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Believe it or not, Monday marks a significant day in the World War II history of Omaha and the United States.
April 18, 1942, was the date carrier-launched Army bombers carried out the first U.S. assault of the war on the Japanese mainland.
And April 18 three years later, in 1945, was the date a Japanese balloon bomb exploded above Omaha.
The coincidence is one of the war's little-known historic footnotes. The Doolittle Raid on Japan by B-25 bombers was retaliation for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor a little more than four months earlier. The balloon bombs were Japan's retaliation.
“It took them nearly three years to retaliate, but it's just proof that the Japanese militarists never got over the insult and humiliation they suffered among their people,'' said historian Carroll V. Glines. “They had told their people that Japan could never be invaded, and here are 16 American bombers dropping bombs in five of their cities and then escaping.''
Glines and the five surviving volunteers who flew the Doolittle mission are wrapping up a reunion in Nebraska this weekend marking the 69th anniversary of the assault. Their final public events are an autograph session and brunch from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at the Strategic Air & Space Museum near Ashland.
Glines is a 90-year-old former Air Force colonel and command pilot who lives in Dallas. He was a B-25 instructor pilot during the war and has written 35 aviation-themed books, including “The Doolittle Raid: America's First Strike Against Japan.'' He is the raid's official historian.
Glines said Japan developed and launched balloon bombs into the jet stream flowing toward North America as a direct response to the Doolittle Raid.
In addition to Omaha, balloon bombs dropped on or near seven other Nebraska communities, according to U.S. War Department accounts at the time. The towns were Ballagh (near Burwell), Chadron, Hyannis, Ellsworth, Osceola, Schuyler and Silver Creek. No severe damage or injuries were reported.
A bronze plaque on the shared exterior brick wall of an ice cream shop and sandwich shops at 50th Street and Underwood Avenue in Dundee commemorates the Omaha incident.
“The incendiary device flared brightly in the night, but caused no damage,'' the plaque reads.
The boom was heard across Dundee and the flash was seen by several people, according to an account in The World-Herald. People rushed outside in their pajamas and saw a light in the sky.
Mary Holyoke described it at the time as “a ring of fire'' in the middle of the sky over Dundee. She watched as it drifted eastward out of view from her home at 5014 Nicholas St.
Glines said Japanese military leaders hoped that the experimental balloon bombs would wreak havoc on U.S. and Canadian cities and forests. The hydrogen-filled balloons were 33 feet in diameter and carried either one antipersonnel bomb or one to four incendiary devices.
Japan launched more than 9,000 balloons between November 1944 and April 1945. The 5,000-mile journey took about three days.
More than 300 balloons were found or observed in America. Balloon bombs were found from Alaska to Mexico and in 26 states, as far east as Michigan.
The U.S. government asked the news media not to publish reports of explosions for fear of causing panic and giving the enemy information about the success of the project.
About two weeks after the Dundee explosion, a pregnant woman and five children from a Sunday school class were killed in Oregon when they discovered a balloon bomb on the forest floor. They were the only known casualties of the devices and the war's only deaths to enemy action in the continental 48 states, Glines said.
Authorities eventually released limited information about the bombs, and on June 1, 1945, lifted the blackout on the cause of the Oregon blast to warn civilians to avoid the devices.
The most recent discovery of a balloon bomb in North America was in the 1960s, Glines said.
“It's possible,'' he said, “that some of the bombs may still be lethal in the far northern regions where they don't deteriorate as rapidly.''
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