Fu-Go: Fire Balloon - Program
Near the end of World War II, in an attempt to attack the United States mainland, Japan launched its fu-go campaign, deploying thousands of high-altitude hydrogen balloons armed with incendiary and high-explosive bombs designed to follow the westerly winds of the upper atmosphere and drift to the west coast of North America. Japanese schoolgirls who manufactured the balloons by hand.
After reaching the mainland, these fu-go, the Japanese hoped, would terrorize American citizens and ignite devastating forest fires across the western states, ultimately causing the United States to divert wartime resources to deal with the domestic crisis. The intentions were to kill individuals; set forest fires in the heavily timbered Pacific Northwest; and demonstrate that Japan could attack the American mainland, thus creating panic and anxiety.
The fu-go balloons were cleverly designed to make the transpacific crossing by using an automatic altitude-control device to drop sandbag ballast at intervals as the hydrogen-filled balloons rose and settled owing to the solar heating of the gas envelope. The balloons flew as high as thirty thousand feet to capture the prevailing easterly jet stream, carrying them across the Pacific in as little as three days. A fu-go measured approximately thirty-three feet in diameter, was constructed from laminated washi mulberry-paper, and was supported by nineteen thousand cubic feet of hydrogen.
The Japanese Military Scientific Laboratory originally conceived of the idea of balloon bombs in 1933. Their Proposed Airborne Carrier research and development program explored several ideas, including the initial idea of balloon bombs. But the Japanese military did not actively pursue this program until Spring 1942.
Military historians believe the surprise air raid on Tokyo, led by Lt. Col. Doolittle, may have been one of the reasons for the Japanese renewed interest in the balloon program. With most of the Japanese military committed to their campaigns in mainland Asia and the South Pacific, the unmanned balloon program was revived as a possible retaliation weapon against North America. The reborn army balloon program was code-named FUGO, an acronym which means "a wind ship weapon".
The 9th Military Technical Research Institute, better known as the Noborito Research Institute, was charged with discovering a way to bomb America, and they designed balloon bombs to be launched from Japanese submarines on the West Coast of America. The army originally decided to prepare 100 balloons to be launched from submarines a few miles from the North American coast. The joint army-navy research into this operation came to an abrupt halt, however, when every submarine was recalled for the Guadalcanal operation in August 1943.
The navy refused to tie up submarines to launch army balloons, resulting in the command decision to launch from the Japanese islands. Although the Japanese had studied high-altitude winds for many years, including their careful application of data from Russian experiments, it was not definitively known in 1942 just what altitude would be best to carry balloons from Japan to North America. Here it should be noted that in 1942 Japanese knowledge of these high-altitude west-to-east winds, later to become known as the jet stream, was far more advanced than the allies.
In order to determine the most effective altitude for balloon transport, the navy launched 40 silk/rubber (type B) balloons beginning in February 1944. None of these carried weapons, but all carried radiosonde units which measured air temperature, barometric pressure, etc. Three of these navy Type B unarmed weather balloons were eventually recovered in or near North America. From that data, the Japanese determined that the best altitude for balloon transport was 30,000 feet and the average flight time to North America was about three days.
This led to the army design of a slightly larger (10 meter diameter) paper balloon which included both explosive and incendiary devices. The weapons and ballast were carried around the perimeter of a horizontally suspended wagon-wheel like structure which was carried below the body of the paper balloon.
The balloon carried enough sandbags so that when they had all dropped, the balloon should be over North America. The barometer device then began to drop four incendiaries, one at a time, as it blew generally eastward across North America. The last weapon in the series was an explosive anti-personnel bomb. After all the weapons had been dropped, a small explosive/incendiary charge was supposed to destroy the balloon mechanism and paper bag, leaving practically no evidence of its presence.
The Fu-Go project, a multiyear effort, cost the equivalent of more than $2 million and required the labor of many adults and teenage women, under the overall supervision of Major General Kusaba Sueyoshi, assisted by Major (Technical) Takada Teiji.
The Chiba Balloon Regiment became the parent body, and the ``Fu'' Operation Balloon Regiment was organized 08 September 1944 (Showa 19). On September 25, it became a unit under the direct control of the Chief of the General Staff. Regiment Commander: Colonel Shigeru Inoue. Regiment Headquarters: Otsu , Ibaraki Prefecture . Total staff: about 2,000. In addition to the regimental headquarters, it had a communications corps, a meteorological corps, and a material depot, and was organized into three launch battalions of two or three companies. A company consists of two platoons, and each platoon has three firing squads (one for each launch pad).
Appearing over wide areas of western North America, fu-go balloons reached 16 States and sites as far distant and separated as northeastern Alaska, southern Manitoba, southwestern Michigan, and northwestern Mexico. They also traveled to the waters off Oahu’s northeastern coast and to Attu in the westernmost Aleutians.
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