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The Attack of the Japanese Balloon Bombs · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye.
0:27
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Quick peek behind the curtain.
0:31
Speaker 1: It is Friday as we record this, and all three
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Speaker 1: of us are really looking forward to the weekends. Hi,
0:37
Speaker 1: I'm Ben, Hi, I'm no, and double peak behind the curtain.
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Speaker 1: This is take two of starting this episode. The first
0:43
Speaker 1: time around, I said that my name was Ben Uh
0:45
Speaker 1: and you had said that we were very excited to
0:48
Speaker 1: be here. I was gonna say, I'm very exhausted but
0:50
Speaker 1: still excited to be here, but then I called myself you.
0:53
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's some kind of like Freudian
0:56
Speaker 1: thing or what, but I am happy to be here
0:58
Speaker 1: and happy to see you. I'm happy. I'm happy to
1:00
Speaker 1: be here, and I'm happy to see you as well. Know.
1:03
Speaker 1: The same goes for our super producer, Casey Pegram. Quick
1:08
Speaker 1: question for you, Casey? Have you ever been in a
1:11
Speaker 1: hot air balloon? What about you know? No? It seems
1:16
Speaker 1: utterly terrifying to me. I am I. I have also never,
1:20
Speaker 1: as far as I know, been in a hot air balloon.
1:23
Speaker 1: So if I ever was, I must have been a
1:25
Speaker 1: wee wee tyke. But they are one of my favorite
1:28
Speaker 1: of ridiculous human inventions. Can you just imagine the cartoonish
1:32
Speaker 1: audacity of it. Someone said, well, we'll just you know,
1:36
Speaker 1: get up there and see how it goes from there.
1:39
Speaker 1: Hot air balloons, aside from being you know, visually stunning
1:44
Speaker 1: and inspiring, are also a passion of many many people.
1:49
Speaker 1: In fact, we before we went on the air today,
1:52
Speaker 1: we're looking into this and I found no less than
1:56
Speaker 1: three hot air balloon festivals going on here in our
2:01
Speaker 1: fair state of Georgia. So this is my pitch, Noel Casey,
2:07
Speaker 1: do you guys want to go in a hot air
2:08
Speaker 1: balloon with me? We could become ridiculous history the podcast
2:12
Speaker 1: of the air there when you go. And some people,
2:15
Speaker 1: perhaps Cheryl Crow included, would say that we have enough
2:18
Speaker 1: hot air already. H She is just the worst, man.
2:22
Speaker 1: She's really dogging us. Man, Why dude, what do we
2:25
Speaker 1: ever do to? Cheryl just complimented the bongos, You know
2:27
Speaker 1: what I always do. I really do think that's a
2:29
Speaker 1: very important moment in American music. Agreed. Agreed, my friend,
2:34
Speaker 1: we want to hear about the hot air balloon experiences
2:38
Speaker 1: in your life. Where the festivals in your neck of
2:40
Speaker 1: the global woods and we'll we'll keep you guys updated
2:43
Speaker 1: over the summer if any of us are all of
2:45
Speaker 1: us make it to one of those. But today's story
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Speaker 1: is not about the fun high altitude hi jinks of
2:54
Speaker 1: touring the air in a hot air balloon. No, it
2:57
Speaker 1: is about balloons as weapons. Yeah. I mean, when we
3:01
Speaker 1: think of aerial attacks against the United States, the first thing,
3:05
Speaker 1: obviously that comes to mind, and for many the only
3:07
Speaker 1: thing that comes to mind are the tragic events of
3:09
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor on December seventh of nineteen forty one, when
3:13
Speaker 1: Japanese forces mounted a bombing raid on Pearl Harbor, kicking
3:18
Speaker 1: off the events of World War Two on September nine
3:22
Speaker 1: of ninety two. But it turns out, then that is
3:25
Speaker 1: not the only air attack on American soil. You're absolutely right.
3:31
Speaker 1: It turns out that one of the most unusual attacks
3:36
Speaker 1: on American soil occurred during World War Two, and it
3:41
Speaker 1: was a balloon attack, or it would be more accurate
3:44
Speaker 1: to say a balloon bombing. You see, the Japanese army
3:48
Speaker 1: employed balloon bombs, or as they were called, food goes
3:52
Speaker 1: f u g o s starting in nineteen forty four.
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Speaker 1: The Japanese military constructed and launched over nine thousand high
4:02
Speaker 1: altitude balloons, and these each were loaded with fifty pounds
4:07
Speaker 1: of explosives. That's right, Ben, So, the Japanese Military Scientific
4:12
Speaker 1: Laboratory actually came up with the idea of what they
4:15
Speaker 1: referred to as fussin baku din or balloon bombs, back
4:19
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty three. And the food go that you mentioned,
4:22
Speaker 1: ben Or, these balloon bombs were just one of several
4:25
Speaker 1: ideas that were proposed by this research unit. And there's
4:30
Speaker 1: a fantastic scholarly report in the Smithsonian Annals of Flight
4:34
Speaker 1: by Robert C. Mikus that's kind of the definitive work
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Speaker 1: on this, and it's pretty crazy. Some of the the
4:40
Speaker 1: ideas they didn't go with are even more ridiculous. Um.
4:44
Speaker 1: There's one called a death ray, and the idea there
4:48
Speaker 1: was it was going to be balloon driven. It would
4:50
Speaker 1: shoot like electric rais or like you know, electric bolts
4:55
Speaker 1: at people on the ground. It would like cover low uh.
4:58
Speaker 1: And then there were several other versions of what became
5:00
Speaker 1: the fo goos. Lieutenant General Raikichi Tada of the Japanese
5:05
Speaker 1: Military Scientific Laboratory is the one who was assigned to
5:09
Speaker 1: this program, and he developed several pretty out their ideas
5:13
Speaker 1: that were already in the worst. One of them was
5:15
Speaker 1: the i Go weapon, which was a wire controlled tank
5:19
Speaker 1: that could attack enemy positions. And then there was the
5:22
Speaker 1: Rogo weapon, which was a rocket propelled weapon. And then
5:27
Speaker 1: you had, when I mentioned earlier, the death ray that
5:30
Speaker 1: would kill enemies up close with this electric charge. But
5:33
Speaker 1: the one that that seemed like it was going to
5:36
Speaker 1: be a winner out of these, the one they wanted
5:38
Speaker 1: to take all the way was the FuGO weapon, which
5:42
Speaker 1: was an altitude controlled balloon. In terms of controlled, I
5:46
Speaker 1: mean there was a bar metric valve that would act
5:50
Speaker 1: according to the elevation, according to how the altitude of
5:54
Speaker 1: the of the balloon, and it would drop sandbags if
5:58
Speaker 1: it went too high, and then it would uh you know,
6:01
Speaker 1: change the amount of air that was in the balloon
6:03
Speaker 1: when it went too low. Um. And the idea was
6:06
Speaker 1: it had a fuse that would ignite once the um
6:11
Speaker 1: wind currents carried the balloon close to the American coast,
6:15
Speaker 1: and the idea was to wreak havoc and chaos on
6:19
Speaker 1: America's uh Pacific Northwest region, specifically by causing forest fires.
6:25
Speaker 1: These incendiary devices would deploy when the fuse would would
6:29
Speaker 1: burn up, and it was meant to not necessarily cause
6:33
Speaker 1: any kind of real infrastructure damage, just kind of cause
6:36
Speaker 1: chaos and mass confusion. Yeah, and you know, we can
6:40
Speaker 1: totally understand how this pitch sounds crazy at first, blush,
6:46
Speaker 1: but a little bit of historical context will help us
6:49
Speaker 1: realize that this is this kind of a brilliant idea.
6:53
Speaker 1: This is not the first time balloons were weaponized. During
6:56
Speaker 1: the Italian War of Independence from eighteen to eighteen forty nine,
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Speaker 1: Austrian Lieutenant uktus undertook the technical development of balloons that
7:07
Speaker 1: could be used as bombs. So there was historical precedent,
7:12
Speaker 1: and the thing was, no one had quite pulled it
7:15
Speaker 1: off as successfully as the Japanese military would hope. Let's
7:21
Speaker 1: let's talk just a little bit about these balloons. As
7:24
Speaker 1: described by J. David Rogers of the Missouri University of
7:28
Speaker 1: Science and Technology, these balloon bombs were thirty three ft
7:32
Speaker 1: in diameter and they could lift about a thousand pounds.
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Speaker 1: But the deadly portion of the cargo again was this
7:38
Speaker 1: thirty three pounds anti personnel frag bomb, fragmentation bomb, and
7:43
Speaker 1: it was attached to that fuse you mentioned NOLA sixty
7:45
Speaker 1: four ft long fuse that was intended to burn for
7:49
Speaker 1: exactly eighty two minutes before detonating. And despite the fact
7:55
Speaker 1: that these are weapons of war, you have to appreciate
7:58
Speaker 1: the aesthetic. These balloons were made of rubber eyed silk
8:01
Speaker 1: or paper, and they were handmade. These were glued together. Now,
8:07
Speaker 1: one of the things that we, not being hot air
8:10
Speaker 1: balloon experts, have always wondered alone and together here on
8:15
Speaker 1: the show is how exactly you steer a hot air balloon,
8:21
Speaker 1: Because on the offset it seems tough. You would want
8:23
Speaker 1: like a fan up there, maybe to provide some sort
8:26
Speaker 1: of propulsion or to function, you know, more or less
8:29
Speaker 1: as a rudder. For the Japanese military, the goal here
8:33
Speaker 1: was kind of a spaghetti at the wall approach. They
8:36
Speaker 1: decided that quantity was a quality all its own, and
8:40
Speaker 1: so they released an estimated nine thousand of these balloons.
8:46
Speaker 1: So far as we know, at least three hundred and
8:49
Speaker 1: forty two reached the US and some even got as
8:53
Speaker 1: far as Nebraska. But what was their attrition rate? Did
8:58
Speaker 1: they were they actually causing harm? No? No, because they
9:02
Speaker 1: couldn't be speared and the technology or the the idea
9:05
Speaker 1: behind them, as they would travel on these winter jet
9:07
Speaker 1: streams for an average of sixty hours to reach America.
9:12
Speaker 1: UM And like you said, they greenlit through this project
9:14
Speaker 1: after realizing that there was a potential for success. About
9:17
Speaker 1: ten thousand, between nine and ten thousands these balloons, and
9:20
Speaker 1: they were handmade ben by school children, by young school
9:24
Speaker 1: girls from a neighboring school UM to the site of
9:29
Speaker 1: this uh, this project, and it took thirty men about
9:33
Speaker 1: thirty minutes to an hour to prepare each of these
9:36
Speaker 1: balloons for flight. And let's remember these were unmanned balloons. UH.
9:40
Speaker 1: These were meant to be autonomous and to behave in
9:43
Speaker 1: certain ways depending on the altitude and just hope that
9:47
Speaker 1: they would get to their target. UM. And the fact
9:50
Speaker 1: of the matter is they were launched on the birthday
9:54
Speaker 1: of the former Emperor Meiji UM and that is when
9:57
Speaker 1: the first series of launches took place. And despite the
10:00
Speaker 1: project being top secret, they were not very inconspicuous. They
10:05
Speaker 1: were spotted. They were described as looking like the clusters
10:09
Speaker 1: of jellyfish in the sky. Absolutely because if you look
10:13
Speaker 1: at the picture, you've got this thirty three ft diameter
10:18
Speaker 1: balloon right, and then you've got this fuse going down
10:21
Speaker 1: and the stuff that it's carrying it looks like a
10:24
Speaker 1: large version of snap and pops. Do you guys remember
10:29
Speaker 1: those the little paper bags that you would throw and
10:31
Speaker 1: they would have a pop with a tiny little you know, like,
10:36
Speaker 1: because yeah, it looks it looks very similar to that,
10:39
Speaker 1: or maybe tea bags wrapped in twine. The thing is
10:42
Speaker 1: that although they launched thousands and thousands of these balloons,
10:46
Speaker 1: they didn't cause the level of havoc that the Japanese
10:51
Speaker 1: military hoped they would create. They did have some damaging
10:56
Speaker 1: psychological effects because you look up in the sky and
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Speaker 1: there's this balloon invasion that's unexplained. And the amazing thing
11:06
Speaker 1: is that they made it across the Pacific at all
11:09
Speaker 1: at all. They were launched from Japan to the US
11:12
Speaker 1: and into Canada, and that trip took several days, again
11:15
Speaker 1: with no one on board, no one steering. And here's
11:20
Speaker 1: one of the problems. The US reacted in a very
11:24
Speaker 1: strange way. Two days after the initial launch, there's a
11:27
Speaker 1: Navy patrol off the coast of California and they see
11:31
Speaker 1: some tattered cloth in the sea. They retrieve it and
11:34
Speaker 1: they noticed that as Japanese characters on it. They alert
11:37
Speaker 1: the FBI, and then two weeks later more c debris
11:41
Speaker 1: of balloons that didn't make the journey or found and
11:44
Speaker 1: the military started putting together the puzzle pieces. They said,
11:48
Speaker 1: something is up. And then over the next four weeks,
11:52
Speaker 1: reports of balloons started coming in from all across the
11:57
Speaker 1: western half of North America, KA and everyday American citizens
12:02
Speaker 1: began seeing these tattered pieces of cloth or hearing explosions
12:06
Speaker 1: in the distance. December nine, workers at a coal mine
12:16
Speaker 1: that was near Thermopolos, wyoming Um described seeing a quote
12:20
Speaker 1: parachute in the air with lighted flares um and after
12:24
Speaker 1: hearing a whistling noise, that's when they heard the sound
12:27
Speaker 1: of an explosion and they saw smoke very near the mine.
12:30
Speaker 1: And the military immediately freaks out about this, But initially
12:35
Speaker 1: they are not worried about explosives being carried by balloons.
12:40
Speaker 1: Some of the folks in the military on the U.
12:43
Speaker 1: S side are concerned that these balloons may carry something
12:46
Speaker 1: potentially far more dangerous than explosives. They are concerned that
12:50
Speaker 1: these balloons may carry biological weapons, and they thought maybe
12:55
Speaker 1: the balloons were being launched from the Japanese relocation or
12:59
Speaker 1: internment camps existed at the time, or German pow camps,
13:03
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until um later in December of nineteen
13:08
Speaker 1: a military intelligence project was put together to evaluate and
13:13
Speaker 1: collect various evidence of these balloon sites and they figured
13:17
Speaker 1: out they were coming from Japan, not just made by
13:20
Speaker 1: Japanese forces, but coming from Japan when they looked into
13:24
Speaker 1: a ballast and found that the sand inside the ballast
13:28
Speaker 1: was from a beach in the south of Japan, and
13:32
Speaker 1: they realized that these were men to carry explosives. And
13:35
Speaker 1: the problem with those explosives is that they could pose
13:39
Speaker 1: a huge danger to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Yeah,
13:43
Speaker 1: that's right, because it's very dry in the winter and
13:46
Speaker 1: these forest fires could really spread and cause some serious havoc.
13:50
Speaker 1: And that was exactly what the Japanese had in mind. Again,
13:53
Speaker 1: they weren't thinking this is going to you know, put
13:55
Speaker 1: a real dent militarily in the US forces, but it
13:59
Speaker 1: would cause cause, uh, some panic and be pretty inconvenient.
14:04
Speaker 1: But the military pretty quickly realized that these um weren't
14:09
Speaker 1: very precision targeted, that they were pretty aimless UM and
14:15
Speaker 1: even though they realized that they were not going to
14:17
Speaker 1: be very successful. As we heard from the folks that
14:21
Speaker 1: reported from the coal mine, it kind of blew up
14:23
Speaker 1: in mid air and didn't actually cause any damage, just
14:26
Speaker 1: kind of freaked them out. Um. They still the military
14:30
Speaker 1: did not warn the public, did not They kept it
14:32
Speaker 1: very top secret, and they did their investigation into it,
14:35
Speaker 1: like he described, but they didn't put out any kind
14:36
Speaker 1: of notice. So people were still seeing these clusters of
14:39
Speaker 1: weird floating jellyfish and didn't know what the hell was
14:42
Speaker 1: going on. Was it a UFO, was it an errant? Uh?
14:46
Speaker 1: Domestic hobbyists, what was that smoke in the distance? Did
14:50
Speaker 1: you also hear that explosion? It was With the benefit
14:54
Speaker 1: of retrospect, we can say the U. S. Military took
14:58
Speaker 1: the wrong course of action when they decided I did
15:00
Speaker 1: to stay silent because in the last when there's no transparency,
15:04
Speaker 1: speculation thrives. But their logic did make sense at the time,
15:10
Speaker 1: because they didn't want the Japanese forces to get a
15:13
Speaker 1: morale boost from hearing anything about this operation being a success.
15:19
Speaker 1: The Office of Censorship went so far as to instruct
15:23
Speaker 1: newspapers and radio stations not to discuss the balloons in
15:27
Speaker 1: print or on air, and they made that decree on
15:31
Speaker 1: January four of nineteen, and the Japanese only heard about
15:37
Speaker 1: one balloon incident on the North American continent, and that
15:41
Speaker 1: was through a Chinese newspaper. Now, as innovative and unsuccessful
15:46
Speaker 1: as this plan may sound, the unfortunate truth is that
15:51
Speaker 1: they did cause some fatalities. Yeah, that's the thing they
15:57
Speaker 1: kept the The U. S. Military kept this thing under
16:00
Speaker 1: any tight wraps until an incident occurred, UM that actually
16:05
Speaker 1: did cause some casualties. Now, Japanese Domain News Agency was
16:10
Speaker 1: reporting UM on February seventeenth that this had been a success,
16:16
Speaker 1: since it is a propaganda paper, and it was really
16:19
Speaker 1: really really inflating the numbers, staying between five hundred and
16:22
Speaker 1: ten thousand casualties occurred. UM. But here's the reality. It
16:27
Speaker 1: was actually uh six six casualties and they were historically
16:32
Speaker 1: the only casualties on American soil for World War two,
16:38
Speaker 1: which is crazy because you think you would have heard
16:39
Speaker 1: of this, and I had never heard of this until
16:41
Speaker 1: he looked into it. So what happened? So this takes
16:45
Speaker 1: place in Bligh, Oregon. It was a Sunday school picnic.
16:50
Speaker 1: They approached the mysterious debris of one of these balloons.
16:54
Speaker 1: A fellow named Reverend Archie Mitchell was about to yellow
16:58
Speaker 1: warning to the kids when the balloon exploded. Sherman Shoemaker,
17:04
Speaker 1: Edward Ingen, Jay Gifford, Joan Patsky, and Dick Patsky were
17:09
Speaker 1: all killed. And these were children. They were eleven to
17:12
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. The reverend's wife, Elsie Mitchell, also died,
17:18
Speaker 1: and she was five months pregnant. This tragedy is what
17:24
Speaker 1: caused the U. S. Military to finally break its silence
17:28
Speaker 1: and its suppression of the story, and so they began
17:30
Speaker 1: issuing warnings not to tamper with anything that looked remotely
17:34
Speaker 1: like one of these balloons. Because let's just backtrack slightly. Um,
17:37
Speaker 1: this balloon wasn't deployed properly. It's not like it fell
17:41
Speaker 1: on them. It was already on the ground, on the ground.
17:43
Speaker 1: And like basically, this woman when she pulled the family
17:47
Speaker 1: car pulled over because she was feeling some morning sickness,
17:50
Speaker 1: and she discovered this bundle of stuff that looked kind
17:55
Speaker 1: of like paper, like almost like origami paper or something
17:58
Speaker 1: like that, and thought it was neat looking, and they
18:00
Speaker 1: started poking at it or something right, Yeah, yeah, and
18:03
Speaker 1: she said, look what I found, dear. According to the
18:07
Speaker 1: Male Tribune newspaper in southern Oregon, there's a great article
18:11
Speaker 1: you can read about this from David Kravitz writing on Wired.
18:14
Speaker 1: May five, Japanese balloon bomb kills six in Oregon. So
18:20
Speaker 1: it left these innocent people dead in a in a
18:24
Speaker 1: horrific scene. They didn't all die immediately. Joan Patsky died
18:29
Speaker 1: minutes after being seriously injured. There was a one ft
18:33
Speaker 1: hole in the ground. And although they were, as you said,
18:37
Speaker 1: nol the only known casualties of this operation, the US
18:44
Speaker 1: government didn't want to take any chances, so they issued
18:48
Speaker 1: you know, they started warning people not to mess with
18:50
Speaker 1: these things. They also, at the same time, somewhat counter
18:54
Speaker 1: intuitively or paradoxically, emphasized that the balloons did not represent
18:58
Speaker 1: a serious threat, and they said, just report these, just
19:03
Speaker 1: let us know if you see them, will send someone
19:06
Speaker 1: to take care of them. And that led to, you know,
19:09
Speaker 1: as we said, three two incidents being recorded, with various
19:15
Speaker 1: parts recovered, but no lives lost. They did, however, have
19:19
Speaker 1: a very close call with infrastructure. Yeah, one of them
19:23
Speaker 1: had a power line and caused a blackout at a
19:26
Speaker 1: weapons facility in Hanford, Washington, a nuclear weapons facility that
19:30
Speaker 1: could have gone a lot worse than it. And according
19:33
Speaker 1: to Colonel Franklin Matthias, the Hanford plant did lose about
19:38
Speaker 1: two days of production. But he thought he as he recalls,
19:42
Speaker 1: at least, he says, we were all tickled to death
19:45
Speaker 1: that this happened because it proved our backup system worked
19:49
Speaker 1: as far as keeping everything stable when they lose the power.
19:52
Speaker 1: And another guy there, Vincent Bud Whitehead, who is a
19:56
Speaker 1: counterintelligence agency at Hanford, recalled chasing and bringing own another balloon,
20:01
Speaker 1: and he was chasing it from a small airplane. Get this,
20:05
Speaker 1: this is crazy. This is what he literally did. He says,
20:08
Speaker 1: I threw a brick at it. I put a hole
20:10
Speaker 1: in it, and it went down. I got out there
20:12
Speaker 1: and started trumping all over that thing and got all
20:14
Speaker 1: the gas out of it. A radioed in that I
20:16
Speaker 1: have found it and got it. They sent a bus
20:18
Speaker 1: up with all the specially trained personnel gloves full of
20:21
Speaker 1: contamination suits mask. I have been walking around on that
20:24
Speaker 1: stuff and they had not told me that they were
20:26
Speaker 1: afraid of bacterial warfare. I know. I want to do
20:29
Speaker 1: a quick correction, It wasn't. The balloon didn't hit the
20:32
Speaker 1: Hanford site. It hit the Bonneville Power Administration in Washington,
20:37
Speaker 1: which supplied power to the Hanford side. That was one
20:39
Speaker 1: of the biggest consumers of power from that particular grid,
20:43
Speaker 1: and so that could have caused some major problems. And
20:46
Speaker 1: so balloon sightings continued throughout the years. It's it's interesting
20:52
Speaker 1: because you know how these kind of things can take
20:55
Speaker 1: over a country's collective attention span. Right just after the war,
21:01
Speaker 1: reports continued to come in from far and wide about
21:04
Speaker 1: balloon incidents. Uh. The Beatrice Daily Sun reports them over
21:08
Speaker 1: seven different towns in Nebraska, including oh Maha. The Winnipeg
21:12
Speaker 1: Tribune notes that there's a balloon bomb found ten miles
21:15
Speaker 1: from Detroit one near Grand Rapids. They were still finding
21:21
Speaker 1: balloon bombs as far as like the mid nineteen fifties. Yeah,
21:25
Speaker 1: that's the thing. I mean, these were like artifacts at
21:28
Speaker 1: this point, right, they were exploded already or maybe they
21:31
Speaker 1: didn't go off properly, and they were scattered because I
21:33
Speaker 1: mean that's ten thousand that were deployed with various that
21:36
Speaker 1: that ended up scattered all over the country. Um, I
21:39
Speaker 1: think that they made it as far as Michigan. I
21:41
Speaker 1: want to say, right, yeah, they made as far as Michigan,
21:44
Speaker 1: Hawaii and Alaska. I believe it was in January of
21:49
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. The Albuquerque Journal reports that the US
21:53
Speaker 1: Air Force discovered a balloon in Alaska in nineteen fifty five,
21:59
Speaker 1: and then in ninety four looking back and know if
22:02
Speaker 1: it called. The Santa Cruz Sentinel noted that a fellow
22:04
Speaker 1: named Burt Weber, who was an author and the researcher,
22:07
Speaker 1: had found forty five different balloon bombs in Oregon, thirty
22:11
Speaker 1: seven in Alaska, twenty eight in Washington, in twenty five
22:14
Speaker 1: in California, and reports still continued to pour in. There
22:20
Speaker 1: was one found in October of twenty fourteen. Really yeah yeah,
22:25
Speaker 1: in British Columbia. According to Henry Prose of the RCMP
22:30
Speaker 1: or Royal Canadian mount of Police, this balloon had been
22:33
Speaker 1: in the dirt for seventy years, and he said it
22:36
Speaker 1: would have been way too dangerous to move it. So
22:39
Speaker 1: it's possible that someone founded in the intervening decades and
22:42
Speaker 1: just decided to let sleeping dogs lie. So, in other words,
22:46
Speaker 1: they didn't work. They were duds, right like the fuse
22:48
Speaker 1: didn't ignite properly, and then they just went down and
22:51
Speaker 1: there was no boom. But still if you mess with it,
22:54
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, could you could cause it
22:56
Speaker 1: to explode. I don't think we found this ben But
22:59
Speaker 1: what was the material? I know the balloons were hydrogen balloons,
23:03
Speaker 1: so that could have even aided in the spreading of
23:06
Speaker 1: the fire because that's highly flammable, like in Hendenburg and
23:09
Speaker 1: all that. But what was the material the explosives were
23:12
Speaker 1: made of. Incendiary bomb is kind of a genre of bomb.
23:16
Speaker 1: It can include stuff like napalm, magnesium powder, white phosphorus.
23:22
Speaker 1: These used thermite and thermite is uh, how did you say?
23:29
Speaker 1: Did it occur in Breaking Back? Yeah, there's is one
23:32
Speaker 1: of those mcgever kind of moments in Breaking Bad where
23:34
Speaker 1: I think he uses an etch a sketch or like
23:36
Speaker 1: the iron filings in an etch a sketch to create
23:39
Speaker 1: thermite or to make a reaction that that that produces
23:42
Speaker 1: this explosion. Yeah. Thermite is a mixture of finely powdered
23:48
Speaker 1: aluminum and iron oxide. It creates a really high temperature
23:51
Speaker 1: and combustion, and it's often used in welding and for
23:55
Speaker 1: incendiary bombs. So this is this is dangerous stuff. And
24:05
Speaker 1: in when the RCMP found this, you know, this ancient bomb,
24:11
Speaker 1: they handled it by putting C four explosives on either
24:15
Speaker 1: side of the thing and blowing it to smithereens and
24:18
Speaker 1: thermite burned so hot that it can as it was
24:21
Speaker 1: used in that scene in Breaking Bad Melt and Metal. Yeah,
24:23
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I mean, it's it's a it's a biggie.
24:26
Speaker 1: It's nothing to play with. So it's interesting because we
24:30
Speaker 1: have to consider how much of this plan and how
24:33
Speaker 1: much of the fallout of it hinged purely on chance,
24:37
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's the thing we talked
24:39
Speaker 1: about earlier at the top of the show. There's really
24:41
Speaker 1: no way even if you're manning a balloon or you're
24:44
Speaker 1: piloting a balloon, you're kind of just able to go
24:46
Speaker 1: up and down. I mean, we talked off air about
24:48
Speaker 1: how zeppelin or a blimp is a more or less
24:51
Speaker 1: a steerable hot air balloon because it's more streamlined and
24:54
Speaker 1: it moves in a forward direction, right, and it's got
24:57
Speaker 1: like a fan system. Um. But this kind of balloon
25:00
Speaker 1: really can only go up and down. And as we
25:03
Speaker 1: described earlier, it was a kind of altitude controlled system.
25:08
Speaker 1: I believe I set it the other way around earlier
25:10
Speaker 1: in the show, so I just want to correct myself there.
25:12
Speaker 1: If it was going too high, then hydrogen would be
25:15
Speaker 1: released from the balloon, and if it was going too low,
25:19
Speaker 1: then sandbags would be deployed. And it was all this
25:22
Speaker 1: kind of valve that was controlled like barametrically to keep
25:26
Speaker 1: it at a more or less consistent altitude in order
25:28
Speaker 1: to have the most consistent path because it was being,
25:31
Speaker 1: you know, pushed along by these these winter jet streams.
25:35
Speaker 1: But once you let them go, there's just no precision.
25:39
Speaker 1: It's like the episode we did on the bat bombs,
25:41
Speaker 1: remember that ben very similar where they had to be
25:44
Speaker 1: deployed automatically using very similar methods mechanisms I imagine or
25:48
Speaker 1: I believe. Uh. And those were a big old mess too,
25:51
Speaker 1: and didn't we we used those against the Japanese, remember,
25:54
Speaker 1: because we dropped them on Japanese villages because the houses
25:57
Speaker 1: were made of wood and paper and stuff, and they
26:00
Speaker 1: would potentially burn the houses right, well, not not you
26:03
Speaker 1: and I specifically, you know, the bats would the bats
26:05
Speaker 1: would nest in the eaves and then they had timers
26:08
Speaker 1: that would then eventually set off the devices. But that
26:10
Speaker 1: was a big flop too. That's the thing about innovation,
26:13
Speaker 1: it's it's always risky. Let's talk a little bit about
26:18
Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts of how this thing actually exploded,
26:22
Speaker 1: Like what what triggers the bomb? Well, there were a
26:25
Speaker 1: couple of different types of ordinance or payload is the
26:29
Speaker 1: military term that they used. I think most of them
26:32
Speaker 1: used thermite, but they were just different sizes and there
26:34
Speaker 1: are different ones that had slightly different mechanisms anti personnel
26:37
Speaker 1: and Incindia's right exactly. But the incendiary device that I
26:41
Speaker 1: think was most common had a fuse that gets armed
26:44
Speaker 1: during flight, and then when it's dropped on impact, there's
26:48
Speaker 1: a magazine that's fired which then ignites a black powder charge.
26:53
Speaker 1: It's much like the way of a pistol works, right,
26:55
Speaker 1: and then that in turn ignites a central channel that
26:59
Speaker 1: contains another charge and then the incendiary material, and there
27:03
Speaker 1: are these different pots that have more black powdered charge,
27:07
Speaker 1: and then the explosive force of those reactions that chain
27:10
Speaker 1: reaction that triggers the thermite, and then the body of
27:15
Speaker 1: the bomb actually erupts. It's enough too, because it's it's
27:18
Speaker 1: made of metal, right, and so we we see the logic,
27:21
Speaker 1: we see how this could work, and we see the
27:23
Speaker 1: primary flaw on the plan, the reliance on chance, right
27:28
Speaker 1: on on who fortune favors that day. And this speaks
27:32
Speaker 1: to the desperate state of the war, you know, in
27:37
Speaker 1: the in the desperate state of the Japanese military at
27:40
Speaker 1: the time. While weaponized balloons did not work out for
27:44
Speaker 1: the Japanese military World War two, that doesn't mean that
27:47
Speaker 1: our species has given up all hope of weaponizing balloons.
27:52
Speaker 1: In fact, we're still as a species developing weaponized balloons today.
27:59
Speaker 1: The United States Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency contracted
28:05
Speaker 1: Lockheed Martin to construct what they called a high Altitude
28:08
Speaker 1: Airship or HA for short through for part of its
28:15
Speaker 1: ballistic Missile Defense system. This thing is unmanned. It is
28:20
Speaker 1: supposed to operate at a height of over sixty thousand
28:24
Speaker 1: feet or eighteen thousand meters in a quasi geo stationary position,
28:30
Speaker 1: to be a surveillance aircraft, to relate telecommunications, and to
28:35
Speaker 1: observe weather. Pretty pretty crazy stuff, you know, yeah for sure.
28:41
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, the way balloons are
28:42
Speaker 1: used mostly today is for observing weather. And then I
28:47
Speaker 1: think there was there was a remember the Google Loon project.
28:50
Speaker 1: I love the name. Yeah. It was a way to
28:53
Speaker 1: deploy wireless internet connectivity in rural area rural areas, and
28:57
Speaker 1: it was literally like, you know, some sort of broadcast
29:01
Speaker 1: device that was attached to a balloon that could then
29:03
Speaker 1: hover over like these areas and they could like get
29:05
Speaker 1: WiFi that way. Man, I love blimps and balloons so much.
29:09
Speaker 1: I get that they're silly. A few years ago, our
29:13
Speaker 1: pal Scott Benjamin and I got really close to getting
29:16
Speaker 1: into a good Year blimp. And the more I think
29:19
Speaker 1: about it, you know, the only reason we don't have
29:22
Speaker 1: more blimps now is because someone would be a jerk
29:26
Speaker 1: and attack them or blow them up. Why can't we
29:29
Speaker 1: have nice things? Why can't I have a blimp? I know,
29:31
Speaker 1: I know, and I'll tell you this. I I tell
29:33
Speaker 1: you I would not want to ride in a basket
29:35
Speaker 1: on a hot air balloon, but I'd be totally cool
29:36
Speaker 1: with riding in a blimp in style. Right. It's just
29:39
Speaker 1: a bigger beast first class for me, baby, right Like
29:42
Speaker 1: in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Remember he hops
29:47
Speaker 1: on an airship. Oh yeah, airships are so cool because
29:51
Speaker 1: They're so ominous and so slow moving, and they have
29:53
Speaker 1: this kind of like doom bringer kind of quality to them,
29:58
Speaker 1: you know, and they make me think of like Sky
30:00
Speaker 1: Captain in the World of Tomorrow. It's kind of like
30:02
Speaker 1: idea of like a weird, steam punky kind of future.
30:06
Speaker 1: You know. Angelia and Joliev with an ipatch eye patches
30:09
Speaker 1: are so cool. Her eyepatch didn't have a string though,
30:11
Speaker 1: it just kind of like stuck there. Yeah, it was
30:13
Speaker 1: just the patch because because of the future, because of
30:15
Speaker 1: the because of the retro future. Well, no, while I
30:19
Speaker 1: am well, I'm candidly a little bit let down poor
30:24
Speaker 1: choice of words that that you don't want to go
30:27
Speaker 1: in a hot air balloon. I totally understand where you're
30:29
Speaker 1: coming from, and I would ride in a blimp with you.
30:33
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. Would you ride in a hot air balloon?
30:37
Speaker 1: You know? What if I had a hot air balloon
30:38
Speaker 1: handy and we could be like up and back down
30:40
Speaker 1: pretty soon, would you would you hop on um? I'll
30:43
Speaker 1: consider it. I'll consider it. What if there was guarantee
30:46
Speaker 1: that we would take you to the land of oz Um,
30:50
Speaker 1: I'll consider it, okay, by which we mean Australia exactly
30:53
Speaker 1: the land of Ozzies. So let us know what you think,
30:58
Speaker 1: let us know about your balloon experiences. Us know if
31:00
Speaker 1: you would be in a hot air balloon, and you know, honestly,
31:05
Speaker 1: we just have to shoot our shot at some point.
31:07
Speaker 1: There's no harm in asking do you have a blimp?
31:10
Speaker 1: Do you have access to a blimp? Because we would
31:13
Speaker 1: love to hang out with you on your blimp. That
31:15
Speaker 1: would be a pretty ball or vehicle to own. Only
31:17
Speaker 1: the elitest of the elite. You know, on a blimp.
31:21
Speaker 1: It's such a it's such a like unless it's one
31:24
Speaker 1: of those high altitude surveillance platforms. It feels like any
31:27
Speaker 1: private citizen who just says I want a blimp is
31:30
Speaker 1: buying this billionaire's toys. I'm saying, if you have a blimp,
31:33
Speaker 1: you also have to have like a hangar, a blimp
31:35
Speaker 1: sized hangar, or some way to tether it to like
31:38
Speaker 1: the top of your you know, skyscraper or whatever. It
31:40
Speaker 1: would be so cool to be at a blimp. It
31:42
Speaker 1: would be pretty cool. We did an episode on blimps
31:45
Speaker 1: on like that was that it was like made of
31:47
Speaker 1: pig skin or something like that, or it was made
31:49
Speaker 1: of you know, some organic material, and I believe there
31:52
Speaker 1: was a time where they were infrastructure where it was
31:55
Speaker 1: being put in place to like stow blimps, and they
31:58
Speaker 1: were literally tethered to the tops of building. Yes, that
32:00
Speaker 1: is correct, and they could get into them that way
32:04
Speaker 1: like they would like lower down ladders. I don't remember
32:06
Speaker 1: exactly how how it worked. And if you want to
32:08
Speaker 1: learn more about airships, dirigibles, hot air balloons and blimps,
32:12
Speaker 1: you can check out you can check out some old
32:15
Speaker 1: car stuff episodes early in our respective careers. So uh,
32:19
Speaker 1: do be kind, but yes, please let us know about
32:22
Speaker 1: your airship and balloon adventures. You can find us on
32:26
Speaker 1: our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians, where you can meet our
32:29
Speaker 1: favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners. You can
32:31
Speaker 1: also find us on Twitter and Instagram, either as our
32:36
Speaker 1: show or Dramatic Pause, as ourselves individually. I am at
32:42
Speaker 1: Embryonic Insider, I am at Ben Bowling also Massive Things,
32:48
Speaker 1: as always to super producer Casey Pegram as always big
32:52
Speaker 1: thanks to our research associate Gabe Losier, Alex Williams who
32:55
Speaker 1: composed our theme, Our dear friend and spirit here with
32:59
Speaker 1: us now, Christopher hasciotis Um and you Ben I'd like
33:03
Speaker 1: to thank you for just being such a dapper young
33:07
Speaker 1: lad with a heart of gold and a fine head
33:10
Speaker 1: of hair. Well, thank you, Noel. I appreciate that. And
33:12
Speaker 1: likewise to you. You've got a killer hat on and
33:14
Speaker 1: I've you know, I've been admiring your gorilla hat for
33:18
Speaker 1: anyone who doesn't know. Uh, my friend here is a
33:22
Speaker 1: big fan of ball caps and as has quite a collection.
33:25
Speaker 1: And I gotta tell you, man, I appreciate that compliment
33:27
Speaker 1: because I'm I'm feeling a little a little under the
33:31
Speaker 1: weather today. I'm kind of slumming, and I'm wearing jeans.
33:34
Speaker 1: Oh I can't see them because they're underneath the table
33:36
Speaker 1: from where I set. You look like a fine, strapping
33:39
Speaker 1: young lad. Thank you, thank you, I I appreciate. I
33:43
Speaker 1: wonder where the phrase strapping came from to describe someone
33:46
Speaker 1: as capable. Story for another time, I think so I
33:49
Speaker 1: think we should explore it on another episode of Ridiculous History.
33:52
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time. For more podcasts from my
34:02
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
34:06
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.