today i learned that during ww2 the japanese launched incendiary balloon bombs called fu-go at the united states; they inflated the paper balloons with hydrogen and let them go at a latitude where they’d be carried across the pacific to north america with the aim of starting forest fires and causing mass panic; of the 9,300 balloons released only 300 were thought to have successfully made the crossing; no fires were started but one of the bombs did kill six civilians, the only deaths of the war on continental us soil; technically speaking the fu-go was the first intercontinental weapon in history