Japanese Fu-Go Balloon Bombs Over USA And Other Amazing Stories From The Past

The story of Japanese Fu-Go balloon bombs over the Unites States and other amazing and interesting stories like the german U-Boot submarines sunk after the war (Operation Deadlight), or the runways surrounded by fire (Project FIDO), or Project Manhigh, the pre-Space Age military project that took men in balloons to the middle layers of the stratosphere.

Fu-Go was an incendiary balloon weapon (風船爆弾 “balloon bomb”) deployed by Japan against the United States during World War II. A hydrogen balloon measuring 33 feet (10 m) in diameter, it carried a payload of four 11-pound (5.0 kg) incendiary devices plus one 33-pound (15 kg) anti-personnel bomb, or alternatively one 26-pound (12 kg) incendiary bomb, and was intended to start large forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.
Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched about 9,300 balloons from sites on Honshu, of which about 300 were found or observed in the U.S. and Canada, with some in Mexico. The balloons were carried by high-altitude and high-speed currents over the Pacific Ocean, now known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated ballast system to control altitude. The bombs were ineffective as fire starters due to damp conditions, causing only minor damage and six deaths in a single civilian incident in Oregon in May 1945. The Fu-Go balloon was the first weapon system with intercontinental range, with its attacks being the longest-ranged in the history of warfare at the time.

Project Manhigh was a pre-Space Age military project that took men in balloons to the middle layers of the stratosphere, funded as an aero-medical research program, though seen by its designers as a stepping stone to space. It was conducted by the United States Air Force between 1955 and 1958.
Candidates for the Manhigh project were put through a series of physical and psychological tests that became the standard for qualifying astronauts for the Project Mercury, America’s first manned orbital space program.
Similar projects in which men in a gondola reached near-space altitudes were performed by Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer, reaching 15,785 m (51,788 ft) in 1931, USSR-1 piloted by Georgy Prokofiev reaching 18,500 m (60,700 ft) in 1933, and Osoaviakhim-1 reaching 22,000 m (72,000 ft) in 1934.

Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) (which was sometimes referred to as “Fog Intense Dispersal Operation” or “Fog, Intense Dispersal Of”) was a system used for dispersing fog and pea soup fog (dense smog) from an airfield so that aircraft could land safely. The device was developed by Arthur Hartley for British RAF bomber stations, allowing the landing of aircraft returning from raids over Germany in poor visibility by burning fuel in rows on either side of the runway.
The FIDO system was developed at the department of chemical engineering of the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, during the Second World War. The invention of FIDO is formally attributed to Dr John David Main-Smith, an ex-Birmingham resident and principal scientific officer of the Chemistry Department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, Hampshire, and as a courtesy the joint-patent (595,907) held by the Ministry of Supply was shared by the department head Dr Ramsbottom as was normal practice at the time. This formal government recognition is enshrined in an Air Ministry postwar letter to the late inventor’s late widow and held by his son, Bruce Main-Smith (February 2008). It also deals with the lesser role of those developing support equipment, notably the FIDO burner.

Operation Deadlight was the code name for the Royal Navy operation of November 1945 – February 1946 to scuttle German U-boats surrendered to the Allies after the defeat of Germany near the end of World War II.

Operation
Of the 156 U-boats that surrendered to the allies at the end of the war, 116 were scuttled as part of Operation Deadlight. The Royal Navy carried out the operation, and planned to tow the submarines to three areas about 100 miles (160 km) north-west of Ireland and sink them. The areas were codenamed XX, YY, and ZZ. They intended to use XX as the main scuttling area, while towing 36 boats to ZZ to use as practice targets for aerial attack. YY was to be a reserve position where, if the weather was good enough, they could divert submarines from XX to sink with naval forces. Submarines that were not used for target practice were to be sunk with explosive charges, with naval gunfire as a fall-back option if that failed.

#engineering #balloon #uboot