)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: 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.
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