Enola Gay (B-29 Bomber) Side Story

[Engineman1960]

I didn’t want to hi-jack a war movie thread about Japan bombing the United States. So I started this one. More than a few years ago, my daughter and I visited the National Air and Space Museum (Stephen F. Udvar - Hazy Center -- Near Dulles Airport -- there is bus service from Dulles Airport -- beats the $16 parking fee). We went on the docent volunteer tour (its free). The docent stopped by this airplane, that sits next to the Enola Gay.

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/aichi-m6a1-seiran-clear-sky-storm/nasm_A19630308000

The story goes: The actual Japanese pilot of the plane ( this had to be like 4th hand) saw this airplane at the Air and Space Museum and said the Enola Gay saved his life, there was a mission where a Japanese submarine armed with 2 of these airplanes sealed in a watertight bay would make its way to the United States eastern coast, where the 2 planes would launch, one would head to New York City and one to Washington D.C. on a bombing suicide mission. Because the Enola Gay dropped one of the two atomic bombs and help bring the end of WW II, the mission never materialized.

According to the story about this airplane, there was actually a mission in play to attack the Gatun Lock, at the Panama Canal, that ended when the Japanese surrendered.

Sounded like a good story to me.

 

[davek]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine about the subs designed to carry them.

 

[dennishoddy]

The Japanese attacked the US mainland a couple of times. A sub opened up with Cannon fire one night, and they actually floated bombs by balloon in the trade winds to fall in the US.
Without looking it up I think there were a couple fatalities when some folks found one.

 

[SoonerP226]

Years ago, a friend of mine told me about a book he'd read about Japanese efforts during WWII (I've long forgotten the name). Apparently, the book claimed that those firebombing balloons they sent were actually supposed to be biological/chemical warfare balloons, and the incendiary charges were just to destroy the evidence.

It also claimed that the Jap high command went along with the surrender because they recognized what the Hiroshima and Nagasaki blasts were, because they'd been trying to develop nukes themselves. Supposedly, they had a plan to set off nukes under American invasion fleets, if either their program or the war had gotten that far.

 

[dennishoddy]

This thread got me digging around the net and found more info that I was aware of.

What most people don't know is that Japan conducted two surprise attacks on the U.S. mainland less than a year later, with the goal of starting wildfires. Now known as the Lookout Air Raids, beginning on Sep. 9, 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of Oregon, assembled a seaplane, and pilot Nobuo Fujita took off toward the Oregon forests.

Here's what happened next, according to the Los Angeles Times:



At 6:24 a.m. Mr. Howard Gardner, a forestry service observer on Mt. Emily reported seeing an unidentified seaplane come from the west, circle and return toward the sea. He described the plane as a single-motored biplane with a single float and small floats on the wing tips. The plane appeared to be small and of slow speed. It had no lights, no distinct color and no insignia was visible. It is possible that a plane of this type might have been carried on a submarine.
Fortunately, it wasn't the best time to start a fire since the area was so damp. While Fujita did successfully drop his bombs and start a small fire, it didn't turn into the hoped-for wildfires that would take valuable resources away from the war effort.

Three weeks later, Fujita gave it another try with two more bombs, and once again, he was unsuccessful.

In his obituary in 1997, The New York Times wrote:



A quiet, humble man who in his later years was deeply ashamed of his air raids on the United States, Mr. Fujita eventually forged a remarkable bond of friendship with the people of Brookings, the small logging town whose surrounding forests he had bombed. Last week, as he lay dying, the town council of Brookings hailed Mr. Fujita an ''ambassador of good will'' and proclaimed him an ''honorary citizen'' of the town.
His mission was unsuccessful but he was hailed as a hero back in Japan. And Fujita did earn his place in history as the pilot flying the only enemy aircraft that has ever bombed the U.S. mainland.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/arti...ng-world-war-ii-hoping-to-start-a-forest-fire


In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon
The military kept the true story of their deaths, the only civilians to die at enemy hands on the U.S. mainland, under wraps.

lsye Mitchell almost didn’t go on the picnic that sunny day in Bly, Oregon. She had baked a chocolate cake the night before in anticipation of their outing, her sister would later recall, but the 26-year-old was pregnant with her first child and had been feeling unwell. On the morning of May 5, 1945, she decided she felt decent enough to join her husband, Rev. Archie Mitchell, and a group of Sunday school children from their tight-knit community as they set out for nearby Gearhart Mountain in southern Oregon. Against a scenic backdrop far removed from the war raging across the Pacific, Mitchell and five other children would become the first—and only—civilians to die by enemy weapons on the United States mainland during World War II.


While Archie parked their car, Elsye and the children stumbled upon a strange-looking object in the forest and shouted back to him. The reverend would later describe that tragic moment to local newspapers: “I…hurriedly called a warning to them, but it was too late. Just then there was a big explosion. I ran up – and they were all lying there dead.” Lost in an instant were his wife and unborn child, alongside Eddie Engen, 13, Jay Gifford, 13, Sherman Shoemaker, 11, Dick Patzke, 14, and Joan “Sis” Patzke, 13.
Dottie McGinnis, sister of Dick and Joan Patzke, later recalled to her daughter in a family memory book the shock of coming home to cars gathered in the driveway, and the devastating news that two of her siblings and friends from the community were gone. “I ran to one of the cars and asked is Dick dead? Or Joan dead? Is Jay dead? Is Eddie dead? Is Sherman dead? Archie and Elsye had taken them on a Sunday school picnic up on Gearhart Mountain. After each question they answered yes. At the end they all were dead except Archie.” Like most in the community, the Patzke family had no inkling that the dangers of war would reach their own backyard in rural Oregon.

But the eyewitness accounts of Archie Mitchell and others would not be widely known for weeks. In the aftermath of the explosion, the small, lumber milling community would bear the added burden of enforced silence. For Rev. Mitchell and the families of the children lost, the unique circumstances of their devastating loss would be shared by none and known by few.

In the months leading up to that spring day on Gearhart Mountain, there had been some warning signs, apparitions scattered around the western United States that were largely unexplained—at least to the general public. Flashes of light, the sound of explosion, the discovery of mysterious fragments—all amounted to little concrete information to go on. First, the discovery of a large balloon miles off the California coast by the Navy on November 4, 1944. A month later, on December 6, 1944, witnesses reported an explosion and flame near Thermopolis, Wyoming. Reports of fallen balloons began to trickle in to local law enforcement with enough frequency that it was clear something unprecedented in the war had emerged that demanded explanation. Military officials began to piece together that a strange new weapon, with markings indicating it had been manufactured in Japan, had reached American shores. They did not yet know the extent or capability or scale of these balloon bombs.

Though relatively simple as a concept, these balloons—which aviation expert Robert C. Mikesh describes in Japan’s World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America as the first successful intercontinental weapons, long before that concept was a mainstay in the Cold War vernacular—required more than two years of concerted effort and cutting-edge technology engineering to bring into reality. Japanese scientists carefully studied what would become commonly known as the jet stream, realizing these currents of wind could enable balloons to reach United States shores in just a couple of days. The balloons remained afloat through an elaborate mechanism that triggered a fuse when the balloon dropped in altitude, releasing a sandbag and lightening the weight enough for it to rise back up. This process would repeat until all that remained was the bomb itself. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey. Between the fall of 1944 and summer of 1945, several hundred incidents connected to the balloons had been cataloged.

The balloons not only required engineering acumen, but a massive logistical effort. Schoolgirls were conscripted to labor in factories manufacturing the balloons, which were made of endless reams of paper and held together by a paste made of konnyaku, a potato-like vegetable. The girls worked long, exhausting shifts, their contributions to this wartime project shrouded in silence. The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. Engineers hoped that the weapons’ impact would be compounded by forest fires, inflicting terror through both the initial explosion and an ensuing conflagration. That goal was stymied in part by the fact that they arrived during the rainy season, but had this goal been realized, these balloons may have been much more than an overlooked episode in a vast war.

As reports of isolated sightings (and theories on how they got there, ranging from submarines to saboteurs) made their way into a handful of news reports over the Christmas holiday, government officials stepped in to censor stories about the bombs, worrying that fear itself might soon magnify the effect of these new weapons. The reverse principle also applied—while the American public was largely in the dark in the early months of 1945, so were those who were launching these deadly weapons. Japanese officers later told the Associated Press that “they finally decided the weapon was worthless and the whole experiment useless, because they had repeatedly listened to [radio broadcasts] and had heard no further mention of the balloons.” Ironically, the Japanese had ceased launching them shortly before the picnicking children had stumbled across one.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/

 

[Seadog]

This thread got me digging around the net and found more info that I was aware of.

What most people don't know is that Japan conducted two surprise attacks on the U.S. mainland less than a year later, with the goal of starting wildfires. Now known as the Lookout Air Raids, beginning on Sep. 9, 1942, a Japanese submarine surfaced off the coast of Oregon, assembled a seaplane, and pilot Nobuo Fujita took off toward the Oregon forests.

Here's what happened next, according to the Los Angeles Times:



At 6:24 a.m. Mr. Howard Gardner, a forestry service observer on Mt. Emily reported seeing an unidentified seaplane come from the west, circle and return toward the sea. He described the plane as a single-motored biplane with a single float and small floats on the wing tips. The plane appeared to be small and of slow speed. It had no lights, no distinct color and no insignia was visible. It is possible that a plane of this type might have been carried on a submarine.
Fortunately, it wasn't the best time to start a fire since the area was so damp. While Fujita did successfully drop his bombs and start a small fire, it didn't turn into the hoped-for wildfires that would take valuable resources away from the war effort.

Three weeks later, Fujita gave it another try with two more bombs, and once again, he was unsuccessful.

In his obituary in 1997, The New York Times wrote:



A quiet, humble man who in his later years was deeply ashamed of his air raids on the United States, Mr. Fujita eventually forged a remarkable bond of friendship with the people of Brookings, the small logging town whose surrounding forests he had bombed. Last week, as he lay dying, the town council of Brookings hailed Mr. Fujita an ''ambassador of good will'' and proclaimed him an ''honorary citizen'' of the town.
His mission was unsuccessful but he was hailed as a hero back in Japan. And Fujita did earn his place in history as the pilot flying the only enemy aircraft that has ever bombed the U.S. mainland.
https://www.wearethemighty.com/arti...ng-world-war-ii-hoping-to-start-a-forest-fire


In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon
The military kept the true story of their deaths, the only civilians to die at enemy hands on the U.S. mainland, under wraps.

lsye Mitchell almost didn’t go on the picnic that sunny day in Bly, Oregon. She had baked a chocolate cake the night before in anticipation of their outing, her sister would later recall, but the 26-year-old was pregnant with her first child and had been feeling unwell. On the morning of May 5, 1945, she decided she felt decent enough to join her husband, Rev. Archie Mitchell, and a group of Sunday school children from their tight-knit community as they set out for nearby Gearhart Mountain in southern Oregon. Against a scenic backdrop far removed from the war raging across the Pacific, Mitchell and five other children would become the first—and only—civilians to die by enemy weapons on the United States mainland during World War II.


While Archie parked their car, Elsye and the children stumbled upon a strange-looking object in the forest and shouted back to him. The reverend would later describe that tragic moment to local newspapers: “I…hurriedly called a warning to them, but it was too late. Just then there was a big explosion. I ran up – and they were all lying there dead.” Lost in an instant were his wife and unborn child, alongside Eddie Engen, 13, Jay Gifford, 13, Sherman Shoemaker, 11, Dick Patzke, 14, and Joan “Sis” Patzke, 13.
Dottie McGinnis, sister of Dick and Joan Patzke, later recalled to her daughter in a family memory book the shock of coming home to cars gathered in the driveway, and the devastating news that two of her siblings and friends from the community were gone. “I ran to one of the cars and asked is Dick dead? Or Joan dead? Is Jay dead? Is Eddie dead? Is Sherman dead? Archie and Elsye had taken them on a Sunday school picnic up on Gearhart Mountain. After each question they answered yes. At the end they all were dead except Archie.” Like most in the community, the Patzke family had no inkling that the dangers of war would reach their own backyard in rural Oregon.

But the eyewitness accounts of Archie Mitchell and others would not be widely known for weeks. In the aftermath of the explosion, the small, lumber milling community would bear the added burden of enforced silence. For Rev. Mitchell and the families of the children lost, the unique circumstances of their devastating loss would be shared by none and known by few.

In the months leading up to that spring day on Gearhart Mountain, there had been some warning signs, apparitions scattered around the western United States that were largely unexplained—at least to the general public. Flashes of light, the sound of explosion, the discovery of mysterious fragments—all amounted to little concrete information to go on. First, the discovery of a large balloon miles off the California coast by the Navy on November 4, 1944. A month later, on December 6, 1944, witnesses reported an explosion and flame near Thermopolis, Wyoming. Reports of fallen balloons began to trickle in to local law enforcement with enough frequency that it was clear something unprecedented in the war had emerged that demanded explanation. Military officials began to piece together that a strange new weapon, with markings indicating it had been manufactured in Japan, had reached American shores. They did not yet know the extent or capability or scale of these balloon bombs.

Though relatively simple as a concept, these balloons—which aviation expert Robert C. Mikesh describes in Japan’s World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America as the first successful intercontinental weapons, long before that concept was a mainstay in the Cold War vernacular—required more than two years of concerted effort and cutting-edge technology engineering to bring into reality. Japanese scientists carefully studied what would become commonly known as the jet stream, realizing these currents of wind could enable balloons to reach United States shores in just a couple of days. The balloons remained afloat through an elaborate mechanism that triggered a fuse when the balloon dropped in altitude, releasing a sandbag and lightening the weight enough for it to rise back up. This process would repeat until all that remained was the bomb itself. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey. Between the fall of 1944 and summer of 1945, several hundred incidents connected to the balloons had been cataloged.

The balloons not only required engineering acumen, but a massive logistical effort. Schoolgirls were conscripted to labor in factories manufacturing the balloons, which were made of endless reams of paper and held together by a paste made of konnyaku, a potato-like vegetable. The girls worked long, exhausting shifts, their contributions to this wartime project shrouded in silence. The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. Engineers hoped that the weapons’ impact would be compounded by forest fires, inflicting terror through both the initial explosion and an ensuing conflagration. That goal was stymied in part by the fact that they arrived during the rainy season, but had this goal been realized, these balloons may have been much more than an overlooked episode in a vast war.

As reports of isolated sightings (and theories on how they got there, ranging from submarines to saboteurs) made their way into a handful of news reports over the Christmas holiday, government officials stepped in to censor stories about the bombs, worrying that fear itself might soon magnify the effect of these new weapons. The reverse principle also applied—while the American public was largely in the dark in the early months of 1945, so were those who were launching these deadly weapons. Japanese officers later told the Associated Press that “they finally decided the weapon was worthless and the whole experiment useless, because they had repeatedly listened to [radio broadcasts] and had heard no further mention of the balloons.” Ironically, the Japanese had ceased launching them shortly before the picnicking children had stumbled across one.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/hist...americansfive-them-children-oregon-180972259/

Thanks for sharing that. I pride myself on knowing a bit of history and I do not recall hearing that part of WWII. Always love learning new bits of history.

 

[Mad Professor]

I didn’t want to hi-jack a war movie thread about Japan bombing the United States. So I started this one. More than a few years ago, my daughter and I visited the National Air and Space Museum (Stephen F. Udvar - Hazy Center -- Near Dulles Airport -- there is bus service from Dulles Airport -- beats the $16 parking fee). We went on the docent volunteer tour (its free).

This is a great museum. If you can only see this one or the one at the mall, pick this one. Much better in my opinion.

 

[skyhawk1]

I have seen that airplane, took a private tour of the original museum several years and after the tour we got to go to the restoration facility and saw all the projects they had to work on. Many one of a kind planes, torpedoes, one man subs etc from WWII.

 

[SMS]

A neat Enola Gay side story is that the airplane went through overhaul at the depot in Midwest City prior to its famous mission. One of her old props used to be on display outside the Tinker O-club.

 

[TerryMiller]

Oddly enough, when we went out to Oregon to be ranch hosts at a retreat and reunion center, we weren't that from from Brookings, OR. In fact, on a vacation week in 2016, we stayed at a state park near there for a night or two.

In 2017, lightning started one heck of a fire near Brookings. It was so bad at one time, that the were warning the residents that they may have to evacuate the town. Our minister's father lived in Brookings, so some of us were prepared to head to Brookings to help him evacuate, if necessary. I don't think they ever did, because we never got called to help.

The map below showed the area of the fire. In the upper, right-hand corner of the map is Grants Pass, which is near where we were living/working. Beautiful country, but way too dang wet in the winter with all the rains.