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Japanese Balloon Battle
mw2040 writes "Slate reports on a little-known method used by the Japanese during WWII - hydrogen-filled paper balloons with deadly payloads floated without a guidance-system across the Pacific. Both amazing low-tech warfare and a cautionary tale about censorship during wartime. More links (even one for our neighbors to the North) (shamelessly stolen from the article)."
Precision isn't always a major requirement. For example dropping thousands of bomblets that are designed to detonate upon handling on a city could have a devastating effect on morale whilst doing relatively little damage to buildings and infrastructure. Kids love picking up unidentified stuff, and people get scared when there's a good chance that they might pick up something that's going to blow up.
Decode these
I'm finding it hard to believe that this comment isn't a troll.
Either that or it displays a very real ignorence of the eithics of bombing during WWII.
WWII was an ugly war. Every nation involved did thing which were, then and now, considered unacceptable. Nations still do today. Unfortunatly many still operate on the principle that the end justifies the means. I think this is actually one of the tenents of Neoconservatisim.
May the Maths Be with you!
It was quite an engineering marvel, even if the results were sickening(to this day, parts of rural China will still periodically get outbreaks of the plague because of these weapons labs),
Yes, China and India still have plague outbreaks from time to time. But it's absurd to blame that on Japanese weapons of 50 years ago rather than the more obvious lack of sufficient sanitation in rural areas.
After the Rape of Nanking, its very hard to have any sympathy for any Japanese. [my emphasis]
Because all Japanese supported it? I was under the - apparently mistaken - impression that pre-war and wartime Japan was a dictatorship. Or is this another stunning example of generalising to avoid making real points?
This is where the serious fun begins.
In an unfortunate coincidence, US made cluster bombs looked very much like, and were the same color as, the "meals ready to eat" packages we air dropped for humanitarian missions. It went poorly. They've since changed the color of the bomblets.
-B
Though this article was intended to demonstrate the dangers of wartime censorship, the actual history demonstrates a quite different viewpoint.
The ballon attack plan was never to cut power lines and blow up family picnics. The Japanese had been working for many years on the effective use of biological weapons, and had every intention of using them with the balloons once they had some idea of whether they were reaching the US. Blowing up picnics should have provided them immediate, specific targeting feedback through the US media - much better targeting intelligence than would have been provided by a bizarre outbreak of bubonic plague in the Pacific Northwest.
Slate's having compared this to burying memos and hiding prisoner abuse scandals, secrets that are kept solely to protect political interests rather than military ones, demonstrates not only a catastrophic failure to understand history, but further weakens the credibility of anyone speaking out against that very same modern politically driven censorship.
Nice going, Slate.
who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.
The casualties are noteworthy because they're the only people killed inside the United States by a foreign military since the Brits burned DC in 1812. There was fighting in Alaska and (obviously) Hawaii during WWII, but they weren't states yet.
-B