During World War II, Japan launched an eerie and little-known campaign—balloon bombs sent across the Pacific to strike American soil. These silent weapons caused real damage and tragedy, including the ...

But as paper bags go, this one was exceptional. In its prior service, the carefully crafted balloon had carried a Japanese bomb more than 5,000 miles across the Pacific—one of thousands intended ...

The attacks prompted the Japanese to seek a way to bring the war to the United States. It took two years before they found the right instrument: a new weapon, the balloon bomb. From November of 1944 ...

the government considers it a "pre-modern method" used by the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II, when it used balloons as intercontinental weapons systems to send bombs over great distances.

The 80th anniversary of the day when a pregnant mother and five young children from Bly were killed by a Japanese balloon bomb will be remembered with a series of ...

The winds caused bombs to miss targets and, as headwinds, required bombers to use far more fuel than expected—so much more that they sometimes ran out on the return trip. Japan’s balloons ...