Balloon Bomb - Smithsonian Institution Libraries

Introduction
The strategy of large-scale modern warfare, which
leans very heavily upon the Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile, may well have been touched off by die epic
attack of the Doolittie Raiders against Tokyo in April
1942. Ironically, this mission also sparked the invention
of the world's first intercontinental weapon. The
concept of balloon bombs might have changed the
course of the war in favor of the Japanese had it been
pursued with more vigor and tenacity.
The "Doolittie Raid" during World War II was
planned against Japan to "cause confusion and impede
production." The Americans knew that the bomb loads
of these sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers could not do
enough physical damage to invoke any permanent delay
of the war. But there were high hopes that the
appearance of American planes over the Japanese home
islands would be such a psychological blow tiiat the
enemy might change their strategy of conquest to the
benefit of the Allies.
Doolittle had no way of knowing then, but the bold
raid he led hastened the end of the war by encouraging
the Japanese to engage the Americans at Midway and
lose disastrously. In a desperate attempt to find a means
of reprisal, the Japanese conceived a method to strike
directly at the American continent. Their plan was
simple; launch balloons with incendiary and antipersonnel
bombs attached, let them travel across the
Pacific with the prevailing winds, and drop on American
cities, forests, and farmlands.
It took over two years to design the balloons, bombs,
and automatic dropping mechanism. Japanese scientists,
spurred on by the fury of the militarists and the need for
a return gesture which would regain them the "face"
they believed they had lost in die eyes of die world,
worked day and night to solve the technical problems.
Finally, on 3 November. 1944, the first of more than
nine thousand bomb-bearing balloons was released. It is
estimated that nearly one thousand of the death-dealing
balloons must have reached die North American
continent. They were found over an area from Attu in
the Aleutians, as far east as Michigan, and reaching
southward to Mexico. They took die lives of six
Americans and caused otiier damage, but their potential
for destruction and fires was awesome. Even more
important, if die extent of this remote kind of bombing
had been known generally, the shock to American
morale might have been worse than any potential
material damage.
Historians have tended to make fight of this use of
man's oldest air vehicle, seemingly a pathetic last-ditch
effort to retaliate against the United States. It was,
however, a significant development in military concept,
and it preceded today's intercontinental ballistic missiles
launched from land or submarines. Had this balloon
weapon been further exploited by using germ or gas
bombs, the results could have been disastrous to the
American people.
Figure 1. The large Japanese paper bombing balloon in the rear of the exhibit hall in the Smithsonian Institution's
Arts and Industries Building in 1972. This one was recovered at Echo, Oregon, on 13 March 1945 after making the
Pacific crossing. (72-2993)
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