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143 a test V-2, with or without monkeys, have been treated as a military secret of epic proportions? Other rocket test mishaps, with and without passengers, were publicized with no great harm resulting. If the wreckage had been nothing more ex- treme than this, it would certainly have been announced as such, and the entire matter completely defused for all time. The crash of an errant V-2 near the town of Jaurez, Mexico, a few weeks earlier (May 29, 1947) wasn't kept secret. By handling the story as it did, the U.S. government provided the best possible reason for concluding that what crashed was truly mysterious. This is the most recently concocted explanation for the Corona crash, and makes no more sense than does the V-2 rocket explanation, and for some of the same reasons. From November 1944, through April 1945, the Japanese launched more than nine thousand crude, gas-filled balloons, each carrying fifty to seventy-five pounds of incendiary or high-explosive bombs. As many as a thousand of them may have ridden the prevailing winds all the way to North America. Damage from the bombs was limited to a few small fires and the deaths of six overly inquisitive people on an outing who came across one in the woods. The balloons were thirty-three feet in diameter, made of laminated paper or rubberized silk, and carried a payload of more than three hundred pounds, most of which was the mech- anism which controlled the balloon's altitude as it drifted along. In order to frustrate the Japanese in their efforts to learn how effective the novel weapon was, the U.S. clamped down on news coverage and thus kept locations of the landings secret until the tragedy of May 1945. By then, launches had ceased due to the impact of American bombing raids on the manufac- turing and launching facilities in Japan. That the materials found on Foster Ranch could have been from such a balloon and its payload is very hard to swallow. ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE WRECKAGE JAPANESE BOMB-CARRYING BALLOON