PROJECT 1947

Fugo Balloon Attacks on North America

Japanese Balloons (Fu-Go) on the Web: A Bibliography edited by Michael Unsworth

5004th AISS Fugo Balloon Recovery (CUFON)

1945 Censorship Notice on Reporting Fugo Balloons

Voices of the Manhattan Project
Oral History interviews revealing details of Fugo balloon attacks
on the Hanford Nuclear Plant during the Manhattan Project:

Colonel Franklin T. Matthias, Officer-in-Charge of the Hanford, WA site

Walter Simon, Hanford plant's first Operations Manager

Japanese Balloon Bomb attack on the US

Japanese Balloon Bombs:
Project FUGO by Philip H. Jacobsen

TEXAS HISTORY HIGHLIGHTS
The Bombing of Texas

Savoir Faire: Bombs from Balloons
by Sandra Bell,
Research and Information Services

Wright Patterson Air Force Base Museum
Fire Balloons - Incendiary Devices Launched by Japan During World War II

Fugos: Japanese Balloon Bombs of WWII
(Types, illustration and possible coverup on BW)
by John Covington

Fugo In Medford, Oregon

1945 Newspaper Stories

Tri-City Herald Sep 12, 2001
"Hanford Once Victim of Attack"
by John Stang

Oregon Picnicers Killed by Fugo

Fugo, Japaness Balloon Bombs of WW II

Japanese Youngster Worked on Fugo Balloons

Operation Firefly

Triple Nickles—555th Infantry Parachute Battalion

Fugos In Canada


Thanks to Robert Gates who found these references to Fugo balloons:

Mikesh, Robert C. Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America. Smithsonian Annals of Flight no. 9. Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington, D.C. 1973.

"Balloons Of War", by John McPhee, NEW YORKER, 29 January 1996, 52:60.

Mikesh's work contains a list of Japanese balloon bombs recovered up to 1945.  A number of recoveries were made after that.  There is probably still wreckage out there in inaccessible areas.  Somewhere, I read an estimate that 1000 balloons made it to North America.  I suspect that estimate is off the top of someone's head.--J. Aldrich

In the early 1950s Dr. Lincoln LaPaz also wrote about Fugo's in a magazine article.

Drew Pearson using Fugos as an example wrote a magazine article suggesting that the west use the same techniques to "bomb" the Soviet Union with leaflets.  Probably a trial balloon (pun intended) for Radio Free Europe and other leaflet balloon efforts later on.  Maybe the propaganda balloon barrage in 1954 had something to do with the UFO flap of that year.