11. Japan’s Plan to Torch America
With defeat staring them in the face late in the war, the Japanese were desperate to lash out at the United States. So they came up with the Fu-Go (“Code Fu”) weapon: hydrogen balloons carrying 70 pounds of explosives or incendiaries. Planners calculated that when released in Japan, the jet stream would carry the balloons over the Pacific Ocean until they reached North America, where their bombs would drop on cities, forests, and farms. Japanese planners hoped that the balloon-borne bombs would ignite devastating wildfires in the heavily forested Pacific Northwest, wreak havoc, and cause widespread panic.
The technology was brilliant in its utilization of cheap materials to launch a simple device capable of reaching an enemy’s homeland, thousands of miles away. The Fu-Go fire balloons were technically history’s first weapons with an intercontinental range. In that respect, they preceded both the American B-36 Peacemaker bomber and the Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile.
