PHOTOS IN THE NEWS

A current news topic is the so called "weather balloons" from China. Is history repeating?? Perhaps the title here should read, "PHOTOS THAT SHOULD BE IN THE NEWS", as a reminder that history does repeat itself so we would be well off to study it!

Below are a few photos of the thousands of balloon-bombs sent to the U.S. during WWII. Let's compare the ideas to the Communist Chinese Party plan of today, then imagine balloons with updated technology, bio warfare and more deadly bombs...makes you wonder why NORAD, the Pentagon and the White House were caught unaware.  No excuses!! LEARN FROM HISTORY for the sake of our country, our freedom, our children and our future. RWP

  

 

PHOTO #1  JA14819   Fu-Go(fire balloon), a weapon launched by Japan during WW2- used the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean to drop bombs on America and Canada. From Nov 1944 - Apr 1945, 9300+ were launched, 300 found or observed in the U.S., with 6 recorded deaths (a woman and five small children), on 05 May 1945. First weapon to ever have intercontinental range. Note: 70 years later, in 2015, another 'active' balloon was found in a moutain forest area in Oregon.

PHOTO #2 JA14819A  Still photo from a US Navy training film about the Fu-Go balloon threat. The Fu-Go were far from crude balloons and the altitude control systems were critical to the success of the flight, since the balloons had to fly above 30,000 feet and below 38,000 feet to remain in the jet stream.  This was made more complex by the daytime solar heating of the hydrogen gas within the balloon.  As the sun shown on it, it would rise. Going too high, it would exit the top of the jet stream and so, based on the altimeter reading, a calculated amount of gas would be released to bring it back into the core of the wind.

PHOTO #3 JA14819B  Japanese children push giant balloon bomb across factory floor. Balloon will later be launched to attack continental America 1941-45.

PHOTO #4 JA14819C Fu-Go devices were discovered all along the western parts of North America, from the arctic circle in northern Alaska and Canada, all the way down to Mexico. The majority of the Japanese fire balloons that reached North America were never discovered. So it is a statistical certainty that at least some of these devices are still scattered all over the western parts of the continent. Most of them have probably deteriorated and gone inert by now, but odds are that some are still dangerous if disturbed.

(Above photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Navy and the National Archives and Records Administation.)