Japanese Balloon Bombs

[Brady]

I actualy drove to the sight of the Baloon Bomb exploshion last summer that killed those kids in Southeren Oregon (About a 6 hour drive from my Home), it was a Sunday school class out on a fishing trip. Bascialy they had to of provoked the bomb to explode, I gues pooking bombs with sticks is not something coved in a Sunday scholl class, you can still see whear the bomb tore chunks out of the trees. This part of Oregon is very remote, in fact at the time it was even more remote than today, its like a 30 min drive up into the mountans from the nearest town (The population of which is about 500, Bly Oregon), and thats on a Paved road, that did not exist them.

The only effect the bombs had, aside from the above tragedy was that it tied down several US Fighter Units that were kept stateside to deal with them. In the grand scheam of things not a big deal.

One of them actualy hit a building at Hanford as I recall.

[vettim89]

Not to hijack the thread but one thing strikes me as odd. It is well known that the Japanese were experimenting with Biological and chemical weapons. In fact testing them on POW's and the Chinese. What I find odd is that a nation so desperate to employ Kamikazes did not at least try to use these weapons against the US troops especially at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Was the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) policy in effect here? By that I mean that the Japanese didn't because they knew the US might respond in kind and obliterate the Japanese even worse than they did?

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: vettim89

Not to hijack the thread but one thing strikes me as odd. It is well known that the Japanese were experimenting with Biological and chemical weapons. In fact testing them on POW's and the Chinese. What I find odd is that a nation so desperate to employ Kamikazes did not at least try to use these weapons against the US troops especially at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Was the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) policy in effect here? By that I mean that the Japanese didn't because they knew the US might respond in kind and obliterate the Japanese even worse than they did?

Not a lot is known, i think, since the US/Russia and everyone else involved clamped down on any information about this after the war, but, i don't think they could get the things to work right... whether or not this was the "backfire effect" (i.e. - if it spreads, it gets you too) or they couldn't get it to propagate properly to start with (or both: i.e. - you got too little or too much) isn't clear.

The Japanese weren't terribly adverse to using chemical weapons*, and did so on a limited basis on the British/Indian troops in the Burma campaign... i am guessing they used them elsewhere as well (i.e. China) but i've never read anything definite about their use outside Burma.

*EDIT: so i doubt they would have been adverse to using bioweapons if they had gotten them to work properly.

[Brady]

My understanding is that they did not use them for fear of having them used on them, and that the uses of fragiable gas grenades aganst British tanks in Burma was the only known use of Chemical weapons that I am aware of in the Burma theater.

Their use of Chemical weapons and expermental vecor bombs with Bioligacal agents in China happened on a limited bases, and was alowed afik because they knew the Chiense did not have such weapons themselfs.

Their was also a political componet to the use of these weapons.

[Yamato hugger]

Bob, you would be surprised at how effective biological weapons can be and how wide a swath they cover. And why every civilized government on the face of the planet condones them. Once released, they have no friends and there is no control.

In a de-classified report (I was told by someone that would know that this was actually printed in the New York Times many years ago), the US military released a "marker" biologic agent (less than 10kg) off the cost of Miami to see just what effect and coverage there would be. In 48 hours it had effectively blanked every east coast state. By the end of a week it had crossed the Mississippi. This was back in the late 60s or early 70s so the cross country movement would not have been that rapid in the 40's, but still something significant.

[JWE]

I think, generally, that the chemical and toxic agents of War-II vintage were derivatives of, and in some cases improvements on, the same agents used in War-I. They were toxic agents, for the most part, and not really bio-agents, as we understand the term today.

Their persistence was low (rain, even a drizzle, and any kind of breeze would dissipate them in a couple of hours), they had no infection vector, their prompt lethality rate was moderate (Hitler and MacArthur and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of others were gassed and survived), and their utility was expressed in terms of a tactical area denial.

Yeah, ok, there were some nasty bacteriological things in the works in about ’44 and ‘45, but they were like anthrax and stuff like that. You need a population to make those things work, and a highly directed delivery system.

Comparing War-II Chem and Bio gasses to what we have today, is a bit like comparing a flashlight to a Class-F stellar object.

Nope, ihmo, Japanese balloon bombs were a joke. A big joke.

[DuckofTindalos]

The main Jap goal of attacking CONUS seems to have been to inspire terror, and they utterly failed. Nobody was terrorized by a floatplane dropping a few incendiaries on a forest in Oregon, and nobody was terrorized by balloon bombs.

If somebody wants to put them in a mod, that's their own business.

[rtrapasso]

ORIGINAL: Yamato hugger

Bob, you would be surprised at how effective biological weapons can be and how wide a swath they cover. And why every civilized government on the face of the planet condones them. Once released, they have no friends and there is no control.

In a de-classified report (I was told by someone that would know that this was actually printed in the New York Times many years ago), the US military released a "marker" biologic agent (less than 10kg) off the cost of Miami to see just what effect and coverage there would be. In 48 hours it had effectively blanked every east coast state. By the end of a week it had crossed the Mississippi. This was back in the late 60s or early 70s so the cross country movement would not have been that rapid in the 40's, but still something significant.

No i wouldn't be surprised, having read most everything i could find on them since the 1960's... but as has been pointed out, they require an effective delivery system, something to put them into the heart of the population to be terrorized... not dropped at random into a forest somewhere. A bioweapon needs to get into the population... stuff like Serratia (which is what i think the "marker" the military liked to use) grows on anything, including antibacterial soap, so can spread with ease, unlike things like (say) Anthrax. And remember: this stuff had to survive crossing the Pacific at something close to 40K feet. The Japanese also did have several of their balloons come down in their own territory, so they definitely would have faced a "backfire" event.

BTW, i think the word you meant was "condemn" not "condone". [:)]

[DuckofTindalos]

Would certainly hope so.

[Cap Mandrake]

I have always wondered if anyone in the Japanese chain of command was at least slightly embarrased by the things.

They send over an unguided balloon with a tiny little warhead, and we send over several hundred B29's with literally tons of incendiaries...and some HE to stir up the kindling.

One B29 tire probably had more rubber than all those little balloons put together. Somebody made a BIG mistake.

[DuckofTindalos]

Yeah, and they made it when they decided to go to war with America...

[BrucePowers]

Yup

[Cap Mandrake]

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Yeah, and they made it when they decided to go to war with America...

I would say it was an epic bad decision.

Nearly as bad as United Artists decision to fund Heaven's Gate. [:)]

[BrucePowers]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

ORIGINAL: Terminus

Yeah, and they made it when they decided to go to war with America...

I would say it was an epic bad decision.

Nearly as bad as United Artists decision to fund Heaven's Gate. [:)]

A lot of money was lost on that movie....................

[JeffroK]

ORIGINAL: Brady

I actualy drove to the sight of the Baloon Bomb exploshion last summer that killed those kids in Southeren Oregon (About a 6 hour drive from my Home), it was a Sunday school class out on a fishing trip. Bascialy they had to of provoked the bomb to explode, I gues pooking bombs with sticks is not something coved in a Sunday scholl class, you can still see whear the bomb tore chunks out of the trees. This part of Oregon is very remote, in fact at the time it was even more remote than today, its like a 30 min drive up into the mountans from the nearest town (The population of which is about 500, Bly Oregon), and thats on a Paved road, that did not exist them.

The only effect the bombs had, aside from the above tragedy was that it tied down several US Fighter Units that were kept stateside to deal with them. In the grand scheam of things not a big deal.

One of them actualy hit a building at Hanford as I recall.

I believe they also diverted the 555th (Colored) Para Inf Bn to act as Fire Jumpers.
(Wrong, that was for the fie bombs dropped by Floatplane[:(])

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: BrucePowers
A lot of money was lost on that movie....................

Hey, they missed their chance. All they had to do was dredge up John Ford and the Duke, then find some hollyweird hamsterhead screenwriter and give him this:


You could have Jack Nicholson as the Duke's best-friend-driven-to-alcohol-by-a-no-good-woman FBI guy, and, for a love interest for the Duke - howzabout Raquel Welch - he never got the chance to nail her before.

And, in what I think is a great historical touch - introducing George W. Bush in his premiere screen role as the Duke's intellectually limited, physically rather inept, but completely devoted underling deputy.

The bad guy? Who other than Mahmoud "I would like nothing better than to launch balloon bombs at America, but I have a secret desire to be a movie star" Ahmadinejad as Hirohito (what a typecast, hah?)

Oh - and as "the kid who's pretty tough but the Duke takes him under his wing and brings him along" - Michael Jackson, who else?

I think we got a winner here, folks...