Fugos or balloon bombs

Discussion in 'The War In The Air' started by Herakles, Sep 5, 2008.

  1. Herakles

    Herakles Senior Member

    I discovered this strange facet of WW2 only recently and was fascinated by it. If you've not heard of the Fugos before, read on.

    Using balloons in war is hardly new. One recalls the reconnaissance balloons used in WW1 for instance. During WW2, the Japanese had the idea of releasing balloon bombs that would float across the Pacific to the USA, carried by the Jet stream. Once over land, they would release their bombs hopefully to cause devastation. Some 9300 were released and about 300 are known to have reached the USA and Canada. A similar but less developed idea was used by the British in 1942-44.

    Japan released the first of these bomb-bearing balloons on November 3, 1944. They were found in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Michigan and Iowa, as well as Mexico and Canada. The last one was launched in April 1945. The last known discovery of a functional fire balloon in North America was in 1955 - its payload still lethal after 10 years of corrosion. A non-lethal balloon bomb was discovered in Alaska in 1992.

    The Fugo was made of mulberry paper and inflated with hydrogen. As a paper weapon it came under much ridicule by the USA. Here are its' specifications:

    A sphere about 100 ft. in diameter with a volume of 19,000 cubic ft. of Hydrogen

    Lifting capacity 800 lbs at sealevel and 400 lbs at 32,000 ft.

    Armament: 5 5 or 12 kg. Thermite bombs and 1 15 kg. High Explosive Anti-personnel bomb.

    Most of the bomb's paper was made by schoolchildren.

    The balloon bombs were released from Japan in the winter months when the jet stream is the strongest. They popped up to altitude (20,000 to 40,000 ft.) and if they were lucky into the stream. They travelled along in an easterly direction crossing the Pacific at around 200 mph in the jet stream.

    In daytime they would ride at the maximum altitude but as time wore on they would sink. At night they would collect dew and become heavy. Below a set height the altimeter would cause a set of blow plugs (charges that released the ballast) to fire releasing the sand bag ballast. The lost of weight would cause the balloon to pop back up to altitude. This continued till all the sand bags were gone.

    The last ballast was the armament. Thermite bombs were armed and dropped in the last positions on the ring. Anti-personnel bombs were also used. After all the ballast was gone a picric acid block blew up destroying the gondola. A fuse was lit that was connected to a charge on the balloon itself. The hydrogen and air mixture burned the balloon envelope up as a large orange fireball.

    In fact, this attack proved useless. The only casualties caused were to a group of 6 picnickers when the kids found one and moved it. Some Fugos set off forest fires. One landed on power lines and this temporarily stopped plutonium production at the nearby nuclear plant.

    Their potential for harm was however huge. The Americans were so concerned about them causing fear and panic in the population that they created a complete news blackout about them. Because of this, the Japanese decided the experiment had failed and stopped sending them. As well, B-29s had destroyed two of the three hydrogen plants needed by the project.

    When first discovered, it was feared that the balloons were carrying bacteria or chemicals.

    Even today, an occasional deflated balloon is found in inaccessible terrain.

    (with help from Wiki)
     

    Attached Files:

  2. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Herakles -
    even the Japanese had their comedians - we also had one who thought that to make an Aircraft Carrier out of a floating Iceberg would be just as effective and cheaper than a real one - he even fired a revolver at it during a demonstration to the combined Chiefs of Staff in Quebec - AND he kept his job !!!
    Cheers
     
  3. Herakles

    Herakles Senior Member

    Should that hair-brained scheme of an ice carrier taken off, I am thinking that a hit on one with say a shell would cause huge splinters, causing anyone nearby to suffer the same horrendous injuries that sailors suffered in the days of wooden warships.

    I've come round to thinking that the Fugos were a clever idea, an idea somewhat thwarted by the delivery method. And in fact, still a good idea.

    Can you imagine the harm that one of these would do releasing say mustard gas or anthrax?
     
  4. Warlord

    Warlord Veteran wannabe

    Sounds interesting as a cheap, mass hysteria weapon, even though it had the potential to become more than that, paper envelope included.

    Could they have started the forest fires they were intended to?
     
  5. Herakles

    Herakles Senior Member

    Forest fires were the most common damage caused. It was the usual way they were detected.
     
  6. Warlord

    Warlord Veteran wannabe

    So the things actually accounted for something more than fear stricken americans...

    Infernos or kids stuff?
     
  7. Herakles

    Herakles Senior Member

    The Americans and Canadians took this attack very seriously. They were constantly putting planes up to shoot the things down. The potential for serious damage was huge.
     
  8. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Both Canadians and Americans to-day cause a great amount of Forest fires with their total careless attitudes with camp fires left smouldering for the first whiff of wind to set off another thousands of hectares of damage - they never seem to learn !
    Cheers
     
  9. spotter

    spotter Senior Member

  10. Mark Hone

    Mark Hone Senior Member

    To be pedantic, HMS 'Habbakuk' wasn't simply an iceberg-it was made out of a combination of ice and wood pulp called 'Pykrete', after Habbakuk's creator Geoffrey Pyke (although some authorities actually credit the invention of Pykrete to American scientists). The combination of ice and wood pulp would make 'Habbakuk' very slow-melting, at least compared to ordinary ice, and also given its 12 metre thick hull a uniform mechanical strength of 70 kg per square metre rather than the unnpredictable stress fracture threshold of normal ice, thus not leading to the flying ice-splinters problem if it was hit by shell fire. The only drawback with the thing would have been that it would have been almost immobile, top speed 6 knots! Also it wasn't actually the very eccentric Pyke who (allegedly) fired the famous shot at a lump of Pykrete at the Quebec conference which ricocheted and almost killed Admiral Ernest King, but Pykes mentor, none other than Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten!
     
  11. Warlord

    Warlord Veteran wannabe

    Lord Louis was into the iceberg carrier scheme?
     
  12. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Warlord -
    and the scientist - Ernie Pike - the TV guy -
     
  13. Mark Hone

    Mark Hone Senior Member

    Pyke (1893-1948) was a protege of Mountbatten's when he was C-in-C Combined Operations. He was also a war correspondent, spy and unorthodox educationalist, if his biography by David Lampe and entertaining entry on wikipedia are to be believed. He had other wacky plans, such as his snowmobile Operation 'Plough'. He committed suicide in 1948. Magnus Pyke, the nutritionalist and TV boffin of the 1980s was apparently his first cousin.(Is that who you're referring to, Tom?) Pyke was associated with another remarkable, and largely forgotten scientist of the period, J.D. Bernal, who was one of the creators of the Mulberry Harbour for Mountbatten; a success unlike Habbakuk!
     
  14. Jan7

    Jan7 Senior Member

    dbf likes this.
  15. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    For those who have Sky:
    On a Wind and a Prayer - showing on The History Channel

    [​IMG]

    In November of 1944, Japan released the first of more than nine thousand Fugo Balloon bombs into the Pacific Jet Stream, launching a long-range aerial attack on the North American Continent. It has been estimated that nearly one thousand of the potentially deadly bombs fell over a broad area from Alaska south to California and east as far as the Mississippi.

    As many as six hundred of them may still be lying undiscovered in remote regions of the North American continent, possibly still explosive. The ingeniously designed balloon bombs took the lives of six Americans, the only victims of World War II to die on American soil. Apart from that they caused only minor damage, but their potential for destruction, fire and public panic was awesome.

    The voluntary media silence on the balloon story makes a compelling case for the virtues of wartime censorship, but one consequence is that most people still do not know about this attack today. On a Wind and a Prayer takes an in-depth look at the Japanese Fugo Balloon bomb offensive and highlights its place in Second World War history.
     
  16. warhawk

    warhawk Member

    Did they carry diseases?.
     
  17. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    The programmes not on until next month but as far as I'm aware they were incendary bombs.
     
  18. Jan7

    Jan7 Senior Member

    Article about this matter:Japanese Balloon and Attached Devices
    TAIC REPORT
    NUMBER 41
    May I945
    JAPANESE BALLOONS AND ATTACPIED DEVICES
    ISSUED IN THE DIVISION OP NAVAL INTELLIGENCE BY COMBINED PERSONNEL OF UNITED STATES AND BRITISH SERVICES FOR THE USE OF ALLIED FORCES
    TECHNICAL AIR INTELLIGENCE CENTER NAVAL AIR STATION ANACOSTIA, D. C.




    Jan.
     
  19. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

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