Observations by a Citizen: The Chinese Balloon

By: Hal Rounds

Media and internet gossipers through the past few days have exploited the opportunity to spread excitement and incite fears because a mysteriously ominous balloon from China passed high in the skies across our country.

While the technology available for use on that balloon is a definite security issue, we have “been there” before, as readers of this column might remember from 2018.  We – the United States mainland – were assaulted by hundreds of balloons used as weapons by the Japanese in World War II.  While the recent Chinese balloon was most likely only carrying sophisticated spying technology, the Japanese balloons were carrying bombs, and they even killed a few American civilians.  

In the months after November of 1944, some 9,000 hydrogen balloons rose from Japan, rode the “Jetstream” winds of the stratosphere across the Pacific, and hundreds of them dropped their bombs across America as far east as Detroit.  Timekeeping and altitude controls were used to drop incendiary and high explosive bombs at times hoped to cause scattered damage once over the United States.  The balloons were as large as 33 feet in diameter.  A system of air patrols was quickly organized to put up some defense after the first sighting of one of the balloons near Los Angeles. Only about 20 were intercepted and shot down; it was hard to catch them due to the altitude and wind speed.  

The U.S. Forest Service got extra troops, including “Conscientious Objectors,” who would not carry arms, to fight the increased forest fires caused by balloon bombs.  One of the bombs briefly cut the power to the Hanford Site, where work on the atom bomb was going on.  On May 5, 1945, a woman and 5 Sunday school students were killed by one of the bombs near Bly, Oregon.   Across America, citizens saw some 300 of the balloons flying, exploding, or lying on the ground.

But the Japanese never knew any of this, because the news media cooperated with the government by refusing to publish these events.  Thinking their experiment had failed, they abandoned it, while their experiments in biological weapons continued.

So, the Chinese balloon itself was nothing new.  That they actually have experimented with the idea, however, should raise our awareness that threats are always “out there.”  What were they specifically trying to do?  I suspect that our military technology was pretty intense on finding out.  There couldn’t be a better exercise for our technology intelligence collectors than an actual enemy probe being sent into our skies.  I imagine intelligence personnel were happily putting in many extra hours as the balloon passed over us, recording and reading every byteof data sent from the balloon to its home-boys.

Most likely, the Chinese operators were also trying to gatherintelligence on us.  Perhaps they were hoping to excite a frantic response by our defenses, a response that would expose to them what capabilities we have and how we would use thoseresources if we are actually attacked by such weapons.  The tactical question is:  Which side can get the greatest advantage by letting the balloon keep blowing across America.  Maybe it was us, and we did it right.

So, what about the official explanation why our forces did not “shoot down” the balloon? They said it was out of concern for falling debris. Maybe so. The balloon was pretty big, so the pieces of whatever it carried might hurt somebody in the one-in-a-million chance that it actually hit someone. Bullets into the balloon would have little effect unless thousands of holes were made – that many bullets would be more of a threat. But a missile obviously could get it; but would be more of a danger to those below, and it makes sense to let that fall in the ocean after a complete passage. Maybe we will learn more. Maybe not.

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