Fire balloon

A blaze airship (風船爆弾 fūsen bakudan?, lit. "balloon bomb"), or Fu-Go, was a weapon launched by Japan during World War II. A hydrogen airship with a bulk capricious from a 12-kilogram (26 lb) damaging to one 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb and four 5 kg (11 lb) damaging accessories attached, they were advised as a bargain weapon advised to accomplish use of the jet beck over the Pacific Ocean and wreak calamity on Canadian and American cities, forests, and farmland.

The balloons were almost abortive as weapons but were acclimated in one of the few attacks on North America during World War II.

Between November 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched over 9,300 blaze balloons. About 300 airship bombs were begin or empiric in North America, killing six humans and causing a baby bulk of damage.1

Overview

From backward 1944 until aboriginal 1945, the Japanese launched over 9,300 of these blaze balloons, of which 300 were begin or empiric in the U.S. Despite the top hopes of their designers, the balloons were abortive as weapons, and acquired alone six deaths (from one individual incident)—a annihilate bulk of 0.067%—and a baby bulk of damage.

Japanese bomb-carrying balloons were 10 m (33 ft) in bore and, if absolutely inflated, captivated about 540 m3 (19,000 cu ft) of hydrogen. Their barrage sites were amid on the east bank of the capital Japanese island of Honshū.

Japan appear the aboriginal of these bomb-bearing balloons on November 3, 1944. They were begin in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Michigan2 and Iowa, as able-bodied as Mexico and Canada.

General Kusaba's men launched over 9,000 balloons throughout the advance of the project. The Japanese accepted 10% (around 900) of them to ability America, which is aswell what is currently believed by researchers.citation needed About 300 airship bombs were begin or empiric in America. It is acceptable that added airship bombs landed in austere areas of North America.

The endure one was launched in April 1945.

Origins

The airship advance was the fourth advance the Japanese had fabricated on the American mainland. The fūsen bakudan advance was, however, the a lot of ardent of the attacks. The abstraction was the abstraction of the Imperial Japanese Army's Ninth Army's Number Nine Research Laboratory, beneath Major General Sueyoshi Kusaba, with plan performed by Technical Major Teiji Takada and his colleagues. The balloons were advised to accomplish use of a able accepted of winter air that the Japanese had apparent abounding at top ambit and acceleration over their country, which after became accepted as the jet stream.3

The jet beck appear by Wasaburo Oishi4 blew at altitudes aloft 9.15 km (30,000 ft) and could backpack a ample airship beyond the Pacific in three days, over a ambit of added than 8,000 kilometers (5,000 mi). Such balloons could backpack damaging and high-explosive bombs to the United States and bead them there to annihilate people, abort buildings, and alpha backwoods fires.3

The affairs were diffuse because the abstruse problems were acute. A hydrogen airship expands if broiled by the sunlight, and rises; again it affairs if cooled at night, and falls. The engineers devised a ascendancy arrangement apprenticed by an altimeter to abandon ballast. If the airship descended beneath 9 km (30,000 ft), it electrically accursed a allegation to cut apart sandbags. The sandbags were agitated on a cast-aluminium four-spoked caster and alone two at a time to accumulate the caster balanced.3

Similarly, if the airship rose aloft about 11.6 km (38,000 ft), the altimeter activated a valve to aperture hydrogen. The hydrogen was aswell vented if the balloon's burden accomplished a analytical level.3

The ascendancy arrangement ran the airship through three canicule of flight. At that time, it was acceptable over the US, and its balance was expended. The final beam of armament appear the bombs, aswell agitated on the wheel, and lit a 19.5 beat (64 ft) continued agglutinate that afraid from the balloon's equator. After 84 minutes, the agglutinate accursed a beam bomb that destroyed the balloon.3

The airship had to backpack about 454 kilograms (1,000 lb) of gear. At aboriginal the balloons were fabricated of accepted rubberized silk, but bigger envelopes had beneath leakage. An adjustment went out for ten thousand balloons fabricated of "washi", a cardboard acquired from mulberry bushes that was closed and actual tough. It was alone accessible in squares about the admeasurement of a alley map, so it was alert calm in three or four laminations application comestible konnyaku (devil's tongue) paste. Hungry workers blanket the adhesive and ate it.citation needed Abounding workers were able teen-aged academy girls.5 They accumulated the cardboard in abounding locations of Japan. Ample calm spaces, such as sumo halls, complete stages, and theatres, were appropriate for the envelope assembly.3

Similar, but cruder, balloons were aswell acclimated by Britain to advance Germany amid 1942 and 1944.

Offensive

Initial tests took abode in September 1944 and accepted satisfactory. However, afore affairs were complete, B-29s began their raids on the Japanese home islands. The attacks were somewhat bootless at aboriginal but still fueled the admiration for animus sparked by the Doolittle Raid.

The aboriginal airship was appear in aboriginal November 1944. Major Takada watched as the airship flew advancement and over the sea: "The amount of the airship was arresting alone for several account afterward its absolution until it achromatic abroad as a atom in the dejected sky like a daytime star."

The Japanese chose to barrage the attack in the alpha of fall, if the jet beck is strongest. This bound the adventitious of the damaging bombs causing backwoods fires, as by that time of year, the forests were about too clammy to bolt blaze calmly or covered in snow.

The balloons connected to access in Oregon, Kansas, Iowa, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, the Yukon, Northwest Territories,6 Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, Nevada (including one that landed abreast Yerington that was apparent by cowboys who cut it up and acclimated it as a hay tarp, addition by a prospector abreast Elko who delivered it to bounded authorities on the aback of a donkey, and addition that was attempt down by Army Air Corps planes abreast Reno). In all, seven blaze balloons were angry in to the Army in Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Northern Mexico, Michigan, and even the outskirts of Detroit.7 Fighters accolade to ambush the balloons, but they had little success; the balloons flew actual top and decidedly fast, and fighters destroyed beneath than 20. Among the US units which fought the blaze airship was the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion. The 555th suffered one accident and 22 injuries angry fires.

By aboriginal 1945, Americans were acceptable acquainted that something aberrant was traveling on. Balloons had been sighted and explosions heard, from California to Alaska. Something that appeared to assemblage to be like a parachute descended over Thermopolis, Wyoming. A breach bomb exploded, and armament was begin about the crater. A P-38 Lightning attempt a airship down abreast Santa Rosa, California; addition was apparent over Santa Monica; and $.25 of washi cardboard were begin in the streets of Los Angeles.

In February and March 1945, P-40 fighter pilots from 133 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force operating out of RCAF Patricia Bay (Victoria, British Columbia), intercepted and destroyed two blaze balloons,8 On 21 February, Pilot Officer E. E. Maxwell While attempt down a balloon, which landed on Sumas Mountain, in Washington State. On 10 March, Pilot Officer J. O. Patten destroyed a airship abreast Saltspring Island, BC.

On March 10, 1945, one of the endure cardboard balloons descended in the about of the Manhattan Project's assembly ability at the Hanford Site. This airship acquired a abbreviate ambit in the powerlines bartering electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps, but advancement assurance accessories adequate ability about immediately.9

Two landed aback in Japan but acquired no damage.citation needed Two cardboard balloons were recovered in a individual day in Modoc National Forest, east of Mount Shasta. Abreast Medford, Oregon, a airship bomb exploded in aerial flames. The Navy begin balloons in the ocean. Airship envelopes and accoutrement were begin in Montana, Arizona, Saskatchewan, in the Northwest Territories, and in the Yukon Territory. Eventually, an Army fighter managed to advance one of the balloons about in the air and force it to arena intact, area it was advised and filmed. Japanese advertising broadcasts appear abundant fires and an American accessible in panic, declaring casualties as top as 10,000.citation needed

Allied investigation

Despite their low success, the authorities were afraid about the balloons. There was the adventitious that they ability get lucky. Much worse, the Americans had some ability that the Japanese had been alive on biological weapons, a lot of accurately at the abominable Unit 731 website at Pingfan in Manchuria, and a airship accustomed biowarfare agents could be a absolute threat.

Nobody believed the balloons could accept appear anon from Japan. It was anticipation that the balloons accept to be advancing from North American beaches, launched by landing parties from submarines. Wilder theories speculated that they could accept been launched from German captive of war camps in the U.S., or even from Japanese-American bondage centers.

Some of the sandbags alone by the fusen bakudan were taken to the Military Geology Unit of the US Geological Survey for investigation. Alive with Colonel Sidman Poole of U.S. Army Intelligence, the advisers of the Military Geological Unit began diminutive and actinic assay of the beach from the sandbags to actuate types and administration of diatoms and added diminutive sea creatures, and its mineral composition. The beach could not be advancing from American beaches, nor from the mid-Pacific. It had to be advancing from Japan. The geologists ultimately bent the absolute beaches in Japan the beach had been taken from. By this time, it was mostly irrelevant, back by aboriginal bounce the airship abhorrent was about over.

edit Columnist coverup

The bombs acquired little damage, but their abeyant for abolition and fires was large. The bombs aswell had a abeyant cerebral aftereffect on the American people. The U.S. action was to accumulate the Japanese from alive of the airship bombs' effectiveness. In 1945 Newsweek ran an commodity blue-blooded "Balloon Mystery" in their January 1 issue, and a agnate adventure appeared in a bi-weekly the next day. The Office of Censorship again beatific a bulletin to newspapers and radio stations to ask them to accomplish no acknowledgment of balloons and balloon-bomb incidents, lest the adversary get the abstraction that the balloons ability be able weapons. Cooperating with the desires of the government, the columnist did not broadcast any airship bomb incidents.10 Perhaps as a result, the Japanese alone abstruse of one bomb's extensive Wyoming, landing and declining to explode, so they chock-full the launches afterwards beneath than six months.

The columnist blackout in the U.S. was aerial afterwards the aboriginal deaths to ensure that the accessible was warned, admitting accessible ability of the blackmail could accept possibly prevented it.10

Japanese abandon the project

With no affirmation of any effect, General Kusaba was ordered to cease operations in April 1945, assertive that the mission had been a absolute fiasco. The amount was large, and in the concurrently the B-29s had destroyed two of the three hydrogen plants bare by the project. The endure blaze airship was launched in April 1945.

Single lethal attack

On May 5, 1945, a abundant woman and 5 accouchement were dead if they apparent a airship bomb that had landed in the backwoods of Gearhart Mountain in Southern Oregon. Pastor Archie Mitchell and his abundant wife Elsie collection up to Gearhart Mountain with 5 of their Sunday academy acceptance (aged 11–14) to accept a picnic, and Elsie and the accouchement got out of the car at Bly, Oregon, while Archie collection on to acquisition a parking spot. As Elsie and the accouchement looked for a acceptable barbecue spot, they saw a aberrant airship lying on the ground. As the accumulation approached the balloon, a bomb absorbed to it exploded and Elsie and all 5 accouchement were killed. Archie witnessed the access and anon ran to the arena and acclimated his easily to extinguish the blaze on his wife's and the children's clothing, but he could not save them.1213 These are the alone accepted deaths acquired by the airship bombs, and aswell the alone accepted deaths in the continental U.S. as the aftereffect of adversary activity during World War II.

Military cadre accustomed on the arena aural hours, and saw that the airship itself still had snow beneath it, while the surrounding breadth did not. They assured that the airship bomb had drifted to the arena several weeks earlier, and had lain there undisturbed until begin by the group.

Elsie Mitchell is active in the Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington. A memorial, the Mitchell Monument, is amid at the point of the explosion, 110 kilometers (70 mi) northeast of Klamath Falls in the Mitchell Recreation Area. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. Several Japanese civilians accept visited the cairn to action their affliction for the deaths that took abode here, and several blooming copse accept been buried about the cairn as a attribute of peace.13

Hundreds of airship bombs may accept landed but were never begin and may still aggregate unexploded ordnance.citation needed

Post World War II

The charcoal of balloons connected to be apparent afterwards the war. Eight were begin in the 1940s, three in the 1950s and two in the 1960s. In 1978, a balance ring, fuses and barometers were begin abreast Agness, Oregon and are now allotment of the accumulating of the Coos Historical & Maritime Museum.14