balloon bombs
Publié le 22/02/2012
Extrait du document
Balloon bombs were something of a curiosity in
World War II. As early as 1939, the British attempted
to float balloons equipped with incendiary bombs
over the German Black Forest. The idea was to start
massive forest fires, which would deplete Germany's
precious supply of timber. The balloons, however,
did not even leave English air space, and when
the wind suddenly changed direction, one of the
balloons set fire to a farm in East Anglia.
It was the Japanese who made the most extensive
use of balloon bombs. Helium-filled and fashioned
out of bonded mulberry paper, they were
approximately 91 feet in diameter, and they were
released by the thousands during November 1944
and March 1945. Japanese climatologists predicted
that prevailing winds would carry significant numbers
of them over the western United States. They
were maintained at the optimum drifting altitude
by an ingenious mechanism, which would release
some of the balloon's helium if it floated too high
and that would jettison a ballast sandbag if it went
too low. Of the thousands deployed, some 200
landed in the American West and Alaska, as well as
in Canada and as far south as Mexico. Explosives
were suspended beneath each balloon, and detonations
resulted in a total of seven deaths, including
one woman in Helena, Montana, and six other
people in Oregon. Small forest fires were also
started but quickly extinguished. American civil
defense authorities did not greatly fear the explosive
devices, which were small and limited in the
damage they could cause, but they were concerned
that the Japanese would use the balloons to disseminate
deadly bacteria in a desperate campaign
of biological warfare. Initially, some officials suspected
that the balloons that actually had landed
carried biological weapons.