WEBVTT - CLASSIC: The Attack of the Japanese Balloon Bombs 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:05.400 Fellow Ridiculous Historians, Welcome to this week's classic episode. Noel, 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:07.280 have you ever been into balloons? 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:09.639 You know, Ben, I do love balloons. They're just a 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:13.400 delightful thing to behold. They like it when they float, 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:16.360 I like it when they bounce. I just like them. 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.400 I like them when they're shaped like things. I like 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:20.840 them when they're wielded by clowns. I don't really like 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:24.160 them as delivery mechanisms for bombs, though. 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:27.240 Ah yeah, yeah, that's why you and I should have 0:00:27.320 --> 0:00:31.000 been in the meeting in late nineteen forty four, probably 0:00:31.000 --> 0:00:35.040 a few years before that, when thousands of people on 0:00:35.080 --> 0:00:39.440 the West coast of the United States noticed bizarre what 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:43.240 they call jellyfish like objects floating in the sky. 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:45.479 Yeah. And this episode is called the Attack of the 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:48.560 Japanese Balloon Bombs. And let's roll the tape. 0:00:51.520 --> 0:01:19.479 Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show, 0:01:19.640 --> 0:01:23.880 Ridiculous Historians. Quick Peak behind the Curtain. It is Friday 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.319 as we record this, and all three of us are 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:28.920 really looking forward to the weekends. Hi. 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.919 I'm Ben, Hi, I'm Nolan. Double Peak behind the Curtain. 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.559 This is take two of starting this episode. The first 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:37.400 time around, I said that my name was Ben, and 0:01:37.880 --> 0:01:39.720 you had said that we were very excited to be here. 0:01:39.760 --> 0:01:42.199 I was going to say, I'm very exhausted but still 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.280 excited to be here, but then I called myself you. 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:47.280 I don't know if that's some kind of like Freudian 0:01:47.360 --> 0:01:49.680 thing or what, but I am happy to be here 0:01:49.720 --> 0:01:50.520 and happy to see you. 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:52.880 I'm happy, I'm happy to be here, and I'm happy 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:55.280 to see you as well, Nola. The same goes for 0:01:55.360 --> 0:01:59.160 our super producer, Casey Pegram. 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.040 Quick question for. 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:04.040 You, Casey, have you ever been in a hot air balloon? 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:08.079 Never? No? What about you, Nol? No, it seems utterly 0:02:08.160 --> 0:02:10.120 terrifying to me. I am. 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:13.760 I have also never, as far as I know, been 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:15.480 in a hot air balloon, so if I ever was, 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.280 I must have been a wei wei tyke. But there 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:22.600 are one of my favorite of ridiculous human inventions. Can 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:26.639 you just imagine the cartoonish audacity of it. Someone said, well, 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:29.600 we'll just you know, get up there and see how 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.800 it goes from there. Hot air balloons, aside from being 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:39.120 you know, visually stunning and inspiring, are also a passion 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.680 of many many people. In fact, we before we went 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.560 on the air today. We're looking into this and I 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:51.040 found no less than three hot air balloon festivals going 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:56.519 on here in our fair state of Georgia. So this 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.280 is my pitch, Noel Casey, do you guys want to 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:00.480 go on a hot air balloon with me? 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:04.240 We could become ridiculous history, the podcast of the air. 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:08.440 There we go, and some people, perhaps Chryl Crow included, 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:10.679 would say that we have enough hot air already. 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.680 Eh, she is just the worst. Man. She's really dogging us. Man, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:16.680 Why dude, I don't know what do we ever do 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:17.600 to Cheryl. 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:19.800 Just complimented the bongos, you know I always do. 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:22.240 I really do think that's a very important moment in 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.239 American music. Agreed. Agreed, my friend. 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.200 We want to hear about the hot air balloon experiences 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.200 in your life, where the festivals in your neck of 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:33.399 the global woods. 0:03:33.080 --> 0:03:34.920 And we'll keep you guys updated over. 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:36.720 The summer if any of us or all of us 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.960 make it to one of those. But today's story is 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:46.760 not about the fun, high altitude hijinks of touring the 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:49.720 air in a hot air balloon. No, it is about 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:52.160 balloons as weapons. 0:03:52.480 --> 0:03:55.040 Yeah, I mean, when we think of aerial attacks against 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:57.400 the United States. The first thing, obviously that comes to mind, 0:03:57.400 --> 0:03:59.240 and for many the only thing that comes to mind, 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:02.760 are the tragic events of Pearl Harbor on December seventh 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:07.360 of nineteen forty one, when Japanese forces mounted a bombing 0:04:07.440 --> 0:04:11.680 raid on Pearl Harbor, kicking off the events of World 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:15.240 War II on September ninth of nineteen forty two. But 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:19.200 it turns out, Ben, that is not the only air 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:20.839 attack on American soil. 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.960 You're absolutely right. It turns out that one of the 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:31.280 most unusual attacks on American soil occurred during World War Two, 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.159 and it was a balloon attack, or it would be 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.320 more accurate to say a balloon bombing. You see, the 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:42.400 Japanese army employed balloon bombs, or as they were called 0:04:42.760 --> 0:04:48.880 fugos fugs. Starting in nineteen forty four, the Japanese military 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:55.719 constructed and launched over nine thousand high altitude balloons, and 0:04:55.760 --> 0:05:00.000 these each were loaded with fifty pounds of explosives. 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:04.960 That's right, Ben, So the Japanese Military Scientific Laboratory actually 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.599 came up with the idea of what they referred to 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.679 as fusen bakuden or balloon bombs, back in nineteen thirty 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.440 three and the FuGO that you mentioned, ben Or These 0:05:14.480 --> 0:05:18.160 balloon bombs were just one of several ideas that were 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:23.080 proposed by this research unit, and there's a fantastic scholarly 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:27.120 report in the Smithsonian Annals of Flight by Robert C. Mikis. 0:05:27.160 --> 0:05:30.000 It's kind of the definitive work on this, and it's 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.920 pretty crazy. Some of the ideas they didn't go with 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:37.560 are even more ridiculous. There's one called a death ray, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:40.320 and the idea there was it was going to be 0:05:40.400 --> 0:05:45.400 balloon driven. It would shoot like electric rays or like 0:05:45.600 --> 0:05:48.240 you know, electric bolts at people on the ground. It 0:05:48.240 --> 0:05:50.880 would like hover low. And then there were several other 0:05:51.000 --> 0:05:56.360 versions of what became the fugos. Lieutenant General Raikichi Tada 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:59.920 of the Japanese Military Scientific Laboratory is the one who 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.800 was assigned to this program, and he developed several pretty 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:06.359 out there ideas that were already in the worst. One 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:08.920 of them was the i Go weapon, which was a 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:13.280 wire controlled tank that could attack enemy positions. And then 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:18.320 there was the Rogo weapon, which was a rocket propelled weapon. 0:06:18.640 --> 0:06:20.760 And then you had what I mentioned earlier, the death 0:06:20.839 --> 0:06:24.640 ray that would kill enemies up close with this electric charge. 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:27.520 But the one that seemed like it was going to 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:29.360 be a winner out of these, the one they wanted 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.080 to take all the way was the FuGO weapon, which 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.840 was an altitude controlled balloon. In terms of my say 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:39.919 out toude controlled, I mean there was a barometric valve 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:44.440 that would act according to the elevation according to how 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.640 the altitude of the of the balloon, and it would 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:51.159 drop sandbags if it went too high, and then it 0:06:51.240 --> 0:06:54.800 would change the amount of air that was in the 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:58.280 balloon when it went too low. And the idea was 0:06:58.320 --> 0:07:02.839 it had a fuse that would ignite once the wind 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:07.279 currents carried the balloon close to the American coast, and 0:07:07.320 --> 0:07:12.120 the idea was to wreak havoc and chaos on America's 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:17.800 Pacific Northwest region, specifically by causing forest fires. These incendiary 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:22.240 devices would deploy when the fuse would burn up, and 0:07:22.760 --> 0:07:25.320 it was meant to not necessarily cause any kind of 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:28.080 real infrastructure dam would just kind of cause chaos and 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:29.040 mass confusion. 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.800 Yeah, and you know, we can totally understand how this 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.920 pitch sounds crazy at first, blush, but a little bit 0:07:38.920 --> 0:07:41.640 of a historical context will help us realize that this 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:44.600 is this is kind of a brilliant idea. This is 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:48.600 not the first time balloons were weaponized. During the Italian 0:07:48.680 --> 0:07:52.119 War of Independence from eighteen forty eight to eighteen forty nine, 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:58.640 Austrian lieutenant Yukitus undertook the technical development of balloons that 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:03.800 could be used as bombs. So there was historical precedent, 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:06.840 and the thing was, no one had quite pulled it 0:08:06.880 --> 0:08:12.640 off as successfully as the Japanese military would hope. Let's 0:08:12.640 --> 0:08:16.280 talk just a little bit about these balloons, as described 0:08:16.280 --> 0:08:20.280 by Jay David Rogers of the Missouri University of Science 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:23.880 and Technology. These balloon bombs were thirty three feet in 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.320 diameter and they could lift about one thousand pounds. But 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.160 the deadly portion of the cargo again was this thirty 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.560 three pounds anti personnel frag bomb, fragmentation bomb, and it 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:37.320 was attached to that fuse you mentioned NOLA, sixty four 0:08:37.360 --> 0:08:41.040 foot long fuse that was intended to burn for exactly 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:46.520 eighty two minutes before detonating. And despite the fact that 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:50.240 these are weapons of war, you have to appreciate the esthetic. 0:08:50.360 --> 0:08:53.679 These balloons were made of rubber eyed silk or paper, 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:59.240 and they were handmade. These were glued together. Now one 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:03.120 of the things that we not being hot air balloon experts, 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:06.800 have always wondered alone and together here on the show, 0:09:07.160 --> 0:09:13.280 is how exactly you steer a hot air balloon, Because 0:09:13.320 --> 0:09:15.400 on the offset it seems tough. You would want like 0:09:15.440 --> 0:09:17.839 a fan up there, maybe to provide some sort of 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.640 propulsion or to function more or less as a rudder. 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.640 For the Japanese military. The goal here was kind of 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:29.280 a spaghetti At the wall approached, they decided that quantity 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.760 was a quality all its own, and so they released 0:09:32.960 --> 0:09:38.160 and estimated nine thousand of these balloons. So far as 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:41.760 we know, at least three hundred and forty two reach 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:46.319 the US and some even got as far as Nebraska. 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:51.240 But what was their attrition rate? Were they actually causing harm? 0:09:51.679 --> 0:09:56.040 No? No, because they couldn't be steered and the technology 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.240 or the idea behind them as they would travel on 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.840 these winter jet streams for an average of sixty hours 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.680 to reach America, And like you said, they greenlit through 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:08.560 this project after realizing that there was a potential for success. 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:11.640 About ten thousand, between nine and ten thousand these balloons, 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.760 and they were handmade ben by school children, by young 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:21.640 schoolgirls from a neighboring school to the site of this project, 0:10:21.920 --> 0:10:25.800 and it took thirty men about thirty minutes to an 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:28.800 hour to prepare each of these balloons for flight. And 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:32.480 let's remember these were unmanned balloons. These were meant to 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:36.120 be autonomous and to behave in certain ways depending on 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:39.240 the altitude, and just hope that they would get to 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.680 their target. And the fact of the matter is they 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:47.840 were launched on the birthday of the former Emperor Meiji, 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:51.120 and that is when the first series of launches took place. 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:55.360 And despite the project being top secret, they were not 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:59.680 very inconspicuous. They were spotted. They were described as looking 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:02.880 like clusters of jellyfish in the sky. 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:07.040 Absolutely, because if you look at the picture, you've got 0:11:07.040 --> 0:11:10.880 this thirty three foot diameter balloon, right, and then you've 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:14.240 got this fuse going down and the stuff that it's carrying. 0:11:14.840 --> 0:11:19.559 It looks like a large version of snap and pops. 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.600 Do you guys remember those the little paper bags that 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:23.920 you would throw and they would have a. 0:11:23.840 --> 0:11:27.319 Pop, Yeah, with a tiny little you know the top. 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.720 Yeah, it looks it looks very similar to that, or 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.320 maybe tea bags wrapped in twine. The thing is that 0:11:34.360 --> 0:11:37.920 although they launched thousands and thousands of these balloons. They 0:11:37.960 --> 0:11:43.559 didn't cause the level of havoc that the Japanese military 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:48.800 hoped they would create. They did have some damaging psychological 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:52.480 effects because you look up in the sky and there's 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:58.160 this balloon invasion that's unexplained. And the amazing thing is 0:11:58.160 --> 0:12:00.960 that they made it across the Pacific at all. They 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:04.160 were launched from Japan to the US and into Canada, 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.319 and that trip took several days, again with no one 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:12.120 on board, no one steering. And here's one of the problems. 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:17.240 The US reacted in a very strange way. Two days 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:20.200 after the initial launch, there's a Navy patrol off the 0:12:20.200 --> 0:12:23.600 coast of California and they see some tattered cloth in 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.080 the sea. They retrieve it and they noticed that as 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.400 Japanese characters on it. They alert the FBI. And then 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:34.079 two weeks later more c debris of balloons that didn't 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.280 make the journey or found, and the military started putting 0:12:37.320 --> 0:12:41.240 together the puzzle pieces. They said, something is up. And 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:46.120 then over the next four weeks, reports of balloons started 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:51.520 coming in from all across the western half of North America, 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:55.800 and every day American citizens began seeing these tattered pieces 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.520 of cloth or hearing explosions in the distance. 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:06.680 In nineteen forty four. December nineteen forty four, workers at 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:11.200 a coal mine that was near Thermopolis, Wyoming described seeing 0:13:11.559 --> 0:13:15.440 a quote parachute in the air with lighted flares and 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.080 after hearing a whistling noise, that's when they heard the 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:21.160 sound of an explosion and they saw smoke very near 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:21.840 the mine. 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:27.120 And the military immediately freaks out about this, but initially 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.640 they are not worried about explosives being carried by balloons. 0:13:32.120 --> 0:13:34.360 Some of the folks in the military on the US 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:38.440 side are concerned that these balloons may carry something potentially 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.559 far more dangerous than explosives. They are concerned that these 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:46.520 balloons may carry biological weapons, and they thought maybe the 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.800 balloons were being launched from the Japanese relocation or internment 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:54.600 camps that existed at the time, or German pow camps. 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.880 And it wasn't until later in December of nineteen forty 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:04.720 four military intelligence project was put together to evaluate and 0:14:04.800 --> 0:14:08.920 collect various evidence of these balloon sites and they figured 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:12.040 out they were coming from Japan, not just made by 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:15.760 Japanese forces, but coming from Japan. When they looked into 0:14:16.040 --> 0:14:19.360 a ballast and found that the sand inside the ballast 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:23.800 was from a beach in the south of Japan, and 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.720 they realized that these were meant to carry explosives. And 0:14:26.760 --> 0:14:30.760 the problem with those explosives is that they could pose 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.520 a huge danger to the forest of the Pacific Northwest. 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:37.240 Yeah, that's right, because it's very dry in the winter 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:41.000 and these forest fires could really spread and cause some 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.800 serious havoc. And that was exactly what the Japanese had 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.240 in mind. Again, they weren't thinking this is going to, 0:14:46.520 --> 0:14:50.040 you know, put a real dent militarily in the US forces, 0:14:50.080 --> 0:14:55.320 but it would cause some panic and be pretty inconvenient. 0:14:55.600 --> 0:15:00.800 But the military pretty quickly realized that these war very 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:07.280 precision targeted, that they were pretty aimless. And even though 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:09.920 they realized that they were not going to be very successful, 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.240 as we heard from the folks that reported from the 0:15:13.280 --> 0:15:15.520 coal mine, it kind of blew up in mid air 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:17.920 and didn't actually cause any damage. It just kind of 0:15:17.920 --> 0:15:22.240 freaked them out. They still the military did not warn 0:15:22.280 --> 0:15:25.240 the public. They kept it very top secret and they 0:15:25.240 --> 0:15:27.320 did their investigation into it, like you described it, They 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:29.720 didn't put out any kind of notice. So people were 0:15:29.840 --> 0:15:33.160 still seeing these clusters of weird floating jellyfish and didn't 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:34.080 know what the hell was going on. 0:15:34.320 --> 0:15:39.320 Was it a UFO, Was it an errant domestic hobbyist? 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.240 What was that smoke in the distance? Did you also 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:43.480 hear that explosion? 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:44.280 It was. 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.080 With the benefit of retrospect, we can say the US 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:51.520 military took the wrong course of action when they decided 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.720 to stay silent, because in the latter when there's no transparency, 0:15:55.800 --> 0:16:01.800 speculation thrives. But their logic did make sense at the time, 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:04.760 because they didn't want the Japanese forces to get a 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:10.400 morale boost from hearing anything about this operation being a success. 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:14.480 The Office of Censorship went so far as to instruct 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:18.600 newspapers and radio stations not to discuss the balloon's in 0:16:18.720 --> 0:16:22.720 print or on air, and they made that decree on 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:28.280 January fourth of nineteen forty five, and the Japanese only 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:32.040 heard about one balloon incident on the North American continent, 0:16:32.040 --> 0:16:36.960 and that was through a Chinese newspaper. Now, as innovative 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:41.120 and unsuccessful as this plan may sound, the unfortunate truth 0:16:41.600 --> 0:16:46.440 is that they did cause some fatalities. 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:50.280 Yeah, that's the thing they kept. The US military kept 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:54.920 this thing under pretty tight wraps. Until an incident occurred 0:16:55.960 --> 0:17:00.800 that actually did cause some casualties. Now, Japanese Ome News 0:17:00.920 --> 0:17:05.560 Agency was reporting on February seventeenth of nineteen forty five 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.199 that this had been a success, since this is a 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:12.080 propaganda paper, and it was really, really, really inflating the numbers, 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:16.080 standing that between five hundred and ten thousand casualties occurred. 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:21.960 But here's the reality. It was actually six six casualties 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:27.240 and they were historically the only casualties on American soil 0:17:27.920 --> 0:17:30.639 for World War two, which is crazy because you think 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:31.880 you would have heard of this, and I had never 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.560 heard of this until he looked into it. So what happened? 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:39.439 So this takes place in Bly, Oregon. It was a 0:17:39.480 --> 0:17:44.719 Sunday school picnic. They approached the mysterious debris of one 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.639 of these balloons. A fellow named Reverend Archie Mitchell was 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:52.119 about to yell a warning to the kids when the 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:58.520 balloon exploded. Sherman Shoemaker, Edward Ingen, Jay Gifford, Joan Patskey, 0:17:58.760 --> 0:18:02.840 and Dick Patsky were all killed. And these were children. 0:18:02.920 --> 0:18:06.600 They were eleven to fourteen years old. The reverend's wife, 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:13.520 Elsie Mitchell, also died, and she was five months pregnant. 0:18:13.920 --> 0:18:17.800 This tragedy is what caused the US military to finally 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.240 break its silence and its suppression of the story. And 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.679 so they began issuing warnings not to tamper with anything 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:26.640 that looked remotely like one of these balloons. 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:31.600 Because let's just backstrack slightly. This balloon wasn't deployed properly. 0:18:31.720 --> 0:18:33.719 It's not like it fell on them. It was already 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.560 on the ground, on the ground. And like basically, this 0:18:36.600 --> 0:18:40.080 woman when she pulled the family car, pulled over because 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:44.240 she was feeling some morning sickness, and she discovered this 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:47.640 bundle of stuff that looked kind of like paper, likes 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:50.200 almost like wrigami paper or something like that, and thought 0:18:50.200 --> 0:18:52.520 it was neat looking, and they started poking at it 0:18:52.640 --> 0:18:53.399 or something, right. 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.840 Yeah, yeah, and she said, look what I found deer. 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:01.880 According to the Male Tribune newspaper in southern Oregon, there's 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:04.159 a great article you can read about this from David 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:07.880 Kravitz writing on Wired May fifth, nineteen forty five. Japanese 0:19:07.920 --> 0:19:12.440 balloon bomb kills six in Oregon. So it left these 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:17.960 innocent people dead in a horrific scene. They didn't all 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:23.320 die immediately. Joan Patsky died minutes after being seriously injured. 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.960 There was a one foot hole in the ground. And 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:31.399 although they were, as you said, nol the only known 0:19:31.640 --> 0:19:37.040 casualties of this operation, the US government didn't want to 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:40.080 take any chances, so they issued, you know, they started 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.320 warning people not to mess with these things. They also, 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:48.639 at the same time, somewhat counterintuitively or paradoxically, emphasized that 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:52.359 the balloons did not represent a serious threat, and they said, 0:19:52.440 --> 0:19:56.440 just report these, just let us know if you see them, 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.440 we'll send someone to take care of them. And that 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.480 led to, you know, as we said, three hundred to 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:06.360 three hundred and forty two incidents being recorded, with various 0:20:06.400 --> 0:20:10.760 parts recovered, but no lives lost. They did, however, have 0:20:10.840 --> 0:20:13.399 a very close call with infrastructure. 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:16.200 Yeah, one of them hit a power line and caused 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:20.359 a blackout at a weapons facility in Hanford, Washington, a 0:20:20.440 --> 0:20:23.280 nuclear weapons facility that could have gone a lot worse 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:23.720 than it did. 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:29.480 According to Colonel Franklin Matthias, the Hanford plant did lose 0:20:29.520 --> 0:20:33.240 about two days of production, but he thought he as 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:36.120 he recalls, at least, he says, we were all tickled 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:39.120 to death that this happened, because it proved our backup 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:42.719 system worked as far as keeping everything stable when they 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:46.840 lose the power. And another guy there, Vincent Budd Whitehead, 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:50.679 who is a counterintelligence agency at Hanford, recalled chasing and 0:20:50.760 --> 0:20:53.720 bringing down another balloon and he was chasing it from 0:20:53.720 --> 0:20:57.480 a small airplane. This this is crazy. This is what 0:20:57.560 --> 0:21:00.800 he literally did. He says, I threw a brick at it, 0:21:01.040 --> 0:21:02.760 I put a hole in it, and it went down. 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:04.960 I got out there and I started trumping all over 0:21:05.000 --> 0:21:06.760 that thing and got all the gas out of it. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:08.919 A radioed in that I have found it and got it. 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:11.320 They sent a bus up with all the specially trained 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:14.760 personnel gloves full of contamination suits mask. I had been 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:16.800 walking around on that stuff and they had not told 0:21:16.840 --> 0:21:18.920 me that they were afraid of bacterial warfare. 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:22.040 Yees, I know. I want to do a quick correction. 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:24.919 It wasn't. The balloon didn't hit the Hanford site. It 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:29.760 hit the Bonneville Power Administration in Washington, which supplied power 0:21:30.000 --> 0:21:31.719 to the Hanford site. That was one of the biggest 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:34.879 consumers of power from that particular grid, and so that 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:36.800 could have caused some major problems. 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:43.680 And so balloon sightings continued throughout the years. It's interesting 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:46.600 because you know how these kind of things can take 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:52.640 over a country's collective attention span. Right just after the war, 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:55.320 reports continued to come in from far and wide about 0:21:55.359 --> 0:21:59.879 balloon incidents. The Beatrice Daily Sun reports them over set 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:04.440 in different towns in Nebraska, including Omaha. The Winnipeg Tribune 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.400 notes that there's a balloon bomb found ten miles from 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:12.800 Detroit one near Grand Rapids. They were still finding balloon 0:22:12.880 --> 0:22:16.560 bombs as far as like the mid nineteen fifties. 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:19.880 Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, these were like artifacts 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:22.600 at this point, right, they were exploded already, or maybe 0:22:22.640 --> 0:22:25.160 they didn't go off properly, and they were scattered, because 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:27.720 I mean that's ten thousand that were deployed with various 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:30.720 that ended up scattered all over the country. I think 0:22:31.359 --> 0:22:33.000 they made it as far as Michigan, I want. 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:36.280 To say, right, yeah, they made as far as Michigan, Hawaii, 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:41.479 and Alaska. I believe it was in January of nineteen 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:45.160 fifty five. The Albuquerque Journal reports that the US Air 0:22:45.200 --> 0:22:49.520 Force discovered a balloon in Alaska in nineteen fifty five, 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.639 and then in nineteen forty four. Looking back enough, it 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:56.280 called the Santa Cruz Sentinel noted that a fellow named 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.280 Bert Webber, who was an author and researcher, had found 0:22:59.359 --> 0:23:03.560 forty five different balloon bombs in Oregon, thirty seven in Alaska, 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.840 twenty eight in Washington, and twenty five in California, and 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:12.720 reports still continued to pour in. There was one found 0:23:12.880 --> 0:23:18.680 in October of twenty fourteen, really yeah, yeah, in British Columbia. 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.960 According to Henry Pros of the RCMP, or Royal Canadian 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:26.000 Mounted Police, this balloon had been in the dirt for 0:23:26.160 --> 0:23:28.880 seventy years, and he said it would have been way 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:32.160 too dangerous to move it. So it's possible that someone 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:34.840 found it in the intervening decades and just decided to 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:36.200 let sleeping dogs lie. 0:23:36.280 --> 0:23:39.480 So in other words, they didn't work. They were duds, right, 0:23:39.720 --> 0:23:42.000 like the fuse didn't ignite properly, and then they just 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:44.040 went down and there was no boom. 0:23:44.119 --> 0:23:45.720 But still if you mess with it, you know what 0:23:45.800 --> 0:23:48.880 I mean, you could cause it to explode. 0:23:49.240 --> 0:23:51.480 I don't think we found this ben but what was 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:54.679 the material. I know the balloons were hydrogen balloons, so 0:23:54.720 --> 0:23:57.720 that could have even aided in the spreading of the 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:01.240 fire because that's highly flammable. In Hindenberg and all that. 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:03.959 But what was the material the explosives were made of. 0:24:04.720 --> 0:24:08.159 Incendiary bomb is kind of a genre of bomb. It 0:24:08.200 --> 0:24:13.639 can include stuff like napalm, magnesium powder, white phosphorus. These 0:24:14.680 --> 0:24:20.440 used thermite and thermite is uh, how did you say? 0:24:21.080 --> 0:24:22.320 Did it occur in Breaking Back? 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:24.840 Yeah, there's there's one of those Mageiver kind of moments 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:26.760 in Breaking Back where I think he uses an Etcha 0:24:26.800 --> 0:24:29.080 sketch or like the iron filings in an etch a 0:24:29.119 --> 0:24:32.639 sketch to create thermite or to make a reaction that 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:35.240