2RHPZ
09-28-2004, 03:47 AM
Riddle of Japanese 'plague' balloons
By Ben Fenton
American intelligence feared a biological attack spreading plague or anthrax over Los Angeles after discovering in 1944 that Japan was launching large unmanned balloons across the Pacific, according to files just released at the National Archives.
The first reports of a campaign that led to more than 9,000 balloons capable of carrying weapons of more than 300lb being sent on the jetstream from mainland Japan caused alarm in Washington.
Military intelligence officers could not work out why the Japanese were sending the balloons, of which 10 examples were found scattered around North America between November 1944 and January 1945.
They shared their concerns with British intelligence and it is the copy of a top secret American report sent to London that has been released at the Archives in Kew, southwest London.
The file shows intelligence agents at the United States War Department feared that if balloons were launched from submarines off the coast of California, a city such as Los Angeles could be devastated by pandemic diseases.
The document contains pictures taken by the USAF of balloons floating eastwards at 60mph 25,000ft over the Pacific, and detailed pictures of wreckage from sites in America, Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.
Much of the file is taken up with reports and suggestions of what the Japanese might be up to. Ideas that the balloons, with spherical envelopes 33 feet in diameter, were meant to carry secret agents into America were dismissed because it would take too long and be too cold for anyone to survive such a flight.
Intelligence specialists became convinced that the Japanese balloons they had so far found were just practice flights for a more sinister purpose. "The intense cold at the altitude of the balloons' flight would facilitate the transmission of bacteria, and disease germs affecting humans, animals, crops and forests could be transported," the report said.
Link (http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/28/nna28.xml)
By Ben Fenton
American intelligence feared a biological attack spreading plague or anthrax over Los Angeles after discovering in 1944 that Japan was launching large unmanned balloons across the Pacific, according to files just released at the National Archives.
The first reports of a campaign that led to more than 9,000 balloons capable of carrying weapons of more than 300lb being sent on the jetstream from mainland Japan caused alarm in Washington.
Military intelligence officers could not work out why the Japanese were sending the balloons, of which 10 examples were found scattered around North America between November 1944 and January 1945.
They shared their concerns with British intelligence and it is the copy of a top secret American report sent to London that has been released at the Archives in Kew, southwest London.
The file shows intelligence agents at the United States War Department feared that if balloons were launched from submarines off the coast of California, a city such as Los Angeles could be devastated by pandemic diseases.
The document contains pictures taken by the USAF of balloons floating eastwards at 60mph 25,000ft over the Pacific, and detailed pictures of wreckage from sites in America, Canada, Alaska and Hawaii.
Much of the file is taken up with reports and suggestions of what the Japanese might be up to. Ideas that the balloons, with spherical envelopes 33 feet in diameter, were meant to carry secret agents into America were dismissed because it would take too long and be too cold for anyone to survive such a flight.
Intelligence specialists became convinced that the Japanese balloons they had so far found were just practice flights for a more sinister purpose. "The intense cold at the altitude of the balloons' flight would facilitate the transmission of bacteria, and disease germs affecting humans, animals, crops and forests could be transported," the report said.
Link (http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/28/nna28.xml)