Bizarre WWII Weapon: Balloon Bombs

Oregon memorial to the lives
lost due to the balloon bombs
Courtesy of Gary Halvorson

During World War II, Japan and the United States were scrambling to outdo each other on the battlefields, in the air and with surprise attacks on often mostly civilian targets. It started with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which in turn triggered the Doolittle raids against Japan. Most people believe that the next event that involved a surprise attack was the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, before that occurred, the Japanese bombed American soil over a period of five months.

After the Doolittle raids, the Japanese were looking for a way to retaliate against the United States. They eventually came up with a plan to build thousands of balloons and attach 15-kilogram bombs to them. The balloons and the bombs would then be sent across the Pacific to the United States. The project took nearly two years to complete and required the closing of schools so that children could help in the construction of the balloons, of which there were 9,000 total. The Japanese called these devices Fu-Go weapons.

The first bomb balloons were sent on November 3, 1944. They were specially designed to stay between 30,000 and 38,000 feet in altitude so that they would remain in the jet stream for long enough to reach the United States. They were not equipped with navigational systems and they weren’t capable of guiding themselves. The idea was that they could just ride the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and to the United States. Nearly one thousand of the balloons actually reached their destination or Canada. What happened to the other eight thousand is uncertain, though it is thought that they simply fell out of the air and into the Pacific.

The bombs that did land in the states did relatively little damage. However, some of the balloons were equipped with incendiary bombs that did cause some forest fires in the northwest United States. The United States government found it wise to cover up the success of the bombing in regards to the media. If the information had reached the Japanese, they certainly would have continued the bombing or possibly modified the balloon bombs to make them more deadly. As it was, they continued sending the balloons until April of 1945 and five people died as a result. The victims were killed when they were picnicking and saw one of the balloons caught in a tree. They attempted to pull the balloon out and the bomb exploded, killing four children and their mother.

There is the possibility that there are live balloon bombs in the United States that haven’t been detected, as of yet. There are still eight thousand balloon bombs that are unaccounted for. Even if it is likely that they fell into the Pacific, there is still a strong chance that some of them made it and are waiting in remote locations.

Sources

Japanese Balloon Bombs, retrieved 10/02/09, japaneseballoonbombs.com

Balloon Bombs: Japan’s answer to Doolittle, retrieved 10/02/09, nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheet.asp?id=1492