Don Piccard is a hot-air ballooning pioneer.
“I felt pretty special when I was the only person in the United States with a balloon and balloon pilot’s license,” Piccard said.
The 91-year-old credits his most famous flight in Minneapolis in 1947 as the birth of the modern sport and hobby.
“If I hadn't made that flight in the paper balloon, we never would have had ballooning in this country,” Piccard said.
And that flight never would have happened if not for a Japanese weapon you may not have heard of, kept secret until the end of the war.
Piccard was born to perhaps the world's most famous family of balloonists.
In 1937, his parents, Jean and Jeannette Piccard, made a historic flight 57,000 feet into the stratosphere.
So when he joined the Navy during World War II, recognizing his name was Piccard, the Navy stationed him as a Balloon and Airship Rigger.
Then, mysterious balloons began appearing over the U.S. mainland. The Japanese studied jet streams and designed what they called "Fugo" balloons to fly 6,200 miles across the Pacific to drop bombs, start forest fires, cause chaos and dampen U.S. morale.
But the news media agreed not to report on the balloons, so the Japanese didn't know how many made it to the U.S. mainland.
“If they'd known some were getting here and they had good fuses, they could have sent tens of thousands,” Piccard said.
Of the 9,000 Fugo balloons the Japanese launched, just 300 arrived and were found in the U.S., including one by a group of boys in a field in Michigan. The boys brought it into their basement. Fortunately, the balloon was no longer armed.
“Lucky. Damn lucky. There was a paper bag full of hydrogen in their field,” Piccard said.
Within a day, the FBI took that Fugo balloon and gave it to the Navy, where Piccard was tasked with watching over all the Fugo balloons until the war ended.
“When the Navy had no more interest, they said, 'Throw them on the dump.' So I went to my senior officer and said, 'We're throwing these on the dump. I'd like to have one.' He said, 'Sure. Take it,'” Piccard said.
Two years later, in Minneapolis, Piccard made good use of the Japanese Fugo balloon.
The U of M student retrofitted it to carry him, convinced the Minneapolis Daily Times to sponsor his flight, and in February 1947, wearing a Japanese airsuit, he lifted off for a successful two-hour flight.
“It was a big event," Piccard said. "I got a picture that big on the back page of the Star."
Piccard made history by getting his flight license. Decades later, with Piccard's relentless promotion, ballooning took off as a sport and hobby. And it's possible none of it would have happened if the Navy hadn't put a man named Piccard in charge of these little-known Japanese weapons.
“I should have taken 10 of those damn balloons!” Piccard laughed.
Don Piccard still has that balloon buried in his garage, stuffed into a drum. It's so rare, the Japanese balloon museum doesn't even have a preserved Fugo balloon.
