Bats, New Mexico, and World War II

[andyfox]

In 1943, Harvard chemist Louis Fieser (inventor of napalm) launched a project to release captive bats carrying tiny incendiaries from American bombers. These creatures, given to roosting in dark attics and cellars, would ignite thousands of fires in the highly flammable buildings of Japan's cities. Tests continued in New Mexico for many months until a number of bat bombs, blown out of the target area by high winds, burned down a theater, the officers' club, and a general's sedan at Carlsbad Army Air Field.

Earlier in the war, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller feared that the atomic bomb might be used to trigger a fusion reaction capable of setting afire the atmosphere of the entire planet. They did not proceed with their work until Teller's calculations were reexamined and scientists computed a three-in-a-million chance that the ultimate catastrophe would occur, a chance which their superior, Arthur Holly Compton, felt was low enough to be worth taking. On the eve of the Trinity test of the plutonium bomb in July, 1945, the possiblity of atmospheric ignition from an atomic bomb was sufficient to induce Enrico Fermi to invite bets against 1) the destruction of all human life and 2) just that of human life in New Mexico.

[Zeno]

It is a fact that the Japanese sent incendiary bombs over the U. S. Northwest by balloon to try and start large forest fires or cause panic. I remember that in the 1970's one of these old, unexploded bombs was found deep in the cascade mountains of Oregon. Made the news in the Eugene Registar-Guard.

Enrico Fermi was quite a scientist wasn't he. What were the odds he gave for # 1 and 2? 3 million to one or was it an even money bet?

Enrico started the first controlled nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. In an old squash court. The russians were always scratching there heads when reading about this as it was sometimes inappropriately translated as occurring in a pumpkin patch.

-Zeno

[Ray Zee]

they actually got to start a fire with one. but in oregon near the coast its too wet to randomly send balloons for fires.

[andyfox]

"the Japanese sent incendiary bombs over the U. S. Northwest by balloon to try and start large forest fires or cause panic."

We certainly didn't have a monopoly of haplessness.

Don't know what odds Fermi was offering, but a wise man once said God doesn't play dice.

[andyfox]

Just googled the subject and found this:

In the waning days of the Pacific War Japan tried a last ditch ploy to hit the United States with a terror weapon. That weapon was the Balloon Bomb, or Fugo.

It was supposed to set fire to the West Coast and drop anti-personel bombs randomly on the U.S. In research after the war it was found that the Japanese built 15,000 of them but only launched 9,300.

A little over 300 Balloon Bomb incidents occured in the U.S. and Canada. The only casualties were a woman and five kids in Bly, Oregon on a church picnic, who found and moved one. It exploded killing them all.

The Japanese have been using balloons in war since the 1800s. At Port Arthur they were used for observation of troop movements. The Japanese air force came out of the balloon society.

When the US first heard about the balloon bombs they didn't believe it. After a few were found things changed. They were considered a threat and they outlined it well in an unpublished manual called BD-1.

The Japanese Navy made the Type B balloon out of rubberized silk. It carried a radio for telemetry but no weapons. The Army version (Type A) was constructed of six hundred pieces of mulberry paper and filled with hydrogen gas. It carried five incendiary bombs and one high-explosive anti-personnel bomb. It was hoped that the incendiaries would start vast fires in the great forests of the western parts of the U.S. and Canada.

However, in the winter months when the prevailing winds were best suited to carry the balloons to their destination most of the target area was damp and/or covered with snow.

Officially, no forest or grass fires were started by Fugos. There was also the real threat of chemical and biological warfare agents being released by these primitive ICBMs but none appear to have been used. Although, they were developed at the infamous Unit 731.

Some of the air balloons did contain a celluloid container holding 1120cc of a greenish-turbid liquid. A major concern by Intelligence Officers was that the containers of liquid were, in fact, biological bombs that could spread cancer and bubonic plague in humans and foot & mouth disease in animals.

The U.S. Public Health Service, Department of Agriculture and the Canadian equivalent, conducted testing on this substance by injected it into mice, guinea pigs and a calf. Charles A. Mitchell, Dominion Animal Pathologist from the Animal Research Institute in Hull, Quebec, Canada reported in a letter dated July 12, 1945, that no evidence of an infective agent was found (Report on Specimen #21 from Fort Ware, B.C.). A broth was also made out of sand bag contents and tested on animals. Again, with no infective agents were found.

If the Japanese had known of their success with the balloons it is possible that the greenish liquid found in the celluloid containers may have been replaced with disease causing bacteria.

On January 4th, 1945, the Office of Censorship censored the air balloon topic. The purpose of the censorship was to avoid panic and to assure that the Japanese had no knowledge of their success. Everything about the Japanese air balloons - the landings, or even deaths should one occur - would fail to reach the public eye.

Discouraged at not hearing any reports of destruction and death on the American continent, and with other war concerns demanding their dwindling resources, the campaign was abandoned in the spring of 1945 until the very last days of the war.

There may have been as many as 15,000 or more of these balloons built and up to 10,000 lauchings. Including Canada and Mexico where there were over 300 incidents reported.

The only casualties I have found occurred May 5, 1945 when a woman and five children on a church picnic were killed after a balloon bomb they had drug from the woods exploded. These were the only known fatalities occurring within the U.S. during WWII as a direct result of enemy action.

None caused stoppage of war related activity, except for one case where a balloon landed on a power line at Cold Creek in Washington state. It caused the first SCRAM in history, taking down the first reactor used to make plutonium. The launch of this intercontinental threat was a carefully planned act of retaliation in response to the Doolittle raid.

[BruceZ]

Don't know what odds Fermi was offering, but a wise man once said God doesn't play dice.

That was Einstein regarding quantum theory. The vast weight of evidence is that he was wrong and God in fact does play dice /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

[andyfox]

Einstein was indeed apparently wrong about quantum physics.

BTW, I once had a teacher tell me that Einstein was the person who figured out why the sky is blue. Is this true?

[andyfox]

Why the Sky is Blue, a Poem by John Ciardi

I don't suppose you happen to know
Why the sky is blue? It's because the snow
Takes out the white. That leaves it clean
For the trees and grass to take out the green.
Then pears and bananas start to mellow,
And bit by bit they take out the yellow.
The sunsets, of course, take out the red
And pour it into the ocean bed
Or behind the mountains in the west.
You take all that out and the rest
Couldn't be anything else but blue.
Look for yourself. You can see it's true.

-With apologies to our resident poetry lover, Mr. Zee.

[Ray Zee]

wonderful little poem. did you say you will post one every week for us.

now i have to read his poems as i havent before

[BruceZ]

I never heard that Einstein had anything to do with it, but the answer can be found here.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/