Fu-Go: The Japanese bomber that hinted at the Chinese spy ones

The spy balloons that have flown across the US skies in recent years, on "Meteorological" or espionage missions, are not a new idea. Seventy years ago an Eastern power relied on the wind to create what was, by the way, the first intercontinental strategic weapon.

Fu-Go (ふ号[兵器], lit. "Fu Code [Weapon]") was an incendiary weapon (風船爆弾, fūsen bakudan, lit. "balloon bomb") deployed by Japan against the United States during the Second world War. A hydrogen balloon measuring 10 meters in diameter, carrying a payload of two 5.0 kg incendiary devices plus a 15 kg anti-personnel bomb (or alternatively a 12 kg incendiary bomb), and was intended to ignite large forest fires in the Pacific Northwest.

Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched approximately 9,300 balloons from sites on Honshu, of which approximately 300 were found or observed in the United States and Canada, with some in Mexico. The balloons traveled on high-altitude, high-velocity currents over the Pacific Ocean, now known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated ballast system to control altitude just as Chinese balloons now do but run on helium. The bombs proved ineffective because they were often too wet to cause fires, but in May 1945 some people died because, unaware it was a weapon, they played with an unexploded ball that fell to the ground. Fu-Go was the first weapon to have an intercontinental range, with its flights being the longest range strikes in the history of warfare at the time

Here is a video in Italian that explains the story

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The article Fu-Go: the Japanese bomber that hinted at the Chinese spy ones comes from Economic Scenarios .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/fu-go-il-pallone-da-bombardamento-giapponese-che-ha-suggerito-quelli-spia-cinesi/ on Wed, 08 Feb 2023 09:00:03 +0000.