
Fire balloon - marvindanig
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_balloon
======
tdeck
Less well known is Operation Outward, England's cheap, scrappy balloon program
that actually got results:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward)

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redcap
> On March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons descended in the vicinity
> of the Manhattan Project's production facility at the Hanford Site. This
> balloon caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for
> the nuclear reactor cooling pumps, but backup safety devices restored power
> almost immediately.

~~~
redwood
What are the chances?!

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Tech1
These are still (very rarely) found by hikers in the pacific northwest
(source: i'm a bomb tech).

Other relevant / weird WWII reading:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb)
(US program) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
tank_dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog) (Russian program)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
And let's not forget more recent efforts:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin)

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paulsef11
There's a really great Radiolab episode on this topic:
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/fu-go/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/fu-go/)

~~~
smpetrey
Such a fantastic episode. This was the first episode I had ever listened to of
Radiolab.

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jamesdterry
This was the test subject for trying to prove any conflict situation could be
turned into a wargame:

[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34117/winds-
war](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34117/winds-war)

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larrydag
If you remember the old show Ripley's Believe it Or Not hosted by Jack Palance
they did an episode on the Fire balloon. There were cases where unknowing
hikers happened upon them in the west coast and some with horrible
consequences as mentioned in the article.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ripley%27s_Believe_It_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ripley%27s_Believe_It_or_Not!_episodes_\(1982%E2%80%9386\))

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halfdan
So here's a weird idea: Could Roswell 1947 simply have been one of these
balloons? Maybe the US was trying to improve those balloons with some, at the
time, experimental material.

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quanticle
The Roswell incident was a balloon, but it's highly unlikely that it was a
fire balloon. Most contemporary analysis points to the Roswell incident being
caused by one of the Project Mogul balloons [1]. Project Mogul was a top-
secret (at the time) project to detect Soviet atomic bomb tests by listening
for their shock waves with very sensitive microphones. These microphones were
mounted on large hexagonal discs, which, when viewed by an untrained eye,
looked like a flying craft of some sort.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul)

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pttrsmrt
_Eventually, an Army fighter managed to push one of the balloons around in the
air and force it to ground intact, where it was examined and filmed._

Wait, what, how??

~~~
david-given
Wingtip turbulence, most likely.

In the UK during WWII, it was discovered that you could flip over a V1 flying
bomb by putting the wingtip of your plane just under the wingtip of the bomb,
at which point its gyro would get confused and it would flip over and spiral
into the ground. This was apparently much safer than shooting them because
otherwise you'd get caught in the shockwave when they exploded (they were
bombs, after all).

Here's a terrible Daily Mail article, but it's got the famous photos of
someone actually doing it.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384740/Kate-
Middlet...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384740/Kate-Middleton-
pays-tribute-pilot-knocked-V1-missiles-course-planes-wing.html)

BTW, wikipedia claims that in at least one case the V1 engine quenched after
tipping, at which point it regained controlled flight and came down to a safe
landing near Tilburg, where it was captured for examination...

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unclewaltr
Yeah, one of these landed in Omaha, NE damaging a clock in Dundee
neighborhood. Not terribly deadly, but it made press.

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Hambonetasty
New front-end framework?

