This past weekend I was listening to the Military History podcast about the history of unmanned drones and was surprised to learn that during World War II the Japanese used unmanned balloons to try and fire bomb the United States and Canada.
After hearing about these balloons I then spent an evening doing some additional research and learned that 6 people died in Oregon after finding one of these balloons stuck in a tree. These six people were the only known casualties caused by the Japanese fire balloon attacks. One reason why many people never learned about this attack on the US mainland was that the US Office of Censorship actively suppressed any news about these firebombs. The U.S. strategy was to keep the Japanese from knowing of the balloon
bombs' effectiveness. Apparently this strategy paid off since the Japanese abandoned the project since there was no evidence of the effectiveness of the attack.
Embedded below is a video I found during my research about these balloon attacks.
Here are some additional links if you want to learn more about these fire balloons:
This is one aspect of history from World War II that I have never heard about before and I found it interesting. These little tidbits of new found knowledge are what keep me interested in the study of historical subjects.
