Page Content (OCR)
144 The last launch from Japan was in early April 1945, more than two years before the discovery of the wreckage. Where had the balloon been in the meantime? Not on the ranch, or Mac Brazel would surely have seen it many times. Could it somehow have been in flight all that time? At the average speed these balloons traveled, it would have made thirty-three trips around the world! With an altitude-controlling mechanism designed for, at most, one week of descending, dropping one or two sandbags, and then climbing back up to its cruising altitude, the balloon would have needed divine intervention to remain in flight until July 1947. Moreover, the wreckage, according to those who saw it, did not include a single scrap of anything similar to the remains of a Japanese balloon, many of which had been recovered by the military and civilians in the final months of World War II and thereafter. The payload section, for instance, was quite ordi- nary in appearance, being composed of conventionally shaped bits of inexpensive metal. While its purpose might not have been immediately obvious, its Japanese origin would have been revealed quickly. Hundreds of others had been rapidly identi- fied ... why not this one? The balloon bombs had not been a matter of military secu- rity since the May 22, 1945, joint announcement by the War and Navy departments that let the American people in on the scheme. This was the original cover story created by the brass at Fort Worth Army Air Field and is still repeated, despite its inability to account for the reported characteristics of the recovered materials. A rawinsonde balloon carries a flimsy, hexagonal, foil-and-wood, kitelike contraption intended to reflect radar and thus make it easier to track the balloon. But what was found on the Foster ranch was 100-percent unfa- miliar materials having particularly impressive physical quali- ties. There was no rubberized balloon fabric, no aluminized CRASH AT CORONA WEATHER BALLOON