FU-GO BALLOON BOMB

An intercontinental weapon

MADE BY: JAPAN DATE: 1944

The US had entered the war, but while so many other nations involved were seeing their major cities attacked and infrastructure decimated, Americans were relatively well protected by the expanse of ocean between it and the enemy, both east and west. Still, the Japanese needed to do something to quell the advance of American troops, and the concept of free-floating, unmanned balloons packed with explosives that would use the naturally occurring jet stream over the Pacific to reach the US was taken up. The Fu-go bombs, made from paper and glued together with potato flour, would float to America and strike fear into the population, damaging buildings with high-explosive bombs and starting fires with thermite bombs with no way of knowing where they would go – at least, that was the theory. Only a fraction even reached America; casualties were very low and the national panic that Japan hoped they would create never emerged. They were, however, a type of intercontinental weapon the likes of which hadn’t been attempted before, a concept that would go on to dominate the post-war arms race.