<< First, the Air Force's 'mogul' explanation's biggest problem for me is the
amount of material found (supposedly scattered for over a quarter of a
mile). I've seen photo's of the 'mogul' balloons and 'there just ain't
enough stuff there to be noticeable' for that area (especially after being
blown around in a thunderstorm). The largest component by far is the
balloon itself. Even the ranch hand would know balloon material was not
some 'unknown' metallic structure. The Air Force personnel certainly
would. >>
I happened to be in a room the other day in which a Television was turned
on...I think it was tuned to the discovery channel...(perhaps the history
channel)...and the topic was ......wwII mogul ballons...
According to this source:
The Japanese had a site on one of their Islands, near a beach...in which
they made and launched about 3000 "continental attack ballons" (my
term)...They were made of....RICE PAPER...filled with hydrogen...had
detatchable ballast packs filled with sand (beach was convient for
that...which was how the launch site was located..(sand was
identified...localized)...and bombed into oblivion by DoLittle). and had one
bomb each... They were launched into the Jet Stream...drifited across in a
day or so...periodically dropping ballast or venting hydrogen to maintain
altitude under the varying conditions of sunlite and darkness...(used an
ingenious clockwork mechanism for this)...when the last ballast was
dropped....the bomb was dropped next....terror weapon...ment to divert scarce
resources from the war effort.(set forests afire,...randomly destroy whatever
was underneath...kill people)
But RICE PAPER...not very metallic...and the ballons ...individually...were
rather small...didn't appear that one would cover much area at all....when
ripped to shreds...and this all occured further north ...I think.
EvMick