Calistoga, In The News

The Day that World War II Came to Calistoga

Posted on by admin
13
Feb

By Ian Thompson
Vacaville Heritage Council

NAPA – It was the day that World War II came to Calistoga.

On February 13, 1945, a large incendiary bomb-carrying balloon that had been carried across the Pacific by the jet stream from Japan was initially spotted floating east over the Mayacamas Range between Sonoma and Napa counties.

A P-38 Lightning fighter aircraft from the 478th Fighter Group, a training command, was quickly scrambled from the Santa Rosa Army Air Field.

A P-38 Lighting fighter aircraft like the one that engaged the Japanese incendiary-carrying balloon near Calistoga on Feb. 13, 1945. Photo courtesy National Museum of the US Air Force.

The pilot found the balloon near Calistoga and quickly shot it down without causing any casualties or damage on the ground. Some of the fabric fragments were later found as far away as Elmira in Solano County.

The successful attack was the first of about 20 such balloon shoot-downs by American and Canadian aircraft over North America. The second happened on February 22 near North Bend, Oregon, and the third happening a month later on March 22 near Reno, Nevada.

“Passing over Reno, the balloon finally settled in nearby mountains,” stated author Robert Mikesh in a 1973 Smithsonian Institution Press report. “Determined to make a capture, one fighter pilot landed his plane to continue the pursuit by automobile, but the balloon released some ballast and bombs in the hills and ascended again.”

It was quickly shot down by another fighter.

The Calistoga balloon was one of 9,300 balloon bombs that Japan released from the east coast of Honshu during the last year of World War II. They were sent aloft into the jet stream to drift across 6,200 miles of the Pacific to drop incendiaries over the Western United States and Canada.

One of the incendiary-carrying balloons that Japan released from northwestern Honshu late in the war to float across the Pacific to attack the United States and Canada. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of the US Air Force.

The hydrogen-filled balloons and their bombs were the first weapons system with an intercontinental range.

Japanese submarines had already shelled the continental United States early in the war and one had launched a seaplane in September 1942 which dropped incendiary bombs on the Siskiyou National Forest without success.

The first balloons were released on November 3, 1944 and the last ones were launched in early April, 1945.

The first balloon was sighted on November 4, 1944, off the coast of San Pedro, California, when a patrol aircraft spotted a large fragment of cloth floating in the sea.

American and Canadian authorities reported 285 incidents during the war, ranging from fragments found to explosions. One such explosion on May 5, 1945, killed six members of a family who were on a picnic near Bly, Oregon.

One balloon was even reported as far east as Farmington, Michigan.

Almost two months before the Calistoga balloon, on January 4, 1945, a Forestville area farmer and his son encountered a balloon when it snagged itself on Terrance Alberigi’s father’s apple tree.

Terrance Alberigi, then a 5 or 6-year-child, was 91 years old when he was interviewed by Santa Rosa Press Democrat reporter Phil Barber for an April 2022 article.

“Dad and I were going out to bring in the goat for the evening,” Alberigi told Barber. “We heard a whistling sound and we saw this thing fall from the sky. It hit an apple tree and broke a branch.”

The balloon came to earth, including its envelope, fragments, rigging and apparatus, and landed behind a workman’s cabin about 150 to 200 feet from the father and son.

“The next day, three or four Army trucks full of soldiers (from Hamilton Field) came out and they were all over the place for bits and pieces,” Alberigi said.

Some balloon fabric scraps, which were suspected to be from the Alberigi farm balloon, were found the next day in the Napa area, according to Mikesh’s study.

The news story of the incident didn’t make the Press Democrat until after the war was over because of a nation-wide gag order to keep the Japanese from knowing about if their bombs were effective or not.

Remains of the bombs and balloons continued to be found long after the war’s end with the latest discovery of remains being near McBride, Canada, in 2019. The discovery of a live bomb in 2014 in British Columbia brought out a Royal Canadian Navy ordinance disposal team who safely detonated the device.

Want to see what else Napa County Historical Society has in our collections for World War II history? Check out this search on our catalog!