During World War II the Japanese launched more than 9,000 bomb-carrying balloons over North America; nearly 300 incidents were recorded. Why did the American people not hear of these dangerous aerial threats? Probably because on 4 January 1945 the office of censorship requested that newspapers and radio stations report nothing on the subject. Bomb-carrying balloons that could ascend to the proper altitude in the jet stream, remain at that altitude despite hydrogen leakage and loss of lift, and eventually deliver their bombs and incendiaries made targeting difficult. Thus, the censorship office did not disclose whether the balloons were working.
Publication Number 9 of Smithsonian Annals of Flight, titled “Japan’s World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America” (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1973), by Robert Mikesh, indicates that on 23 February 1945, an Army Air Forces P-38 was the first U.S. aircraft to down a Japanese balloon. It was I, however, who trailed and forced down the real first balloon nearly six weeks earlier.
On 10 January 1945 I was the commanding officer of Fighting Squadron 36, which had just a week before arrived at Naval Air Station, Klamath Falls, Oregon, with no aircraft. Most of my pilots had come directly from the training program and were to be trained further for deployment on the USS Siboney (CVE-120) which was still under construction but soon to be commissioned and deployed for duty with a jeep carrier task force in the Western Pacific.
We were in the ready room discussing combat tactics, when I received a telephone call from the office of the senior aviator at Fleet Air Detachment, Klamath Falls. He told me that the Commander Fleet Air Seattle had reported a “bright, shiny” object high in the sky near our base. He then directed me to provide a pilot to fly their Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat fighter, in order to bring down the object.
I knew that the fighter was there to tow targets for us during high-altitude gunnery practice and that the guns of that plane would have been protected with a heavy coat of cosmoline. We would have to remove it, because even a little extra light oil will freeze at high altitude. I gave instructions for two of the .50-caliber machine guns to be cleaned as quickly as possible while I changed and proceeded to the plane.
At 1709, local time, I took off in perfect weather conditions. I climbed with near full power and almost immediately saw the bright shiny object high in the southeast sky. Soon it became clear that it was a free balloon. About 20 minutes after takeoff I caught up with it at an altitude of 28,000 feet. I began to inspect it close up so that I could report the details accurately. I lowered my flaps and wheels in order to fly by as slowly as possible.
After several passes I estimated, as I wrote later that day, that “the balloon appeared to be about 30 feet in diameter and from 60 to 70 feet from top to bottom. It was fully inflated and had a small metallic-looking cylinder suspended by ropes in the conventional manner. This cylinder seemed to be about three feet in diameter, and about eight to ten inches deep. What appeared to be a small tube ran from the bottom of the bag to the bottom of the cylinder.” The foregoing description would prove to be surprisingly accurate.
When I had completed my inspection, I attempted to bring it down by firing into the bag and releasing the hydrogen inside. My guns failed to fire. Assuming that they were frozen, I realized that I had to find another way to open the bag. It then occurred to me that if I could fly by close enough for the wing tip to catch the periphery of the bag, I might tear it. I tried this maneuver repeatedly, but each time as I approached, the balloon seemed to roll off my wing without actual contact.
Acutely aware that the balloon was filled with highly inflammable hydrogen, I knew I must not hit it in such a way that it wrapped around my wing. Caution prevailed. Carefully, I continued my attempts to tear it, until I realized that we were down to 27,000 feet. I decided that something I was doing was having a positive effect, so the next pass was to inspect rather than to make contact. I saw what appeared to be a vertical split running from the bottom of the bag. Presuming that this could be attributed to my propwash, which was causing the platform to swing violently, I immediately resumed the passes, exerting greater effort to swing my tail at each pass so that the slipstream would have maximum effect upon the balloon. Within a few minutes it became obvious that the balloon was deflating. It then started down rapidly.
I am still not sure that I could have committed myself to more drastic action, but I have often wondered. If I had really flown into the balloon and spun in with it hanging around my plane, would I have had time to think about whether I was a hero or a damn fool? It was my good fortune that those passes caused the rubberized paper fabric to tear. I stayed with the balloon until it was near the surface, where a twin-engine plane from the base was circling. The landing point was near enough for the FBI to collect the balloon the next morning.
Immediately after returning to the air station, I wrote a report of my flight; I then forwarded it with some urgency because of the possibility that it required action at higher levels. Until the Smithsonian publication came out, the only higher-level action that I heard about came on 3 March. I received information copies of many letters of congratulations from various commands. An Army major general, Commander Northwest Sector, Western Defense Command, had written to the Commander, Western Sea Frontier via the Commanding General, Western Defense Command, saying, “in connection with the incident of 10 January, 1945 in the vicinity of Klamath Falls. . . . The successful conclusion attained was made possible by the prompt and efficient action of the Commander, Northwest Sector, Western Sea Frontier and his staff.”
I realized that others were involved, but I thought that I had done most of the work; a few weeks later I did receive a letter of commendation for this secret incident. At about the same time I read in the local paper that an Army pilot had been awarded some prestigious medal for shooting down a balloon in the Seattle area. I wondered, in light of this event, if the Navy might be exaggerating its efforts at secrecy.
How the Balloons Got Here
After release of a balloon in Japan, an aneroid barometer controlled the device that governed its altitude during the flight across the Pacific Ocean. At night, the gas cooled and contracted, causing the balloon to lose altitude. During the descent, the aneroid closed a switch to a freeze- proof battery. The battery then ignited a fuse attached to a squib that released one in series of ballast sand bags. This reaction subsequently closed an adjacent switch that ignited the next slow-burning fuse, and thus released another sand bag. Once the balloon rose above the minimum height, the aneroid interrupted the sequence, usually after three fuse light.
The sun’s heat the next day caused the balloon to continue its ascent. A metering valve at the top of the balloon vented off excess pressure, limiting its maximum altitude. The sequence resumed at night, as the cooler air contracted, the balloon descended, and more ballast was released.
Depending upon the calculated speed of the jet stream that propelled the balloons, the Japanese estimated the number of days required for the balloon to cross the Pacific Ocean. They suspended bombs on those stations of the altitude control device that would normally discharge ballast on the estimated final descent cycles needed to reach North American.
R. C. Mikesh