5 ms·
Maybe Japanese fire balloons during WWII? "One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” dir
by irrational 4y ago
Maybe Japanese fire balloons during WWII?
"One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” directed at the mainland United States. Starting in 1944, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons, each loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives. Amazingly, these unmanned balloons originated from over 5,000 miles away in the Japanese home islands. After being launched, the specially designed hydrogen balloons would ascend to an altitude of 30,000 feet and ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. Their bombs were triggered to drop after the three-day journey was complete—hopefully over a city or wooded region that would catch fire.
Nearly 350 of the bombs actually made it across the Pacific, and several were intercepted or shot down by the U.S. military. From 1944 to 1945, balloon bombs were spotted in more than 15 states—some as far east as Michigan and Iowa. The only fatalities came from a single incident in Oregon, where a pregnant woman and five children were killed in an explosion after coming across one of the downed balloons. Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil during World War II."
https://www.history.com/news/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-world-war-ii https://www.history.com/news/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-wo...
- sandworm101 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevan_Point_lighthouse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevan_Point_lighthouse Much like this story, many Japanese planners did not appreciate the vast size of the American west. A hundred random firebombs were basically irrelevant compared to the many thousands of yearly lighting strikes that also regularly cause fires. Who knows how many Japanese balloons are out there hanging from some tree undiscovered.
- refurb 4y agoThe other good story about remoteness https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt German sub drops off a team in 1943 to install a weather station on Newfoundland. Wasnt discovered until 35 years later only because some scholar found reference to it in the German archives.
- xattt 4y ago> Newfoundland Labrador, where’s the station was located, is a lot less densely populated than Newfoundland.
- ok_computer 4y agoGeologists were able to reduce the search area for the origin of these balloons using the mineral composition of sand in the sand bags. The airforce then bombed hydrogen generating facilities nearby the suspected launch sites. Section offense and defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
- hinkley 4y agoDid we have operatives taking sand samples or was that some over-exuberant librarian who got to say "I told you so" to their bosses?
- hamburglar 4y agoThey ran it through a database at Sandia Labs. ;)
- iforgotpassword 4y agoThat's what's so surprising to me nowadays I'd just assume they'd have googled and found a paper by some Japanese scientists, but back then someone from the US must have taken those probes across Japan.
- ok_computer 4y agoThat's an interesting aspect to this story to me. Maybe it was truly based on intel and the geological survey was a farce to justify the facilities targeting. That wouldn't surprise me, there's a ton of lore around WWII and military activity in general. Or maybe the US government chooses to fund all areas of research, like mineral surveys, in the hopes they can call on a field of knowledge repository to use in a war machine. I'd like to believe there is a soil library that staff were doing microscope slide searches late into the night.
- wkat4242 4y agoThere was also a lot of deliberate misdirection to cover intelligence sources, many of which would probably persist in history to this day.
- dendrite9 4y agoMore than 500 Americans and more than 2000 Japanese died fighting in the Aleutian islands during WW2. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/battle-of-attu-60-years.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/battle-of-attu-60-years.htm
- irrational 4y agoIt probably meant the continental USA.
- HideousKojima 4y agoAsking why Japan invaded the Aleutians is a fun question for flat earthers. On most map projections it's way out of the way but on a globe if you draw a geodesic from Tokyo to Seattle (or Sapporo to San Diego and Los Angeles) it's basically halfway.
- culi 4y agoMaybe it's like pacman where going off one edge teleports you to the opposite edge. A finite land that goes on infinitely
- iforgotpassword 4y agoAnd to better visualize it we could just map it to a sphere...
- wizofaus 4y agoHawaii was still an "incorporated territory" of the US though, surely it would have qualified as "US soil"? I gather at least some deaths did occur in Honolulu itself too.