The Japanese Navy's Crazy Plan to Bomb Texas

(Photo: Max Smith)

Other than a handful of submarine-mounted artillery bombings, a brief air raid by a single submarine-launched seaplane, and a few balloon-floated bombs, Japan was unable to directly attack the 48 contiguous United States during World War II. The Japanese did, however, have larger ambitions against the US heartland.

Pictured above is a surviving Kawanishi H8K, a seaplane operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy. 30 of these planes would have been the strike force of an extraordinary plan to bomb Texas.

(Map: NOAA)

Note that Texas does not have a Pacific coastline.

That did not dissuade the Japanese. They wanted to damage the oil fields then active in Texas. So they planned to fly 30 H8K seaplane bombers across the Pacific, refueling them with carefully-staged submarines. After refueling a final time off the coast of Baja California, the bombers would fly across northern Mexico and strike Texas.

Fortunately, the Japanese developed this plan too late in the war to make it feasible. They cancelled it and similar plans to bomb the Panama Canal.

-via Ace of Spades HQ