed six . They designed balloon bombs to be launched from Japanese submarines on the West Coast of America. Fu-Go Balloon Bombs were experimental weapons launched by the Japanese late in 1944, destined to explore on American soil. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. hide caption. ", This screen grab from a Navy training film features an elaborate balloon bomb. Once aloft, some of the ingeniously designed incendiary devices weighted by expendable sandbags floated from Japan to the U.S. mainland and into Canada. After bombs of Japanese origin were found, it was believed that the balloons were launched from coastal submarines. The balloons weren't designed to navigate themselves and that's part of the wonder of this Japans offensive. The campaign was halted, with no intention to revive it when winds restarted in late 1945. Not only were the minister and his wife, Elsie, expecting their first child, but he had also accepted a new post as pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in the sleepy logging town of Bly, Oregon. [11] The original proposal called for night launches from submarines located 600 miles (970km) off of the U.S. coast, a distance the balloons could cover in 10 hours. [25] In the "Lightning Project", health and agricultural officers, veterinarians, and 4-H clubs were instructed to report any strange new diseases of crops or livestock caused by potential biological warfare. Lieutenant Commander Kiyoshi Tanaka headed an group that developed a 30-foot (9.1m) rubberized silk balloon, designated the B-Type (in contrast to the Army's A-Type). I radioed in that I had found it and got it. They wouldnt have been if that tragedy hadnt happened, Betty Mitchell told Sol in an interview. Fu-Go ([], fug [heiki], lit. In addition, B-29s had bombed the Showa Denkochemical plant, which heavily limited Japans hydrogen resources. Just then there was a big explosion. Follow me @NPRHistoryDept; lead me by writing to lweeks@npr.org. But forensic geology, then in its infancy, was able to pinpoint Japan as the point of launch. It's. The girls worked long, exhausting shifts, their contributions to this wartime project shrouded in silence. OMAHA, Neb. ", "Japan's Secret WWII Weapon: Balloon Bombs," by Johnna Rizzo, On a Wind and a Prayer, a film by Michael White, "Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America," by Robert C. Mikesh, Fu-go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America by Ross Coen, ------------------------------------------------------------------------------. As one of the children reached down to touch it, the minister began to shout a warning but never had a chance to finish. 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. On Paper Wings shows them meeting face-to-face in Bly decades later. Japan launched more than 9,300 paper balloons carrying bombs over the Pacific Ocean from late 1944 to early 1945 to attack the United States, including Iowa, in an attempt to instill fear and terror during World War II. Balloon bombs aimed to be the silent assassins of World War II. The trip took several days. I put a hole in it and it went down. The firebombing of Japanese cities by U.S. B 29 four-engine bombers destroyed two of the three hydrogen plants needed by the project. hide caption. The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. Japan launched nearly 10,000 such balloons from Nov. 3, 1944, to April 1945. The balloon bombs were 70 feet tall with a 33-foot diameter paper canopy connected to the main device by shroud lines. Schoolgirls were conscripted to labor in factories manufacturing the balloons, which were made of endless reams of paper and held together by a paste made of konnyaku, a potato-like vegetable. 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". Utilising the jet stream, Japanese forces launched these hydrogen f. They said a second factor was the lack of information about whether the balloons even reached America and caused damage. 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. Seeking to deepen their newly planted roots, the Mitchells invited five children from their Sunday school classall between the ages of 11 and 14on a picnic amid the bubbling brooks and ponderosa pines of nearby Gearhart Mountain on the beautiful spring day of May 5, 1945. It wasnt until two weeks later, when more sea debris of the balloons were found, that the military realized its importance. But it shut down the plant cold, and it took us about three days to get it back up to full power again.. 1. 1. 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. [19] The Army estimated that 10 percent of the balloons would survive the journey across the Pacific Ocean. How did this mountain lion reach an uninhabited island? Another source of concern was the comic strip The Adventures of Smilin' Jack, which a few weeks later depicted a plane crashing into a Japanese balloon that exploded and started a fire upon falling to the ground. The balloons not only required engineering acumen, but a massive logistical effort. [41] Furthermore, much of the western U.S. received disproportionately more precipitation in 1945 than in any other year in the decade, with some areas receiving 4 to 10 inches (10 to 25cm) of precipitation more than normal. Prompted by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942, the Japanese developed the balloon bombs as a means of direct reprisal against the U.S. mainland. Sherman Shoemaker, Edward Engen, Jay Gifford, Joan Patzke, and Dick Patzke, all between 11 to 14 years old, were killed, along with Rev. The currents had been investigated by Japanese scientist Wasaburo Oishi in the 1920s; in late 1943, the Army consulted Hidetoshi Arakawa of the Central Meteorological Observatory, who used Oishi's data to extrapolate the air currents across the Pacific Ocean and estimate that a balloon released in winter and that maintained an altitude of 30,000 to 35,000 feet (9,100 to 10,700m) could reach the North American continent in 30 to 100 hours. 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. Can we bring a species back from the brink? [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. The balloons were supposed to blow themselves up after releasing anti-personnel and. [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). 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. In the aftermath of the explosion, the small, lumber milling community would bear the added burden of enforced silence. [9] Sand from the sandbags was studied by the Military Geology Unit of the United States Geological Survey, revealing mineral and diatom compositions that corresponded to Ichinomiya. Since the 13th century when a pair of cyclones foiled the fleets of Kublai Khans Mongol invaders, the Japanese had long believed that the gods had dispatched divine winds, called kamikaze, to protect them. Balloon bombs aimed to be the silent assassins of World War II. Eventually American scientists helped solve the puzzle. Hisscholarly report on these Fu-Go balloonsis a definitive work on this obscure topic. Just a few months ago a couple of forestry workers in Lumby, British. 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. [19], The first balloons were launched at 0500 on November 3, 1944. "It would have been far too dangerous to move it. The Japanese Military Scientific Laboratory originally conceived of the idea of balloon bombs in 1933. They discovered that a balloon could hypothetically travel on average 60 hours on this jet stream and successfully reach America. May 5, 2021. 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. As recently as 2014, aballoon was discovered in Canada, and it was technically functional. Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. Toronto Star Archives/Toronto Star via Getty Images. Department of Geological Sciences & Engineering. total war effort mindset preached by the Japanese Empire, an interview with Stephane Groueff in 1965, Fu-Go: The Curious History of Japan's Balloon Bomb Attack on America, Japans World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America. They sent a bus up with all of this specially trained personnel, gloves, full contamination suits, masks. [29], On January 4, 1945, the U.S. Office of Censorship sent a confidential memo to newspaper editors and radio broadcasters asking that they give no publicity to balloon incidents; this proved highly effective, with the agency sending another memo three months later stating that cooperation had been "excellent" and that "there is no question that your refusal to publish or broadcast information about these balloons has baffled the Japanese, annoyed and hindered them, and has been an important contribution to security. 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. The final balloon design was 33 feet (10m) in diameter, and had a gas volume of 19,000 cubic feet (540m3) and a lifting capacity of 300 pounds (140kg) at operating altitude. [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. Attached were bombs composed of sensors, powder-packed tubes, triggering devices and other simple and complex mechanisms. In February 17, 1945, the Japanese used the Domei News Agency to broadcast directly to America in English and claimed that 500 or 10,000 casualties (the news accounts differ) had been inflicted and fires caused, all from their fire balloons. [47], The remains of balloons have continued to be discovered after the war.
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