Issue No. 6 Spring 2017 Mar-May 2017 # Content Page 1 A Japanese War Weapon and Don Piccard’s Famous Flight 2 2 New World Record: 82 Balloons Take Flight to Cross English Channel 5 3 World’s Largest Airship Achieves a Three-Hour Test Flight 6 4 Konyukhov Plans for High-Altitude Record Attempt 8 5 Exhibition Portrays Birth-of-Flight Era 10 Leak Causes Scientific Balloon and Space Observatory Payload to Sink 6 15 in Pacific Ocean 7 Fifty Years of Balloon-Borne Ozone Research 16 8 Balloon Fleet for English Channel Crossing on Amber Alert 18 Weather Not Favorable for March17th Launch; Balloon Fleet on 9 19 “Standby” Again! 10 Balloon Fleet for Channel Crossing on "GREEN" for April 7th 19 Office Location: Maryland, USA Contact Information: Ms. Sitara Maruf Phone: (240) 426-2040 Emails:
[email protected] [email protected] Issue No. 6 Spring 2017 Mar-May 2017 1) A Japanese War Weapon and Don Piccard’s Famous Flight Some of these balloons were retrieved by the FBI. They were 33 feet in diameter, carried 33- by Sitara Maruf, 31st May 2017 pound bombs, and had a volume of 19,000 cubic feet. “In one way, the Japanese had assumed correctly that Americans are gossipy and so they would get news about the bombs hitting their intended target, but what they had not realized was that the American government planned very efficient censorship efforts, and except for a couple of brief reports, there wasn’t any mention in the US or Canadian press,” said Unsworth. This (mis)led the Japanese to believe that their balloon bombs had missed their mark, and they abandoned the operation in April 1945.