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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)."
Hydrogen filled Paper Ballons? That sound like a floating fireball to me..
Nothing wrong with censorship during a war for survival. First order of the day is always to survive.
One thing you will not find in Japanese schoolbooks is an historical account of the massacre at Nanking. In 1937, the Japanese attacked China and killed thousands of innocents in Nanking. Today, it's as if it never happened. In fact, I have never learned of this myself until very recently.
This kind of censorship is what we need to be aware of today. Historical records must not be skewed so that they may not tell all sides of the story - always make sure you know where your sources are coming from. This is one of the many reasons why history repeats itself.
To this end the Germans disassembled a light bomber, brought it to the arctic in a sub...put it together and tried to hit a munitions facility north of Minneapolis. It ran out of fuel and crashed within 10 miles of the suspected target. Imagine the psychological impact of a heartland attack like that.
Of course there is the well known U-boat activity from Florida to Maine. People living on the coast saw many instances of ship aflame.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Modern technology could improve the precision. Put a gps device (something like this ought not be too expensive in that kind of volume.) in it which would cause it to drop when it reaches a certain region. Calculate where the winds will take it depending where you release it.
Or do it on the really cheap and have some sort of string or something which would weaken over time and cause the payload to drop, after roughly the right amount of time.
At the very least you could VASTLY increase the number of balloons which made it to North America.
I would not be surprised if you could pick your target within 100 miles, if you were really careful.
Considering the low cost and low risk of this approach, it could very well be worthwhile.
Try this on for size: a chemical laden balloon launched from a suburban area, carried by the prevailing winds into downtown until it smacks into a building, or some timer set to go off at roughly the right time (what, an hour or so), drops the payload. During a major event, of course. (New Year's in a major city. You could do it at night.) You could do this and not even come close to being caught. You'd probably have to release a few to hit the crowds with just one, though, even if you had figured out where it would go.
It seems that ingenious Brits were ready to send pidgeons over the front line on balloons as well. I can't quite remember what for - they were either carrier pidgeons for use by secret agents or they carried tiny bombs on them to cause havoc amongst the enemy forces (and I guess they wanted to be sure those ones weren't carrier/racing pidgeons.. /.er can find it!
I wish I could find a website for you.. maybe another Brit
But no, that wasn't good enough for the US. They had to have the unconditional surrender of the Japanese.
There was no reason to drop the bomb.
This has been reported many times over the past few years.
Some of the interesting facts regarding this is that the Japanese discovered the Jet stream during the war, using it to distribute the balloons to the US.
Another interesting fact is that the US traced where exactly the balloons were being launched from by small samples of dirt that had contaminated the payloads. The US used pre-war mineralogical surveys to find the exact beach they were being lauched from, and eventually took care of it, so to speak.
Wait a minute. I got it. You could play with your magic nose goblins.
Just as unguided as the 1000 plane raids staged over Germany. As unguided as the incendiary raids over Japan. Just because we're th good guys didn't mean we didn't do the same thing.
My father told me stories about these ballons when I was a kid, during WWII. The ballons where kind of a running joke at that time. At least that is how he made it sound. Apperently some did actual explode, but of course the NEVER hit anything.
There was no mention from him or any one else in the room about cencership. Which leads me to wonder was there REALY any goverment cover up? Or was it just not importent enought for any one to realy care, one way or the other.
There are many much more IMPORTANT things that where covered up. Like the U.S. army company whiped out by thier own troops durring a landing.,
anon, anon, anon
Who cares about ballons?
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
The Canadian war museum, http://www.civilization.ca/cwm/cwme.asp has one on such captured balloon on display. They also have a map showing where each balloon landed. The source of the balloons were eventually tracked down by studying the sand they used for ballast - it had a unique composition particular to one area in Japan. From this information they were able to later able to pinpoint the location the factory and put it out of commission.
The Japanese were the first to discover the existance of the jet stream, and take advantage of it.
My rights don't need management.
...weapons i would have to say that the pigeon guided missile is my favourite.
I had an imaginary sig once, he said I was a loser and ran off.
The Plutonium Files is an account written by the journalist who uncovered and eventually forced the declassification of the story of about 60 years of secret radiation-exposure experiments by the US government on thousands of unknowing civilians and military personnel, including e.g. feeding pregnant women at a hospital a 'new infant formula' to test the effects of radiation on the foetus. These programmes have now actually been declassified and apologised for by the Department of Energy under Clinton, but few people actually know about them and they are definitely not written about in textbooks!
There was an oil refinery near Santa Barabara that was shelled by a Japanese U-boat during WWII, as well. Just because the government says it didn't happen, doesn't mean it didn't actually happen.
Why do most mainstream news articles seem to censor themselves by giving us six paragraphs of patting one self ( the author that is) on the back and rhetorical questions before hitting the meat of the story?
About half way down the article they finally mention the balloon bombs but by that time I was already bored to death. Maybe the Japanese should have used dullard journalism on us... it would have been more effective.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Biowarfare was the big worry. As a carrier for a livestock or agriculture disease (or even people), one successful payload could have caused a lot of disruption. Look at what one case of Mad Cow disease did recently. The allies were certainly doing their own research into stuff like Rinderpest and delivery systems, so they knew it was possible.
Hmm, interesting. I just Googled and rinderpest to check the spelling. I was about to search on "rinderpest biowarfare" and it occured to me that if I was running things (eek), I'd make sure searches like that got filed somewhere.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
We had a fella from Wyclyffe Bible Translators come out and give a demo of what technology is being used in the missionary field. One of his exhibits was a red plastic bag -- looked somthing like a WalMart bag, that had the entire book of John printed on it. Missionaries are filling these bags w/ helium and sending them into Korea and other places.
You need a lot of chemicals to kill any number of people. It took over 1 tonne per soldier killed in WWI.
And remember the Tokyo subway gas attack and how ineffective it was? The same amount of C4 in a place as crowded as that would have done a lot more damage.
Why do you think terrorists stick to explosives and guns?
The Real Domestic TerroristsThis guy was arrested, put in jail for a year, his wife and kids deported, then found innocent and set free.
It's gotten pretty widespread press this week. Democracy Now | Jury Acquits Idaho Webmaster Charged With Terrorism For Hosting Anti-American Websites
Synergy is your friend
I think that Mikhail Kalashnikov--the designer of the AK-47--really lucked out when he designed that famous assault rifle.
Despite his denials, I still believe that Kalashnikov may have seen captured examples of the Sturmgewehr 43 and 44 weapons that the Germans used during World War II and applied some of the German weapon concepts into the AK-47. But the AK-47 incorporated one thing that made it famous: its firing chamber mechanism was designed to be extremely reliable even in the worst conditions of mud, snow and high humidity. The result was a superb weapon, one that was much-lauded for its extreme reliability and reasonable accuracy in the long-barrel versions.
Meanwhile, the M16 was designed to such tight tolerances that it made the weapon quite susceptible to firing chamber jamming in poor operating conditions, as the Americans found out much to their chagrin in the mud and high humidity of Vietnam. That's why the M16 evolved into the much more reliable M16A1, which had a number of design changes to improve its reliability under poor conditions.
By the way, the appearance of the M16 made to Soviets want to develop an assault rifle that used smaller caliber ammunition; the result was the AK-74, another outstanding weapon, though one that was developed surprisingly with some opposition from Mr. Kalashikov, who thought going to the 5.45 mm calibre cartridge wasn't such a good idea.
There is an annual canoe tournament between Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and US Navy Seals. To the best of my knowledge, the US Navy Seals has never finished better than fourth despite carrying better and more expensive equipment than any other participant nation.
Would be interesting to have the Russian Spetsnaz participate in that tournament as well, for nothing else than to demonstrate how easily they would win I suppose.
Mod me as troll and see if I care...
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
The war was a bit more substantial than we heard in the press regards domestic deaths. There were several locations where U-Boats shelled both costs, At Battery Park in New York is a monument to the war on the east coast with a name or two (Thousands) that were killed by German actions near or on shore.
These myths and the argument for security are just nuts. The internet has ended any such secrets. I do think some wisdom in presenting is in order but frankly the day of doing something secretly is OVER!
My parents witnessed one of the Jap bombs hit a hillside in S. San Francisco and set it ablaze. During the war much in the way of massive forrest damage was done by these bombs. My family includes parties who fought the fires.
All of this stuff is like the Bush Administration's current cry that "The story is just not getting out" on the rising economy. Well people get notice every week or two of the facts and it's called a paycheck. You can lie all you want but the paycheck tends to bring in the truth. Why do these people never get the story streight? Propaganda is not going to work for long. It matters little what Bush or Kerry says on the economy, the paychecks will carry the truth right to the door of the voters.
In the modern world not telling a story is often much more dangerous than telling it. This old way of thinking that secrets are valuable is generally just not useful.
I for example knew (by working in my garden and looking up into the sky seeing aircraft passing the local airport) at least 10 hours before US forces landed in Haiti recently and a good 24 hours before the media got the story. I told family at the time! Telling me that they were not going at that time would have made a liar or fool of the party trying to tell me otherwise.
The Russians who kept every secret well would not let any clues to their people about the Afghanistan situation out. Well the people got the bodies and death notices and were visited by comrads of the slain. The effect was much worse than just reporting the facts would have been. Americans are trying to run a Russian model here and it will not work. It will not even work in Russia.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Yeah.. Reminds me of the joint training operation between Swedish armed forces and NATO forces in the mountain range between Sweden and Norway (was told this by my Captain when doing military service).
A platoon of 'Mountain Seals' (Fjälljägare) from Sweden (probably Arvidsjaur) captured the whole company of NATO troups (Seals outnumbered about 6:1) in less than 24 hours. Gives me SOOOO much faith in NATO troupes I positively glow.
I suppose it just goes to show that having significant financial backing doesn't automatically make good soldiers.
Swedish, but resident in the UK since 1996.
In 1940, an anti-aircraft barrage balloon was ripped loose by a storm and drifted to Sweeden. The drifting steel wire caught on a power cable and shut down most of Stockholm's metro system. From this came the idea for Project Outward.
The balloons were much smalled than the Japanese Fugos as they only needed to cross the North Sea. Each carried an incendary bomb intended to start forrest fires or a trailing steel wire intended to short-out and destroy power grids. Several tens of thousand were launched from Harwich in eastern England from 1941 to 1944. AFIK, no serious fires were ever started but at least one German power station was overloaded and destroyed.
Full details are in The Moby Dick Project: Reconnaissance Balloons over Russia by Curtis Peebles. This book mainly deals with the Cold-War American Genetrix spy balloons but has a chapter on the Fugos and Project Outward.
Not exactly the pinnacle of the science of precision bombing. Can't really see it catching on.
Imperial Japan intended to switch from incendiary payloads to biological payloads. Anthrax spores, fleas infested with plague. Imperial Japan committed thousands of atrocities in China researching these weapons. And by "atrocities" I don't mean the modern definition of humiliation and emabarassing photos, I am using the real definition of the word as in dropping infested fleas on a village, when the plague took hold sending doctors to "help" the sick, and performing live vivisection (cutting into living animals for scientific research) without anesthesia on these victims back at the lab. A secondary delivery system developed was using submarine launched aircraft. A ceramic bomb casing was used so that a smaller explosive charge could be used to disperse infected fleas, the smaller charge permitted more fleas to survive. I think San Diego or San Francisco were early targets, but I am not sure. The atomic bombings preempted these attacks. You may debate whether the atomic bombs or the Russian invasion of Manchuria prompted the surrender, but the atomic bombings left little doubt in the minds of those researching a biological attack on the US what our response would be.
Unfortunately the US let those involved with the atrocities in China go. These criminals traded their excellent notes for their freedom.
The balloon delivery is still feasible today. "Funny" is the last thing anyone with half a brain would label your comment.