Posted on 10/23/2008 7:50:28 AM PDT by harwood
The article states: "bin Laden wanted devastating fires in the forests of the United States"
You chimed in with: "The japs nearly pulled this off, too."
No, the "japs" didnt come close to pulling it off. They might've worked their asses off and spent a grip of time and material working towards it...and in the end, they did not come anywhere near creating devastating fires in the forests of the United States.
Oivey.
They didn’t “work their asses off.” They let off — literally trial baloons — and but for a shift of the wind, it would have worked.
Sounds like “almost” to me.
” They let off — literally trial baloons — and but for a shift of the wind, it would have worked.
Sounds like “almost” to me.”
Actually, American citizens were killed by one of these Japanese baloons.
near BIy,
Oregon, on May 6, 1945—nearly a month after the last balloons had
lifted off Japanese soil. On May 7 the Klamath Falls (Oregon) Herald
and News reported that Elsie Mitchell and five children had been
killed while on a fishing trip by an explosion of “unannounced cause.”
“One of the party found an object,” it continues, “others went to
investigate, and the blast followed.”
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.outdoors.rv-travel/2008-06/msg06669.html
There were several of them dropped in the Southern Oregon, Medford, Klamath Falls area as well.
Fine, you’re right...the Japs damn near burned down everything west of Denver. Damn the facts.
Now go pat yourself on the back.
lots of urban wildland interface near major Western cities, including southern Cal...
part of the problem is the burn season for different areas is at different times...and tie up huge amounts of resource...but even in the US, when Arizona’s burning good, it’s still to wet to burn in Missoula for instance, although possibly you might get some burn going near Denver...and the South tends to burn in the fall and early spring best...when the west still has snow on the ground.
But the damage you can do in Southern California is pretty spectacular...except that if you do it when the Santa Anas are’t running you won’t burn nearly as many acres. And they have great firefighting intial attack resources there....
The winds that blew’em here tended to get the balloons around before good fire weather season, I have been told by FS people in the know....but it was an interesting idea....
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