Fire balloon

Less well known is Operation Outward, England&#x27;s cheap, scrappy balloon program that actually got results:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Operation_Outward" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Operation_Outward</a>

&gt; On March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons descended in the vicinity of the Manhattan Project&#x27;s production facility at the Hanford Site. This balloon caused a short circuit in the power lines supplying electricity for the nuclear reactor cooling pumps, but backup safety devices restored power almost immediately.

These are still (very rarely) found by hikers in the pacific northwest (source: i&#x27;m a bomb tech).<p>Other relevant &#x2F; weird WWII reading: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bat_bomb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Bat_bomb</a> (US program) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anti-tank_dog" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Anti-tank_dog</a> (Russian program)

There&#x27;s a really great Radiolab episode on this topic: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.radiolab.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;fu-go&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.radiolab.org&#x2F;story&#x2F;fu-go&#x2F;</a>

This was the test subject for trying to prove any conflict situation could be turned into a wargame:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boardgamegeek.com&#x2F;boardgame&#x2F;34117&#x2F;winds-war" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;boardgamegeek.com&#x2F;boardgame&#x2F;34117&#x2F;winds-war</a>

If you remember the old show Ripley&#x27;s Believe it Or Not hosted by Jack Palance they did an episode on the Fire balloon. There were cases where unknowing hikers happened upon them in the west coast and some with horrible consequences as mentioned in the article.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_Ripley%27s_Believe_It_or_Not!_episodes_(1982%E2%80%9386)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_Ripley%27s_Believe_It_...</a>

So here&#x27;s a weird idea: Could Roswell 1947 simply have been one of these balloons? Maybe the US was trying to improve those balloons with some, at the time, experimental material.

<i>Eventually, an Army fighter managed to push one of the balloons around in the air and force it to ground intact, where it was examined and filmed.</i><p>Wait, what, how??

Yeah, one of these landed in Omaha, NE damaging a clock in Dundee neighborhood. Not terribly deadly, but it made press.

New front-end framework?