The Omaha suburb of Dundee didn’t expect an enemy attack during World War II. Bombs weren’t reaching the U.S. heartland in 1945. That’s why most people thought it was just fireworks when a loud boom and a flash of light appeared in the sky over 50th and Underwood Streets the night of April 18. A few bleary-eyed residents ran outside in their pajamas. Seeing nothing threatening, they went back to bed.
Word soon got out that the explosion that jolted the neighborhood out of bed was caused by an incendiary device that had floated from Japan by balloon.
Hal Capps was 10 years old when the bomb went off. He remembers his father arriving home from his job at the Buffett grocery store in Dundee and saying: “Something happened in the neighborhood last night, but they’re not talking about it.”
Americans were asked to be mum about the bombings. “They didn’t want the Japanese to know how far inland the balloon had come,” says Capps.
Residents in the suburb had other things to talk about at that time. Dundee and the rest of America was still mourning the April 12 death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Signs of World War II were ever present. Dundee women collected tin cans for the war effort. Victory gardens were planted.
But then in August of 1945, the Enola Gay—a B29 bomber built at the Martin bomber plant at Offutt AFB—dropped its atomic payload on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, Nagasaki was bombed. Japan surrendered, ending World War II. People in Dundee no longer had to whisper. The balloon bomb story was now public.
The Japanese Balloon Bomb Site plaque was outside Carl S. Baum Druggists, which has since gone out of business. However, the building was renovated in 2007 and now houses an eCreamery Ice Cream Shop and Hoppy Taco, and the plaque remains.
Called ‘Project Fugo,’ (Fire Bomb) the booby-trapped hot-air balloons were designed to ride 30,000-foot altitudes en route to North America, where, if everything went according to plan, they would set fire to the United States vast forests. Japan hoped these massive wildfires — particularly in the Pacific Northwest—would create mayhem and disturb the U.S. war effort. Each balloon was essentially a giant, floating Molotov cocktail.
This bomb was one of more than 9,000 balloons launched during a six-month period at the end of the war, and one of the nearly 300 that were found or observed in the United States.
These experimental weapons brought the Second World War closer to home than most Americans realized. But the Dundee explosion, and the larger plan it was a part of, are one of the many little-known incidents marking our time at war.
The balloons were constructed from mulberry paper, measured about 33 feet in diameter, and was capable of lifting 1,000 pounds. The first bomb-laden balloons lifted off the Japanese mainland on November 3, 1944. If all went as planned, heat from the sun’s rays would cause the hydrogen in the bag to expand, raising each balloon to its highest altitude, approximately thirty-eight thousand feet. There it would meet the winter winds coursing northeastward at speeds often exceeding two hundred knots. At night, when temperatures dropped to minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit and the contracting gas pitched the craft about three thousand feet, a specially developed altitude-control device would discharge enough ballast to lighten the balloon, maintaining a minimum altitude of thirty thousand feet. Next day the sun would again warm the gas and the balloon would ascend to repeat its vaulting cycle. By the time the craft reached the American Northwest, all its ballast would have been dropped. The altitude mechanism would then begin discharging bombs instead of sandbags. Because the balloons took between 30-60 hours to reach North America, the bomb’s 64-foot fuse was designed to ignite after about three days of flight and detonate after 82 minutes.
These Japanese balloon bombs were dropped in 26 other states and Mexico. Most of the attacks caused no severe damage or injuries. There was one reported deadly incident, though. On May 5, 1945 in Bly, Oregon, five children and a pastor’s pregnant wife, Elsie Mitchell, were killed as they played with the large paper balloon, unaware of its explosive contents. In 1950, a memorial for the victims, called the Mitchell Monument, was erected in Oregon near the site of the bombing. It reads: “Only place on the American continent where death resulted from enemy action during World War II.”
Remains of the fire balloons continued to be found after the war, with the most recent discovery in the mountains of British Columbia in 2014 by two forestry workers who used C-4 to blow it up because it was too dangerous to move.
Project Fugo was a total bust. Still, you’ve got to acknowledge the gumption it took to produce this terrifying and unique concept, regardless of how poorly it was carried out.
So, although the corner of 50th and Underwood may now be known as the corner where business mogul Warren Buffett and musician Paul McCartney catch up over ice cream, that corner of Omaha has a much more interesting history.
To claim this cache:
1. Go to the posted coordinates. There you will see a large green clock. Look down low on the South side of the clock and there is a metal plate. What is the street address on the plate? Send the CO an email with this information. Please do not post it in your log.
2. (Optional) Feel free to post a picture of you near the sign or relaxing nearby.
Virtual Rewards 2.0 - 2019/2020
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between June 4, 2019 and June 4, 2020. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 2.0 on the Geocaching Blog.