World War II brought many new weapons to the fight. Almost everyone knows about the quantum leap in large weapons by the Germans. They had V1 Buzz Bombs and V2 Rockets along with jet fighter planes and a great tank. They also had guided air to air missiles and ground to air missiles and very nearly developed the atom bomb. They had accomplished this by putting almost all their scientists and engineers in one place and it worked beautifully. They even developed the first assault rifle. But enough of the Germans, we are not here today to talk about them, we are here to look at the secret Japanese weapons of World War II.

One of the most interesting ideas that the Japanese had during the war was to send large balloons across the ocean to the U.S. These balloons were filled with explosives. These balloons had to cross over 6,000 miles of ocean to reach the U.S. Makes you wonder how this scheme could ever work, doesn't it? Now here is the crazy part, it worked somewhat. The government kept this top secret and the American people never knew about this. In a five month period the Japanese launched over 9,000 of these balloons. Because of this top secret stance, the news papers never reported any of the balloon stories and this led the Japanese to quit, think that this project was a failure. The truth was that about 285 balloons made it to the U.S. On May 5, 1945 six pickers were killed by a balloon bomb in Oregon. The damage from the bombs was small but the psychological damage would have been great if the people knew about the balloon bombs flying overhead.

Japanese Balloon Bomb
Photo Source: U.S. Navy

Another secret weapon being developed by the Japanese was a dirty nuclear bomb. The Japanese didn't have a nuclear bomb to launch but what they did have was radioactive material that was shipped to them from Germany. Their plan was to launch a plane from a submarine off shore of the U.S. and have that plane drop a nuclear dirty bomb on the U.S. We got wind of their plans and dropped the atom bombs on them first. They also had a couple of German jets that had been sent over in crates in a sub along with the nuclear material from Germany, but they never copied them.

The Japanese were trying to use a type of German buzz bomb as a weapon. The difference was their's had a suicide pilot onboard. The idea was to steer this fast moving jet bomb to its target. It was felt that this would cause more destruction than even the suicide pilots and their planes had caused.

The tiny 2 man sub was another of Japans secret weapons. One was found at Pearl Harbor, it tried to slip into the harbor before it was sunk. Later in the war a type of manned torpedo was developed. This torpedo had a human onboard who was welded into the device. He would steer the torpedo into a ship and die for the glory of the emperor. From what I have found on this subject, it seems that this type of torpedo was not even as successful as a standard torpedo. Could it have been because the pilot may have been frozen with fear?

Japanese Midget Sub Sunk At Pearl Harbor
Photo Source: U.S. Navy

The Japanese were trying to develop biological weapons and to this end were conducting experiments on live humans. Most of these humans were Chinese and the victims had been nicknamed logs. When a doctor would desire to cut up another person he would say, get me another log. This people were all cut open without regard to any pain or suffering on their part. It is interesting to note that after the war ended the U.S. got a hold of many of the notes on these experiments and wanted to use the results for developing different drugs. There was an outcry at the time that prevented it.

Generally speaking, most weapons of the Japanese army were inferior. The Japanese believed that it was the soldier that was the deadliest weapon and just didn't do much research into small arms. The Japanese air force was another matter. The Zero was a great plane. As the was went on, there wasn't much improvement in the planes but the U.S. was constantly improving all its aircraft. The Japanese had a fine navy at the beginning of the war including some of the biggest battleships ever built, but as they suffered loses, they didn't have the ability to replace them. It was American industry that save us in World War II. We just kept producing more and more things as the war progressed.