news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

speaking of some bizarre military operations in human history, the japanese military's balloon bombing of the united states during world war ii is definitely one of them. judging from the results, it was a complete failure. a total of about 9,300 balloons were launched, and only about 300 reached the target area. the damage caused is almost negligible, but it would be naive to think that balloon bombs are useless. in fact, there was another balloon bomb operation earlier, and that was the british operation outward.

in fact, the british did not want to develop balloons into an attack weapon at the beginning. in the early stage of world war ii, balloons were still mainly used for meteorological observation and air defense. for example, many balloons were tied around important targets such as cities and military bases, forcing enemy bombers to reduce their speed or climb high to avoid balloons and cables, thereby creating conditions for hitting targets and reducing bombing losses. your imagination was opened after an accident.

sweden was not involved in world war ii at the time. one day in 1940, swedish people were listening to radio information that was suddenly interrupted. after investigation, it was discovered that it was a british anti-aircraft balloon that was accidentally blown more than a thousand kilometers by the air current and later crashed into it. the main antenna of the national broadcaster. several similar incidents occurred after this, but the difference was that the victim was changed from an antenna to a transmission line.

if something like this happens, the swedish government will definitely have to negotiate with the british government to resolve it. who can tolerate accidents that happen every three days? the british saw opportunities in these accidents. they never thought that a simple balloon could cause so much damage, so they began to plan operation outward.

this operation was carefully considered. first of all, various accidents have proven the destructiveness of balloons. secondly, from a meteorological point of view, britain is in a special position, with winds mostly from west to east, which is conducive to britain launching an attack. the germans in the east were unable to fight back in the same way.

the british used the navy's inventory of weather balloons for this operation, totaling tens of thousands. these balloons are very small, with a diameter of only more than 2 meters when full, and can fly to a height of several thousand meters. the balloons are equipped with fuses with different functions. , they all play a timing role through slow burning. the specific length of the burning rope is determined according to the wind speed and target distance.

after the balloon is released, it will climb to an altitude of about 5,000 meters and float towards germany with the help of wind. after a certain period of time, the burning rope will burn out and the deflation device will be activated. the balloon's hydrogen will slowly leak and lower the flight altitude. once it is close to the ground, it can be "destructed".

there are two main ways to cause damage. about half of the balloons have conductive cables hanging under them. these cables will hit the high-voltage transmission lines during low-altitude flights, causing short circuits. a serious short circuit will cause the cables to melt due to high temperature. it can even cause damage to transformers and circuit breakers. even if the lines are not disconnected, the damaged wires may be unable to withstand the load and cause an accident someday in the future. replacing these transmission lines is not only time-consuming, laborious and material-consuming, but also affects industrial production and residents' lives. normal operation.

other balloons will have other more direct destructive weapons suspended below, such as a bomb filled with white phosphorus that will explode and burn after landing, and an incendiary bomb that will spray flames about 6 meters around after detonating to cause a fire.

the first release of balloon bombs took place in march 1942, more than two years before the japanese dropped balloon bombs. the operation was completely stopped in september 1944, because the allied bomber forces were able to calmly bomb the german mainland. it is difficult to evaluate the effects of the operation. through intelligence, the british determined that many fires were caused by the operation. therefore, the british judged that the operation was successful and interfered with german industrial production. sweden once again acted innocently in this matter, and some balloons floated to the place. the country has caused damage, and individual balloons will return to the uk due to changes in wind direction.

the germans were obviously very passive towards these balloon destroyers. at first they used fighter jets to shoot them down, but then gave up as the number of balloons increased. the cost of combat was too high. at the most, the british released 1,500 balloons a day, and a total of 99,142 balloons were released. germany people had no choice but to send a large number of personnel to observe the sky and pay attention to fires and remedy them in time. the costs invested by both parties in this game are obviously unequal, so it is entirely possible to determine that operation outward was successful.