Fire balloon

Fire balloon 風船爆弾 (fūsen bakudan)
Shot-down fire balloon reinflated by Americans in California.
Role	Hydrogen balloon
National origin	Japan
Manufacturer	Imperial Japanese Navy
Built by	Imperial Japanese Navy
First flight	1944
Introduction	November 3, 1944
Retired	April 1945
Primary users	Imperial Japanese Navy Imperial Japanese Army
Produced	1944-1945
Number built	over 9,300
Developed into	E77 balloon bomb

A fire balloon (風船爆弾, fūsen bakudan^?, lit. "balloon bomb"), or Fu-Go (ふ号[兵器], fugō [heiki]^?, lit. "Code Fu [Weapon]"), was a weapon launched by Japan during World War II. A hydrogen balloon with a load varying from a 15 kg (33 lb) antipersonnel bomb to one 12-kilogram (26 lb) incendiary bomb and four 5 kg (11 lb) incendiary devices attached, it was designed as a cheap weapon intended to make use of the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean and drop bombs on American and Canadian cities, forests, and farmland.

The Japanese fire balloon was the first ever weapon possessing intercontinental range (the second being the Convair B-36 Peacemaker and the third being the R-7 ICBM). The Japanese balloon strikes on North America were at that time the longest ranged attacks ever conducted in the history of warfare, a record which was not broken until the 1982 Operation Black Buck raids during the Falkland Islands War.

The balloons were ineffective as weapons but were used in one of the few attacks on North America during World War II.

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