Japanese balloon bomb found...

[leaftree]

Thought this was kind of interesting. This town is not far from where I grew up, so far away from the battlefields of the Pacific.
http://www.kelownanow.com/news/news/...und_Near_Lumby

On Thursday morning RCMP in Lumby were asked by one of Tolko’s employees to come to an area off Thunder Mountain Forest Road. The employee suspected that he had found an unexploded Japanese balloon bomb. The bomb is partly embedded in the ground within the bush in the area east of Lumby. Officers photographed the bomb and the military disposal unit from Esquimalt is heading to the area to deal with the unexploded bomb.

[blinky]

wow, that's is one of the coolest "battlefield" finds in recent memory!
Even better is that someone recognized what it was!!

Eric

[Jean-Loup]

Cool find, and surprising that anybodw recognised it.
I was thinking of these baloon bombs sometimes, and wondering when some of them would be found way out in the bush.

[leaftree]

320km/198 miles inland...

That's roughly 320km/198Miles inland, over some serious mountain ranges. I'm impressed.
http://ca.distancefromto.org/distanc...-lumby/479093/

[blinky]

A lot of them probably did make it all the way over and judging by how remote that area is, you wonder how many of them might have exploded and just burned themselves out without a single person having a clue it ever happened. At least a couple made it all the way to Michigan!

[bodes]

A lot of them probably did make it all the way over and judging by how remote that area is, you wonder how many of them might have exploded and just burned themselves out without a single person having a clue it ever happened. At least a couple made it all the way to Michigan!

I'm not sure your account is completely right.....Seems I saw some where there was a fatality here in the US by one of these bombs....It was hushed in order to keep the Japanese from continuing this type of warfare.....Bodes

Here's a good article which explains it and has a picture of what the bomb looked like...

[blinky]

Yes, I know. I was saying for everyone seen or known to have fallen, how many of them fell and exploded without anyone being the wiser.

[bodes]

Diagram of what balloon bomb looks like....Bodes

[bodes]

Yes, I know. I was saying for everyone seen or known to have fallen, how many of them fell and exploded without anyone being the wiser.

Gotcha!....Bodes

[blinky]

Amazingly simple and complex at the same time.
If the public had been told, it would have been almost the perfect terror weapon.

[GHP]

While I was at Camp Zama, Japan (Jan 1990 - Oct 1994) my final six months was at our subinstallation, "Sagami Depot," as the 35th Supply & Services Battalion S-3 (Plans and Ops Officer). While there I learned that in addition to building tanks or doing depot-level maintenance there, the depot also constructed these baloon fire bombs.

Sagami Depot also housed a WWII Japanese Military Hospital; we were using it as (1) a warehouse for medical supplies, and (2) an emergency hospital. It once had extensive gardens for the patients to walk around in, and a medium-sized Shinto shrine (about 8 ft x 10 ft x 12 ft high). I was told it was haunted because of so many souls who died there ... but I never saw or heard a ghost.

I found this very accurate description here

Sagami Depot
<...>
Sagami Depot is located in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Honshu, Japan. Many other items were also made at the Sagami Arsenal. Of particular interest were the fire bombs carried by free balloons which drifted across the Pacific to start forest and other fires in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Component parts were made in what is now Plant Three, the Box and Crate Shop of the Care and Preservation Branch, and assembled in Bldg 166-1. These balloons were launched from the Chiba Peninsula, across the bay from Tokyo. Tractors, shells, gauges, and an airborne guided missile were also produced at the Arsenal. .

--Guy