Beware of Japanese Balloon Bombs

http://www.npr.org/blogs/npr-history-dept/2015/01/20/375820191/beware-of-japanese-balloon-bombs

by Shivetya • 12 years ago

40 29 12 years ago

I imagine most of them are in the ocean somewhere, still, plenty of WWII ordnance is found all over the world, always good to remember that things like this are possible.

Off-topic: Do we really need all the "Diabolical plan", "Wicked weapons" spiel. This isn't a 1940s comic book. It was a war and all sides were up to this sort of off the wall stuff ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb for example ) as well as more conventional ways of killing people.

kjjw• 12 years ago

Right and the reference to the atomic bomb is of a 'secret project'. The discrepancy is a little bit jarring to read.

Roboprog• 12 years ago

I had to laugh at that part, as well. Sure, a B-24 is a "Liberator", and B-17s were, uh, friendly???

I think they meant to write "desperate", rather than "diabolical", for a plan to blow random holes in the countryside. Not that I would want to be under one when it came down, regardless of country of origin.

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

In Japan, a very crowded country, it might have seemed effective to drop bombs at random - killing people at random as a terror campaign. But California is mostly empty space. Making random black spots on remote pastures and empty hillsides has a lesser effect on moral.

I think it likely that the Japanese command were merely profoundly ignorant of the living situation in America including population density.

chiph• 12 years ago

One of the clever things that Ian M. Banks did in his Culture series was naming military ship classes. So rather than "Liberator", he had "Torturer", "Gangster", and "Psychopath" classes of ship.

stewartbutler3• 12 years ago

Pigeon-guided missiles also come to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon

kjs3• 12 years ago

Plenty of WWI ordinance being found, now a hundred years on. Much of it still dangerous, and as recently as March of 2014 two people were killed by a WWI bomb in Belgium.

jnardiello2• 12 years ago

Nice way to start a WWII article "Those who forget the past are liable to trip over it."

Especially considering that "the past" doesn't exist and that history is written by winners. It changes according to current political needs and in this specific case western history is us-centric and russians were just "passing-by" when in fact it was mainly thanks to the russians that germany was defeated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Casualties says it all.

Related to the article: These japanese bombs are surely interesting for geeks but saying "evil geniuses" is a bit overstating as, to me, they seem as a desperate attempt to hurt US inland.

My2cents

viggity• 12 years ago

I won't take a definite stance, but would probably agree with you that the USSR had a bigger role defeating Germany than the US/UK. However, I would contend that "casualties says it all" is the wrong way to look at it.

The Russians liked to send humans into the meat grinder ill equipped to deal with war (ex. having two soldiers share a rifle during the battle of Stalingrad). I haven't looked, but it would be more interesting to see total german casualties on the western and eastern fronts. And further more, how many of those casualties were caused my the miserable russian winter vs actual combat.

jnardiello2• 12 years ago

You see, even a sentence like "The Russians liked to send humans into the meat grinder" to me seems SO unfair and driven by a deeply conditioned mentality - please, don't take this personally and I don't really mean to offend -. While lack of organisation and proper equipment was a fact, they also were fighting a war in their own country. Which is quite a different story than just sending people abroad having an entire nation supporting you. This is something nor the US nor the UK has ever faced during their whole "modern" history.

Those two soldiers sharing a rifle in the US would have been called heroes and would have had tens of movies covering their stories. But as they were Russians, they were just two poor unlucky men sent against their will to the meat grinder while probably they were soldiers well aware of giving their lives -trying to- protect their people.

It's this basic lack of respect which is hurting me and that just confirms how history is the result of books written and approved by the current political power.

To me, casualties say it all as they are the only real indicator of the suffering of a country (which goes well beyond propaganda). Also consider in such situations the line between official soldiers, unofficial militias and lone fighters is just a matter of definitions and asking "it was winter or a bullet?" is just the wrong question.

njharman3• 12 years ago

Russians liked to send humans into the meat grinder ill equipped

That is simplistic (and largely wrong) view fueled by propaganda and post war "Winners (or current cold war combatants) rewrite history) OP is talking about.

The German invasion of USSR caught them completely off guard, without the organization or material needed to fight. Reeling they did what they had to (sacrifice hundreds of thousands) to save Moscow, and buy time to move production east and organize a real defense. It was a heroic sacrifice and amazing military victory to survive the blitzkrieg.

Later in the war USSR had the most of everything planes, tanks, artillery, and still men. Arguably the best tank of the war, one of if not the best ground attack plane.

During the later winter offensives it was the Germans who sent their troops ill prepared for war. And all the Hitler no retreat orders led to many german meatgrinders.

jbattle• 12 years ago

You could invert it and consider on which front the Germans suffered the most losses - clearly the Germans suffered the majority of their casualties fighting the Russians.

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

mikeash3• 12 years ago

Arguing over who had the bigger role seems foolhardy to me. The masses of Soviet manpower were critical to defeating the Nazis, as were the masses of American war equipment (which the Soviets used extensively). Take away either one, and the war looks much different (and much, much worse).

ajuc3• 12 years ago

Of course then you have to remember that USSR were allied with Nazis before and at the start of WW2, invaded Poland to start WW2 in 1939 together with them (ok, 16 days later, but the invasion was still taking place), and only started fighting Germany after Hitler betrayed and invaded them in 1941.

So USSR made it possible to start WW2 in the first place, then when it backfired they managed to defend (with big industrial help from the west), and then hit back.

Good for them, but expecting gratitude from people they invaded, mass murdered, "liberated" and then occupied till nineties is just bullshit.

Also USSR casualties really shouldn't be labeled as "Russians". Russians were +- 50% of population of USSR and the fighting mostly took place on Polish, Ukrainian and Belarussian territory, so I'd say it was at most 50% Russians and 50% other nationalities.

MechSkep• 12 years ago

After the single lethal attack in 1945: "Several Japanese civilians have visited ... to offer their apologies for the deaths that took place here, and several cherry trees have been planted around the monument as a symbol of peace" [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon

stewartbutler3• 12 years ago

PSA: old bombs are dangerous bombs. If you find something you suspect may be unexploded ordinance, contact the police or (in the US) regional ATF office. Many of the compounds used in older explosives (e.g. TNT) grow more unstable as time passes, actually increasing the change of accidental detonation

Case example: while I don't remember all of the details (it was 15 years ago), there was an exhibit in a small museum in my hometown that had several civil war era percussion fuse cannon balls. An explosives-certified agent at the local ATF office heard that one of the curators would occasionally show children visiting the museum how neat they were, since they would warm up when you shake them. Ends up they were still live, but that the explosive had degraded; a little more energy (say, from dropping it after shaking it for a while) could have set the charge off, killing or seriously injuring the kids at the exhibit. They were safely destroyed, but it stuck in my mind as a cautionary tale not to screw around with old ordinance.

abandonliberty• 12 years ago

"they would warm up when you shake them"

That's insane. I can't believe no one was slightly concerned about this.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

Indeed. It would hardly be more clear if a little flag popped out reading "I am still dangerous." I wonder what sort of misunderstanding causes a person to think this is reasonable.

njharman3• 12 years ago

Wow, that was ridiculously adjective laden writing. diabolic, dastardly, wicked.

krakensden• 12 years ago

Especially from (USA) National Public Radio. A nation that bestowed only hugs and cuddles upon the Japanese.

Udo• 12 years ago

The plan was diabolic

As far as wars go I would say that a scattershot plan designed to cause forest fires in order to distract the enemy is about one of the most benign things they could have come up with given the technology at their disposal. Interesting as the bomb itself is, the article seems to be unnecessarily polemic.

Beware of Japanese Balloon Bombs

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