Come visit us at one of our Roundtown UFO Society meetings on the 2nd Thursday of each month presently at the Pickaway County Public Library in Circleville starting at 6:00 pm and ending at 8:30 pm. There is usually a sign indicating where the meeting is.
Home of America's First Classic Close Encounter
& Circleville - Roswell Connection
Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks of North America
by Robert C. Mikesh
Smithsonian Institution Press, City of Washington
1973, 85 pages
From November 1944 to the summer of 1945 Japan in a desperate measure to prevent defeat launched over one thousand "fugo" high altitude balloons equipped with bombs that reached North America. Fortunately they did little damage, killing only six Americans and causing some forest fires. However its significant in that for the first time the U.S. was attacked from the air by weapons from another continent. At the time these attacks were kept secret from the American public to prevent loss of morale and also to prevent spies from learning of the effectiveness or lack thereof of the Japanese weapons. However eventually the public was told of these weapons and how to avoid triggering off their explosive if one landed nearby.
How does this relate to UFOs? In a recent issue of FATE magazine, journalist John Keel speculated that it was a fugo balloon that crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, not a real "flying saucer." This has caused UFO and aviation experts to research World War II secret weapons and consider alternatives to the popular theory that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed at Roswell. This reviewer doubts that a mere balloon crash two years after the end of the war would merit a massive cover-up. This book has dozens of photos of the Japanese weapons so the reader can judge for himself if this can be reconciled with the evidence collected by Roswell experts.
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