| Original caption: “Japanese balloons with bombs are shot down, as shown in gun camera photos, by Eleventh Air Force near Attu, Aleutian Islands, at thirty thousand to thirty-seven thousand feet. Note P-38 at lower right. Nine were shot down in two hours. It is relatively easy to bring down balloons either by armor-piercing ammo, which downs them slowly, or by incendiaries, which ignite the envelope.” Gun camera photographs of a Fu-Go Japanese balloon shot down by an 11th Air Force fighter aircraft near Attu, Aleutian Islands, on April 13, 1945. A Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighter is seen in the lower left photo as the balloon disintegrates. The United States Army Air Force Weather Division in San Francisco had long been compiling meteorological data over the Pacific in an attempt to trace possible balloon flight trajectories from the confirmed landing locations in the western states back to Japan. The meteorologists also hoped to predict where any balloons currently airborne might come down. The north by northeast meridional shift in the high altitude winds continued as March turned to April, and the weather office warned Fort Richardson in Alaska that many balloons, perhaps hundreds, could be on the way. On April 12, a fighter intercepted and shot down a balloon west of Attu, scene of a pitched battle in 1943 that resulted in the deaths of the entire Japanese garrison. The next day, the 11th Air Force detected approximately 2 dozen balloons grouped in random formation over Attu’s Massacre Bay. 27 Lockheed P-38 Lightning fighters and 4 Curtiss P-40N Warhawk fighters broke through heavy clouds. They intercepted 10 balloons between 67,000 feet (9,100 to 11,200 meters). After taking numerous photographs, pilots of the P-38s shot 9 of them down. For the next couple of days, fighter, patrol, and utility aircraft engaged numerous balloons over a wide area. The P-38s had fired 3,892 rounds of ammunition in the balloon engagement. At the request of the War Department, the pilots provided detailed information on the type, number, and effectiveness of ammunition used to destroy each balloon. The experience led to the conclusion that a single Browning M2 50 caliber (12.7 millimeter) machine gun round was clearly sufficient to rupture the paper envelope, but that producing such a hit required short bursts of up to 200 rounds within the tracer limit of 600 yards. With the balloon defense in mind, the War Department called for the development of a tracer with an effective range of a 1,000 yards. The 11th Air Force also reported intercepting numerous radio transmissions believed to have come from the balloons. The unique, easily identifiable sound signature of the transmissions suggested that some balloons carried meteorological instruments and radiosondes (battery-powered telemetry instruments) to send data back to Japan. Of the 13 balloons sighted on April 13 by the Attu aircraft, all contacts were initially made by radar. United States Army Air Force SCR-588 radar operators in the Aleutians also made contact with the April 13 balloons at a range of 85 miles (a 136 kilometers). They tracked them for a 100 miles (a 160 kilometers). The SCR-516 radar operators 1st tracked the balloons at 20 miles (32 kilometers) and tracked them for 55 miles (88 kilometers). The SCR-270 radar operators 1st tracked balloons at 70 miles (a 112 kilometers) and tracked them for a 100 miles. The return echoes on the radar screen appeared to be aircraft, they reported, but with a markedly different signal-to-noise ratio. The report shocked the Naval Research Laboratory, as its extensive testing program 2 months earlier found the balloons were too small and contained too little reflective metal to be reliably detected by radar at any distance. The Attu incident supplied valuable real-world data for the War Department, which was then formulating defense plans that featured fighter squadrons to be dispatched quickly to shoot down airborne balloons. | |
| Image Filename | wwii1618.jpg |
| Image Size | 854.87 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 3731 x 2967 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Air Force |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 13, 1945 |
| Location | Attu |
| City | Aleutians |
| State or Province | Alaska |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | 342-FH-3A29771-58267AC |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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