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CLASSIC: The Attack of the Japanese Balloon Bombs · Ridiculous History

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