Wacko WWII Japanese fire bomb attack on the US

I'm pretty well read with respect to history but I love it when I discover new and interesting things.

So here's a near article on a WWII bomb attack on the US and how one dropped in everett WA. Apparently the Japanese tried to fire bomb the West coast with ballons, but launched them in winter.

http://kuow.org/post/why-it-matters-wwii-balloon-bomb-fell-everett

Another article showing 6 people died in Oregon. http://www.wired.com/2010/05/0505japanese-balloon-kills-oregon/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/05/130527-map-video-balloon-bomb-wwii-japanese-air-current-jet-stream/

Was it whacko, or sheer brilliance mis-timed?

If that's not crazy enough for you, try this: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/04/old-weird-tech-the-bat-bombs-of-world-war-ii/237267/

I have known about these for about 25+ years. Heard about them when I was a kid. They actually still warn people out here what to look for because those things are still laying around and pose a threat.

Amazing. I've read a lot about WWII but never knew about this. Pretty primitive since the Chermans already had rockets at that point and weren't too far from sending them across the Atlantic with conventional warheads. Imagine what that could've done! And we were a few months away from completing the first two A-bombs. I guess the Japanese were pretty desperate at that point in the war.

While I didn't know about the Japanese hydrogen balloons, I did know about the submarine attack on the West Coast in SoCal. It must have been true because I saw it in the Belushi movie "1941."

An interesting piece of trivia: right around the time that the European war was ending, a German U-boat was still operating off the coast of Southern New England, and sank a freighter. The Coast Guard found it, depth charged it, and it sank a few miles off the coast of RI. It's supposed to be the last German naval combat casualties of the war. The sub is still out there on the bottom, but scavengers have removed some of the external pieces. The propellers (I guess they're called screws) were a decoration in front of a high end restaurant in Newport, RI, until it was deemed to be not too politically correct anymore. I don't know where they went.

The Japanese were the first to know about the Jet Stream.. they had those balloons perfectly timed to use it to drop their payload into the forests to cause fires so as to divert our resources.

Somehow they never know about the rainy season in the North West....

Those bat bombs are pretty odd. Hilarious they accidentally set fire to a general's car.

I thought it was clever to monitor the atmosphere and add lift or drop ballast to maintain the requisite altitude.

Hundreds dropped, how many made it? Pretty good for the tech at the time.

You do know about the Japanese submarine/aircraft carriers? They built 3 of them. I believe I read somewhere that they were intended to attack the Panama Canal but by the time them were ready the war was near it's end they ended a foot note in history. One captured sub was studied and tested. It was later sunk as a target somewhere off Hawaii.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine

There was some screwball stuff on our side as well, like the 'dambuster' bouncing bomb:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise

It had to spin 'backwards' before it hit the water so it would 'bounce', sort of like skipping a rock across a pond. It sounds easy enough, but during building and testing four planes were lost along with their crews. And that wasn't even with enemy fire added to the list of problems.

Then later on cats were to be used as radio transmitter carriers, i.e. a mobile listening device.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2321693/They-monstrosity-How-CIA-tried-failed-turn-CATS-cyborg-spies-Operation-Acoustic-Kitty-ended-disaster.html

The 'prototype' was run over by a cab.

Gary wrote: Amazing. I've read a lot about WWII but never knew about this. Pretty primitive since the Chermans already had rockets at that point and weren't too far from sending them across the Atlantic with conventional warheads. Imagine what that could've done! And we were a few months away from completing the first two A-bombs. I guess the Japanese were pretty desperate at that point in the war. While I didn't know about the Japanese hydrogen balloons, I did know about the submarine attack on the West Coast in SoCal. It must have been true because I saw it in the Belushi movie "1941." An interesting piece of trivia: right around the time that the European war was ending, a German U-boat was still operating off the coast of Southern New England, and sank a freighter. The Coast Guard found it, depth charged it, and it sank a few miles off the coast of RI. It's supposed to be the last German naval combat casualties of the war. The sub is still out there on the bottom, but scavengers have removed some of the external pieces. The propellers (I guess they're called screws) were a decoration in front of a high end restaurant in Newport, RI, until it was deemed to be not too politically correct anymore. I don't know where they went.

My grandfather was on the destroyer that sunk that uboat.

He had grown up in Gary Indiana and on Dec 8 1941 he went to the Chicago recruiting office to join the navy with his buddies. Apparently the line was reeeeally long (imagine: people desperate to get into the military!) and grandad being a bit lazy/impatient with lines went for a walk to stretch his legs. A few blocks away he found the Coast Guard recruiting station nearly empty so figured that was close enough. He enlisted and they sent him to Cape Cod where for a year his job was to walk up and down North Beach off Chatham and look for uboat frogmen coming ashore. As far as I know there never were any but grandad did meet grandma on the beach and they went on to have 5 kids so I guess being too impatient to wait in line ended up with me. Otherwise he could have ended up on the Indianapolis or some such

The destroyer was an old 4 stacker they pulled out of mothballs from WW1 and loaned to the CG for coastal patrol.

Gary wrote: ...While I didn't know about the Japanese hydrogen balloons, I did know about the submarine attack on the West Coast in SoCal. It must have been true because I saw it in the Belushi movie "1941." ...

Interestingly, 1941, was probably a pretty realistic portrayal of the events.

"What are you shooting at?"

"I don't know, whatever he's shooting at"

Of course, they did not bombard the "industrial" structure that was the Santa Monica Pacific Park, they were shooting at old fields.

Interestingly, they suspect the Battle of Los Angeles was caused by a weather balloon (way to early for the fire bomb balloons of course though).

Bombardment of Ellwood

Battle of Los Angeles

Captain Wild Bill Kelso: "War nerves? Who said war nerves?"

The Patron: "I heard it on that radio there."

[Kelso shoots the radio]

Captain Wild Bill Kelso: "Radio's wrong."

Another random bit of trivia. In the RTS game C&C Red Alert 3 the "Empire of the Rising Sun" has balloon bombs as part of there arsenal.

Dumb things: back during WWII the Columbia airport was an Army Air Corps training base and they trained bomber crews. They used an island in Lake Murray that's still called Bomb Island. One night a bomber crew got all bollixed up and turned around, they wound up flying over the Saluda traffic circle and mistook it for a target. The practice bombs were filled with white powder and had a small explosive charge to spread the powder for easy ID from the air. My grandmother lived there at the time and would get all fired up about it.

There's also the bomber crew that accidentally dropped a REAL NUKE! on a town called Mars Hill down here.

@Iggy: did you listen to the Radiolab show about this recently? Very interesting stuff. I had heard about it before, but the backstory was interesting. It was terrible to hear about that hiking family.

Love that show.

I'm ashamed to say that, until recently, I didn't know about the bombing raid and subsequent tribulations of Doolittle's Raiders. What an amazing story that is.

I guess I take my high school history & AP history classes for granted.....most of this was covered in it. There was a bunch of crazy things that took place.

Curmudgeon wrote: Then later on cats were to be used as radio transmitter carriers, i.e. a mobile listening device. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2321693/They-monstrosity-How-CIA-tried-failed-turn-CATS-cyborg-spies-Operation-Acoustic-Kitty-ended-disaster.html The 'prototype' was run over by a cab.

Check this out:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1988042&cid=35153216

I find this to be a much more clever idea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_%28listening_device%29

In reply to GameboyRMH:

This is such a hilariously bad idea - and I'm a cat person. There's at least a 90% chance a cat is going to do anything other than whatever it is you want it to do.