Devoir de Philosophie

balloon bombs

Publié le 22/02/2012

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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.

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