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Japanese Balloon Battle 567

Posted by michael from the kaboom! dept.
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)."
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Japanese Balloon Battle More

Japanese Balloon Battle

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  • Little known?? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:05AM (#9450358)
    Unless you actually read a book or watched Discovery channel in the past 20 years. I've seen that on there tons of times. And I read a story about it in high school which was almost 6 years ago. Maybe little known if you only know a little?

    • Re:Little known?? (Score:3, Funny)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Next headline on Slashdot:

      "What hath God wrought?"

      To be quickly followed by an article on how to transmit such digital singals without wires.

      KFG
    • simpsons did it! [tvtome.com] sorry, just figured i'd hop on the "not-news!" wagon :]

    • Include the submarine attack on California (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

    • Re:Little known?? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by philbert26 ( 705644 )
      Unless you actually read a book or watched Discovery channel in the past 20 years. I've seen that on there tons of times. And I read a story about it in high school which was almost 6 years ago. Maybe little known if you only know a little?

      Exactly. The fact that hardly anyone knows about it says more about the ignorance of the American population than about the evils of censorship.

      This reminds me of a recent survey [reuters.co.uk] of English schoolkids that found most were ignorant of D-Day. Perhaps the guys at Slate t

  • Balloon (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:08AM (#9450365)
    The BBC (or it may have been Channel 4 in the UK) did a programme about these balloons, explaining how the Japanese used the Jet Stream, and a clockwork mechanism to drop sandbags allowing the balloon to drop out of the stream once over the States - I believe many ended up in Canada.

    • Re:Balloon (Score:3, Insightful)

      by betelgeuse-4 ( 745816 )
      As part of the British Empire, Canada were also at war with Japan (although I don't know how much fighting occured directly between the two countries), so accidentally attacking Canada probably still counted as a success for them.
      • Canada declared war indepentaly on germany almost a week after england declared war.
        Some canadian women where killed by the germans in uboat attack.
        As for attacks in the pacific field, main ones were at hong kong, however canadians were also at wake field at a few others.
      • Your US-centricity is showing. Canada just had a 60th anniversary for D-day in which the Canadian troops were able to drive further into the mainland than any other troops. The US is not the only one who fought and died in WW2. Note that this article is made by a Canadian whose Grandfather fought, Geez!
        • Of course, the Canadians didn't have the same level of resistance on their beach that the Americans experienced on Omaha beach - so your point that the Canadians were somehow 'better' is false.

          However, they would have their own trial taking Caen (was supposed to be taken on D-Day - but wasn't secured for 6 weeks, I believe) - running up against SS Panzer units in a drawn out slugfest that ended up leveling the city and bloodying the Canadians badly.

          Later, the Canadians would make a name for themselves du

        • Re:Balloon - Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Photar ( 5491 )
          Yeah, lets not forget that Russia lost more people in WW2 than every other country combined.
    • yes so not only are these widely known nowadays(by anyone who's even slightly intrested in history) they were quite sophisticated(hitech).

      slashdot: inaccurate news from last century!

  • Little-known? (Score:5, Informative)

    by AndyChrist ( 161262 ) <andy_christ.yahoo@com> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:08AM (#9450366) Homepage
    I heard about this in my world history classes in high school and college, in my Japanese history class (well no shit I'd hear about it there), and on several occasions since, and I've never once gone actively looking for this information.

    I think it's more well-known than most minor elements of WWII.

  • Not exactly ..... (Score:5, Funny)

    by liamo ( 699840 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:08AM (#9450367)
    ... the pinnacle of the science of precision bombing. Can't really see it catching on.
    • Modern technology could improve the precision. Put a gps device (something like this [motorola.com]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 ba

    • Re:Not exactly ..... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by betelgeuse-4 ( 745816 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:23AM (#9450436) Homepage Journal
      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.

      • Re:Not exactly ..... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jepaton ( 662235 )
        Explosive, incendiary or poisonous (fake) currency would have a greater affect than curious bomblets. Everyone would pick them up with great harm to themselves, general morale and the economy.

        IANAT (I Am Not A Terrorist)
    • 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 h

  • Saw this on Discovery Channel ~6 years ago (Score:3, Informative)

    by Amgine007 ( 88004 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:10AM (#9450372)
    Interestingly, one of these was also found in California [militarymuseum.org].

    (That page says the device was taken to Moffetf Field in Sunnyvale CA, but Moffett is and always has been in Mountain View. I believe it was sometimes described as being in Sunnyvale because the military guys were sensitive to the perception of 'Mountains' being anywhere near their airship base. No reference, just remember this from many an airshow..)

  • The only mainland US casualties from the war? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm sure I read somewhere (or saw on Discovery) that the only mainland US casualties from WW2 were caused by the bombs carried by these balloons.

    They managed to cross the pacific by using the jetstream IIRC.. at a time when that particular weather system was relatively unknown.

    Bum, I can't log in.. I'm normally MegatronUK... too many damn passwords...

  • The need for censorship (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:11AM (#9450387)
    The news was squelched in America in order to make then Japanese enemy believe that their efforts had completely failed. Similarly, in Great Britain during the buzz bomb attacks, news reports often gave false information as to where the bombs had landed so that the enemy would mis-adjust their targeting when they re-calibrated based on the false reports.

    Nothing wrong with censorship during a war for survival. First order of the day is always to survive.

    • Also, it's worth pointing out that this was WW-freaking-II. The death of these children was tragic, obviously, but to point to one isolated incident to make a sweeping criticism of the entire US security policy during the war seems a bit -- well, it's precisely why it's a good thing the current US media mentality wasn't in place in the 1940's.

      And of course, the other datum on which the author relies "The balloon bombs were erased not only from our national awareness, but from our collective history. We beli

  • Speaking of censorship.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:13AM (#9450394)
    One thing you will not find in Japanese schoolbooks is an historical account of the massacre [fordham.edu] 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.

  • Low technology against high technology (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pelops ( 454213 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:13AM (#9450396)
    More and more people thinks that high technology is much more efficient to win a war. I don't think it is necessarily true.
    On the contrary, i think that low tech can be much more lethal because of their simplicity. High technology requires people to be trained and efficient, while low tech can be done nearly by everyone, increasing the deadliness and the frequency of those attacks.
    Again, don't underestimate the use of high technology devices as a simple low tech weapon. For instance, dropping a PC on someone can be deadly :)

    Pelops

    • Re:Low technology against high technology (Score:5, Informative)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:25AM (#9450441)
      I saw a documentary about this as to why the AK-47 beats the M-16 in real combat. It basically came down the the fact that the M-16 was a rifle with autofire capabilities, while the AK-47 was a machine gun with rifle capabilities. The AK-47 worked much better in real combat, because it almost never jammed, and was quite easy to use, which is good if you don't have time to train soldiers. The AK-47 was also a lot heavier. Which allowed it to be used much more effectively at very close range. (AKA, using it to club the guy over the head)

      • A few tidbits about AK-47 vs. M16. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MtViewGuy ( 197597 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:19AM (#9452178)
        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.

  • At least they didn't load them with bio-weapons (Score:4, Informative)

    by foidulus ( 743482 ) * on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:18AM (#9450413)
    The Japanese had created an interesting bio-weapon during WWII, though they only "tested" it on the Chinese. They figured out a way to create a bomb that would explode scattering plague infested fleas everywhere. 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), they figured out how to make a bomb explode without killing the fleas. However they never really used it against the Americans, maybe in fear of what the retribution would be.
    As the case with Nazi scientists, the head Japanese scientists who worked on Japan's bioweapons during the war avoided war crimes prosecutions by coming over to the US after the war to help in the new "war" against the Soviets.

    • Re:At least they didn't load them with bio-weapons (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jonathan ( 5011 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:37AM (#9450483) Homepage
      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.
      • There are outbreaks at the sites of the former labs(I'm not saying they are responsible for country wide outbreaks), that would tend to make me believe that the lab is at least partially responsible.
        • There are outbreaks at the sites of the former labs(I'm not saying they are responsible for country wide outbreaks), that would tend to make me believe that the lab is at least partially responsible.

          But what is the claimed mechanism? Are the Chinese running those labs today or something? The agent of plague isn't a virus or a spore-forming bacillus like anthrax -- it's a normal enteric bacterium and thus needs to be maintained in culture to survive. An abandoned plague lab would contain nothing infectious

  • Not safe anywhere (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Analogy Man ( 601298 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:20AM (#9450420)
    To a degree both the Japanese and Germans wanted to bring some of the fight to us. It would make us tie up more resources on domestic defense. Trains would require air support, factories would need to be more heavily guarded etc.

    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.

    • Imagine the psychological impact of a heartland attack like that.

      We don't have to imagine it... the U.S. did the same thing via the Doolittle raid, [af.mil] though that was more to boost the morale of the U.S. citizenry after Pearl Harbor than to strike fear into the Japanese.

      ~Philly
    • 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.

      Link, anyone? Google can't find this...

    • Re:Not safe anywhere (Score:3, Informative)

      by iCharles ( 242580 )
      Germany also looked into a suborbital "Amerikabomber." It would skip across the atmosphere, and attack, say, New York.

      Another concept was built by the Japanese. A floatplane bomber [si.edu] was to be launched against the West Coast from a submarine. One sub was built, with three aircraft. The war ended before it could be launched.

  • photos (Score:5, Informative)

    by bjpirt ( 251795 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:21AM (#9450421)
    photos and more info here [af.mil] and an interesting photo [af.mil] of them being shot down from a plane.

    Intersting stuff.
  • 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..
    I wish I could find a website for you.. maybe another Brit /.er can find it!

  • Old news (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Angry_Admin ( 685125 )
    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 s
    • 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.

      They didn't have to go over the balloons to find dirt samples, it wasn't quite so "CSI" as that... the balloons had several sandbags to provide ballast, and the sand that filled those is what gave away the launch location via the mineralogical surveys.

      ~Philly
  • Governments give out all kinds of excuses for censorship. That it will "aid the enemy" or "induce panic". In reality they just don't want bad press.

    Censorship is a very thorny issue, but we need total freedom of the press for our society to remain free. The story of "embedded" reporters during the Iraq war was a case in point. Embedded was a euphamisim for censored and reporters felt this. Their skewed reports helped continue the culture of lies and exaggeration that prevailed in the lead up to the war. People were misinformed about that war. From start to finish. Far better for us all to get the story , warts and all, rather than have it dripped and filtered to us by biased parties.

    Interestingly, the prevailence of high tech media helped retard the effect of censorship during the war. It was difficult, but no impossible, for the army to censor reporters for very long. The press center in Quatar became redundant as feeds were transmitted directly from the field.
    High tech media is also the ONLY reason that we are seeing images of torture from prisons in Iraq.

    The media also practices self-censorship by limiting the coverage of disturbing imagery. I think they should give people more credit and stop listening to the easily offended.

    The truth is never more distorted than during times of war. But this is the most critical time in which the truth needs to be shown, in all its
    truth. We might like like the truth, but we NEED to hear it. We have to hold a mirror up to ourselves. Otherwise we'll start to believe all the rethoric and that would be a vert bad thing.

    • Re:Censorship is BAD m'kay (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @07:27AM (#9451047) Homepage
      sorry but CNN broadcasting troop movements and locations is not a smart idea.

      a certian FOX news reporter over in Iraq has no respect from the troops as he put many of them in danger all for only his typical Shocking journalizm style...

      some censorship is very important... like I am not going to tell you my credit card numbers, my bank account numbers and the combination to my safe or the location of my porn cache..

      I expect the news to self censor when their "broadcast" or "news" will cost lives.

  • "Balloons Of War" (Score:5, Informative)

    by LISNews ( 150412 ) * on Thursday June 17, 2004 @05:52AM (#9450552) Homepage
    John McPhee wrote about this in The New Yorker, 29 January 1996, 52:60. It's a really neat story on how Geologists figured out where exactly in Japan the balloons were being produced based on the sand used in the ballast the ballons held to make the long float across the Pacific.
    This is how we first learned about the jet stream as well.

    I'm pretty sure the story is in Annals of the Former World, a 1996 book by McPhee, all about geeky geology stuff, but it's a really interesting read.
  • 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?
    • They were not designed to hit anything. They were design to drop and explode causing a fire in forest. Doing this would of caused a diversion of resources. They did cause a few small fires, it was a wet year.
      IIRC under 10 American civilians did die because of picking them up and it exploding on them. Big news at the time because it was the only successfull attack on the US main land.

  • Is this the slowest slashdot post ever? (Score:5, Funny)

    by areve ( 724106 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:04AM (#9450597)
    Is this news not 60 years old?

  • The Adams Plan was cooler (Score:4, Informative)

    by General Wesc ( 59919 ) <slashdot@wescnet.cjb.net> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:05AM (#9450603) Homepage Journal

    Not that it worked out very well [everything2.org], but I still think the American's bombing method was much more interesting, and probably a little less well-known. (Though not at all arcane. The last time I mentioned it at least one fourteen-year-old already knew of it.)

  • Jet Stream Badassity... (Score:4, Informative)

    by SuperChuck69 ( 702300 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:08AM (#9450618)
    The really cool part (and the science part, IMO) is that what made the baloon bomes possible was the Japanese discovery of the jet stream. At the time, no one knew it existed

    Only by coincidence did the Yanks discover that the bombs really were coming from Japan. The sand used in the sandbags was analysed and turned out very unique. However, as the Americans had done a complete survey of Japan's beaches (your granddad's tax dollars at work), they were able to narrow it down to a sand composition at a single beach in Japan.

    Curious, a couple planes were sent to investigate...

    So until 1940-whatever... No idea the jet stream existed.

  • Mainland casualties in WWII (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:11AM (#9450630)
    I thought the balloon bombs were pretty famous, simply because they caused the only casualties (from enemy action) on the mainland USA during the whole of the war. A picknicking family found one of the bombs, which hadn't gone off, and er...tampered with it until it did, killing them.
  • 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.

  • Why is it? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by east coast ( 590680 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @06:57AM (#9450814)
    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.

  • Slate's legendary objectivity strikes again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lone_marauder ( 642787 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:08AM (#9451417)
    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.

  • more secret weapons: Grimsby Butterfly Bomb (Score:4, Informative)

    by Willard B. Trophy ( 620813 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @08:35AM (#9451695) Homepage Journal
    News blackouts during wartime aren't just a US thing.

    On June 24 1943, the English fishing port of Grimsby was bombed with experimental "butterfly" anti-personnel bombs. A total news blackout on this raid caused the Luftwaffe to abandon butterfly bombs after one raid, since they thought that the devices were ineffective. Quite the opposite was true -- many people were killed or injured by the butterfly bombs. Unexploded devices were still being found in and around Grimsby until quite recently.

    In March 1941, the Scottish town of Clydebank was razed by German bombers [bbc.co.uk]. The first news that people in the nearby city of Glasgow heard of it was when survivors started walking in from Clydebank.

  • trite quotes (Score:3, Informative)

    by SuiteSisterMary ( 123932 ) <{slebrun} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @09:32AM (#9452347) Journal

    This is /., so I'll trot out the trite quotes.

    In war-time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

    -- Sir Winston Churchill.

  • All Your Balloons Are Belong To Us (Score:3, Funny)

    by Vexler ( 127353 ) on Thursday June 17, 2004 @12:49PM (#9454362) Journal
    'Nuff said.

  • British Incendary Balloons in WW2 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Catmeat ( 20653 ) <mtm.sys@uea@ac@uk> on Thursday June 17, 2004 @01:13PM (#9454710)
    The Japanese Fugo balloons are indeed widely known. However what is little known is the use of balloons in WW2 by the British.

    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.

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