I’m surprised there is a story about the Japanese balloon bombs in the paper. I thought that was censored to prevent them from knowing that they crossed the ocean successfully.
I bet since the one exploded and killed some family members in Oregon earlier in the spring it was decided to let the public know about them.
9000 balloon bombs sent and 1,000 landed here.
http://defensetech.org/2004/06/17/world-war-iis-paper-bomb-attack/
Note the captions. photo in flight so that tells the japs we know about them. Landed in Canada, tells them it didn’t work.
From this site:
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1492
1,000 estimated landing, 285 documented.
Started nov 3,1944, ended April 1945. We probably knew thy had stopped so was safe to release some info.
Two days after the nov 3 launch, out planes spotted them off the coast so it was not a surprise.
Evidently, we shot a few down.
Here it says we blew up their hydrogen production which put a stop to it.
The Japanese government withdrew funding for the program around the same time that Allied forces blew up Japanese hydrogen plants, making the commodity needed to fill the balloons scarcer than ever. Plus it was unclear whether the weapons were working; security was so good on the U.S. side that news of the balloon bombs’ arrival never got back to Japan.