On November 3, 1944, Japan released fusen bakudan, or balloon bombs, into the Pacific jet stream.They each carried four incendiaries and one thirty-pound high-explosive bomb. The final flash of gunpowder released the bombs, also carried on the wheel, and lit a 64 feet (20 meters) long fuse that hung from the balloon's equator. The Japanese set a production goal of 10,000 balloons. On Saturday, May 5, 1945, three days before the end of World War II in Europe and just three months before the Japanese surrendered, spinning shards of metal ripped into the tall pine trees, burrowing holes into bark and tearing needles from branches outside the tiny logging community of Bly, Oregon. The Navy found balloons in the ocean. The hydrogen was also vented if the balloon's pressure reached a critical level. The expense was large, and in the meantime the B-29s had destroyed two of the three hydrogen plants needed by the project. Japan employed an advanced balloon technique to drop bombs on the USA. In 2005, director Michael White created a documentary for PBS on the Japanese Balloon Bomb incidents. Through Firefly, the military used the United States Forest Service as a proxy agency to combat FuGo. 1945:: A Japanese balloon bomb kills six people in rural eastern Oregon. Designated by the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, this is the only place on the continental United States where Americans were killed by … It was only available in squares about the size of a road map, so it was glued together in three or four laminations using edible konnyaku (devil's tongue) paste – though hungry workers stealing the paste for food created some problems. They were found in Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Mexico, Michigan,[6] Montana, Nebraska, Nevada,[7] North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas,[8] Utah, Washington, Wyoming, and Yukon Territory. Throughout the years, Japan’s balloon bombs have continued to be discovered. A large number of the balloons that successfully reached North America failed to release their bomb loads when they arrived. A frightened Conner handled it as best she could. As Elsie and the children looked for a good picnic spot, they saw a strange balloon lying on the ground. The Mitchell Monument marks the spot near Bly, Oregon, where six people were killed by a Japanese balloon bomb during World War II. A balloon launch organization of three battalions was formed. In 1945 Newsweek ran an article titled "Balloon Mystery" in their January 1 issue,[33] and a similar story appeared in a newspaper the next day. It was also a sort of last-ditch effort by a country with damaged military and limited resources. It was found by a hunter looking for mountain goats in the east central BC wilderness. The four bombs found are over a 5.5 pound average by a total of 20.8 pounds and the sand bags recovered are under a 5.5 pound average by 17.2 pounds disregarding the last bag which weighed 6.75 pounds. [10], The control system ran the balloon through three days of flight. Balloons and balloon envelopes and apparatus were found in Montana, Arizona, Texas[27] and inside Canada in Saskatchewan, in the Northwest Territories, and in the Yukon Territory. Japanese Balloon Bomb (U.S. Air Force) Upon tending his garden, John T. Cook of Gill Road found something that looked like a “new tin can as the material had a bright metallic finish,” according to a declassified Security and Intelligence Division report on the incident. The Japanese balloon project was revenge for an altogether different morale-smashing mission. Ironically, the 16-year-old Conner had narrowly missed becoming another victim of the mishap. The contraption had alighted on Gearhart Mountain, where it lay in wait until the fateful day when it found its victims—the only deaths from enemy attack within the continental United States during World War II. American authorities concluded the greatest danger from these balloons would be wildfires in the Pacific coastal forests. The Japanese balloon bomb was a brilliant invention built to offset the loss of Japanese air power during the war in the Pacific. The sandbags were carried on a cast-aluminium four-spoked wheel and discarded two at a time to keep the wheel balanced. Further exploring their long-range options, the Japanese also planned to riddle the American coastline with submarine-fired rocket volleys. 1945:: A Japanese balloon bomb kills six people in rural eastern Oregon. The balloon was the only one reported to have landed in Kansas. A story from a local newspaper gives the details. America, Canada and Mexico were all placed under assault from one of the most ingenious and dastardly weapons of WW2 - the Japanese balloon bomb. These balloons were tracked by direction finding stations in Ichinomiya, Chiba, in Iwanuma, Miyagi, in Misawa, Aomori, and on Sakhalin to estimate progress toward the United States. I mean, it's never, never been done. One was found as rece… The balloons rose to about 30,000 feet, where winds … Week after week, the public reported more and more sightings of the mysterious airborne devices. One of World War 2’s best-kept secrets was that of the Japanese balloon bombs, the first weapon ever deployed with intercontinental range. Elsie Mitchell is buried in the Ocean View Cemetery in Port Angeles, Washington.