Stumbled across this during research. I never knew Japan managed to bomb the USA during WWII. Did you guys? www.kilroywashere.org/006-Pages/06-BombOregon.html If you`ve never seen the kilroywashere site, take some time to navagate round it. Its got loads of interesting "funnies". Cheers Jack
Does that mean you've never heard of the Japanese baloon bombs??? One killed 6 in Oregon as they dragged off an unexploded one. No.9
Hey Jack, very interesting. That's crazy, I always wondered why Japan never came over here for the offensive but I guess now my questions are answered. Thanks for the clarification.
That is really intresting. I have never heard of that. I have heard about the balloon bombs though. i wonder why no one ever talks about it?
I also found it interesting that Japan launched seaplanes to fly over Pearl Harbor prior to the Battle of Midway to get intelligence of the US fleet. Also a submarine surfaced off of a factory in Oregon in 1942 i think and shelled it for a few hours. Pretty interesting huh.
I remember reading about that when I was younger. I also think one of the balloon bombs landed all the way in Michigan and killed some boy scouts or something on an outing. Greg
They used the ballons to start forest fires in the Canadian shield. They have a unexploded one in the War Museum that was found. I believe they where a primative fire bomb.
Hello: It wasn't a factory, it was in fact, Fort Stevens, Oregon. I had a friend that was there that night, and he said it got REAL interesting for a while. Japan launced over 6,000 balloons, against the North American conitinent Japan had planned to shootout the Lighthouses on Christmas eve 1941. Can you imagine that!!!!! Billy the Kid
Japanese military attacks on the mainland of America were pretty puny and ineffectual for the most part. Those Fugo balloon bombs were a pretty much total failure, one Fugo bomb did kill a Methodist minister’s pregnant wife and five kids who were on a church sponsored picnic in the woods near Bly Oregon, and another one of them did hit and cut the power lines to the Hanford Plant (plutonium production). The silver lining to that Fugo success was the "integrated" self shut-down process proved to work without flaw, and the system was up and working again within a week or two at Hanford. Of the nine thousand or so balloon bombs launched, about half made it across the Pacific and landed on the North American continent resulting in over 342 incidents registered throughout western United States and Canada. Fugo bombs landed as far north as Alaska and the Yukon Territories, and as far south as Mexico. I believe a few even made it as far east as Wisconsin, but they never did anything in reality other than alert the American government to the existence of the Jet Stream (something largely unknown by the US), and that our "ocean barriers" were far from perfect defenses. Here is a good article on how the US geologists figured out where they were being launched from. Goto: Japanese Vengenance Balloon Bombs of World War II - J. David Rogers On the 23rd of February 1942. the Japanese Navy's submarine I-17, under the command of Commander Nishino Kozo, surfaced and shelled the oil refinery near Santa Barbara. About 15 or 16 shells were fired from its 5.5-inch deck gun. Little damage was done in this attack, about $500 damage was done to one oil rig, and one man was wounded (not killed) in his attempt to defuse an unexploded shell. Later, after the Doolittle raid on the home islands of Japan, on June 20th, 1942, the submarine I-26 shelled the lighthouse at Estevan Point on Vancouver Island and I-25 torpedoed and shelled the freighter S.S. Fort Camosun off Cape Flattery. It was towed to port, not sunk. On the evening of June 21st of '42 the I-25 moved in close to shore and opened fire on Fort Stevens. It fired 17 shells, but a great many of them were duds. Some of them which functioned left craters in the beach and marshland around Battery Russell at the fort, damaging only the backstop of the baseball diamond about 70 to 80 yards from the facility's big guns. A shell fragment also nicked a power line, causing it to fail later. Casualties amounted to one soldier who cut his head rushing to his battle station. In its final "claim to fame", the I-25 again launched another unique attack on American soil. On September 9th, 1942 Japanese pilot Nobuo Fujita catapulted from the I-25 near the coast of southern Oregon aboard a seaplane and headed east toward Mt. Emily. His mission was to drop an incendiary (fire) bomb on the thick forest and cause a massive fire that would shock Americans and divert resources from fighting the war. Once over forested land, Fujita released the bomb, which struck leaving a crater about three feet in diameter and about one foot deep, but not igniting a major fire. A second, similar seaplane attack at the end of September yielded similar results. If the forest had been dry, the Japanese plan might have worked, leaving forest fires that could have diverted hundreds of fire fighters and large amounts of money from the war effort while triggering panic in the population.
I always find it amazing the strange weapons that where thought up during world war 2 My personal favorite is the "bat bomb" The best part is it worked real well.
