So here'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.
The Roswell incident was a balloon, but it's highly unlikely that it was a fire balloon. Most contemporary analysis points to the Roswell incident being caused by one of the Project Mogul balloons [1]. Project Mogul was a top-secret (at the time) project to detect Soviet atomic bomb tests by listening for their shock waves with very sensitive microphones. These microphones were mounted on large hexagonal discs, which, when viewed by an untrained eye, looked like a flying craft of some sort.
> On March 10, 1945, one of the last paper balloons descended in the vicinity of the Manhattan Project'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.
If you remember the old show Ripley'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.
In the UK during WWII, it was discovered that you could flip over a V1 flying bomb by putting the wingtip of your plane just under the wingtip of the bomb, at which point its gyro would get confused and it would flip over and spiral into the ground. This was apparently much safer than shooting them because otherwise you'd get caught in the shockwave when they exploded (they were bombs, after all).
Here's a terrible Daily Mail article, but it's got the famous photos of someone actually doing it.
BTW, wikipedia claims that in at least one case the V1 engine quenched after tipping, at which point it regained controlled flight and came down to a safe landing near Tilburg, where it was captured for examination...
17 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 41.4 ms ] thread[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mogul
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34117/winds-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ripley%27s_Believe_It_...
Wait, what, how??
In the UK during WWII, it was discovered that you could flip over a V1 flying bomb by putting the wingtip of your plane just under the wingtip of the bomb, at which point its gyro would get confused and it would flip over and spiral into the ground. This was apparently much safer than shooting them because otherwise you'd get caught in the shockwave when they exploded (they were bombs, after all).
Here's a terrible Daily Mail article, but it's got the famous photos of someone actually doing it.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1384740/Kate-Middlet...
BTW, wikipedia claims that in at least one case the V1 engine quenched after tipping, at which point it regained controlled flight and came down to a safe landing near Tilburg, where it was captured for examination...
Other relevant / weird WWII reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb (US program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog (Russian program)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_dolphin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon