US Secretary of State cancels visit to China over hot air balloon
In the United States right now the only talk is about a Chinese balloon that is hanging somewhere over the Midwest. The Chinese authorities make excuses that the balloon was launched for scientific purposes and meteorological observations. The Americans obviously don't believe it and think it was launched to spy on missile silos and other US military infrastructure.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has already canceled his planned visit to China because of this, Republicans are persistently demanding that the balloon be shot down to hell and are already posing with their rifles, ready to shoot it down. Biden himself, after a briefing with the military, decided not to shoot down the balloon (and it is generally not clear how technically possible this is). Meanwhile, somewhere over Venezuela a second balloon was spotted.
Well, while everyone is scratching their heads, I’ll tell you a story from almost 80 years ago, when the United States last really threatened with balloons. In December 1944, in the skies over Montana, local residents noticed a strange object that was blown onto the rocks, where foresters found it and then showed it to FBI agents and the military. It turned out to be a Japanese paper balloon with a bomb tied to it. Later, a crater from a similar bomb was found in Wyoming, and another ball was seen in Colorado.
In total, between November 1944 and April 1945, Japan launched about 10 thousand explosive balloons towards the United States, but only about 300 of them reached America. They were assembled mainly by Japanese schoolchildren by laminating layers of tissue paper from mulberry fibers. The balloons maintained an altitude of about 9 thousand meters while crossing the Pacific Ocean; a gas vent valve and a release cycle for the sandbags allowed them to rise and fall as gas was displaced or cooled.
The only victims of these balloons were a group of church members in southern Oregon on May 5, 1945. Pastor Archie Mitchell, with his wife and five children, stopped their car near the fallen balloon. The children ran to his remains in the forest, and an explosion was heard, killing the pastor's wife Alice and all 5 children aged 11 to 14 years. The US censorship office demanded that journalists not write about such incidents so that the Japanese would not know that the balls were reaching America, but after the explosion in Oregon they issued a warning not to approach the fallen balls.
The Japanese also did not know about the success rate of the launches and many of them flew to America during the summer of 1945, although the launches stopped in April. The balloons' trajectories depended on the vagaries of the wind, making them very difficult to control. But they were also surprisingly difficult to intercept.
About 500 American planes searched for balloons in 1944-1945, but only two were shot down over North America. “Determined to make the capture, one fighter pilot landed his plane to pursue a car pursuit, but the balloon dropped ballast and bombs into the hills and rose again over the plain,” wrote Robert Mikes, author of a monograph on Japan’s use of balloons.
One attempt to shoot down a balloon went particularly wrong. Amid the Chinese balloon story, the US Naval Institute posted the following on Facebook: "As the USS New York was heading toward Iwo Jima in 1945, the crew spotted a silver sphere flying high overhead that appeared to be following the battleship "for several hours. Concerned that the shiny ball might be a Japanese balloon, the captain ordered it to be shot down. After the guns failed to hit the ball, the navigator realized that they were shooting at Venus."
Author: Yan Veselov
