Balloon Bomb

Balloon Bomb. . Very near here on a warm spring day in 1945, six people, a woman and five children, were killed by a Japanese “balloon bomb” or Fugo. The group had just arrived for a picnic when they discovered the deflated balloon. While they were gathered around the strange device, it exploded. Within a few weeks, word spread through the community that this bomb was no fluke; there had been others, and there could be more. , Despite the intensity of the attack and the success of the devices themselves, (nearly 10,000 were launched, and at least 300 made it across the Pacific), the mission was ultimately a failure. Few bombs did any real damage; most detonated over remote areas in the wettest time of the year., Launched from 6,000 miles away in Japan, and deployed in retaliation for US bombing raids on Japanese soil, Fugo were the world's first intercontinental weapons. The Japanese military hoped the squadrons of these silent killers, wafting in from the ocean, would create terror and panic.