Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States Navy Bureau of Aeronautics launched a major advertising campaign aimed not at recruiting sailors or aviators but school children. ‘Your country needs scale model planes for the emergency,’ said the bureau in adverts across the press calling for children to make aircraft identification models. ‘They won’t be used in a display gallery or to show the handiwork of one’s leisure time. They will serve a definite purpose. They will be used for training military personnel in aircraft recognition and range estimation in gunnery practice. These models likewise will be important in the training of civilians in enemy plane detection, an essential element in civilian defense.’66
The adverts were run across the US and asked children to create 500,000 scale aircraft models to help millions of civilians and soldiers tell friend from foe during the war. Children from across the States responded in droves and flooded the Navy Bureau with recognition models of famous planes (also known as ‘ID’ or ‘spotter’ models). Due to wartime shortages, the models were made of paper, cardboard, wood, plaster or less commonly injection-molded plastic. Most were simply painted black to simulate a silhouette, helping observers familiarize themselves with the outlines of planes from all angles which was considered critical to the war effort. However, others ended up being used in educational films or in flight schools to aid identification of different aircraft shapes and markings.
Cashing in on the aircraft spotter craze in 1942 Toy Creations of New York brought out a new game aimed at telling friend from foe called Spot-a-plane.
Cashing in on the aircraft spotter craze in 1942, Toy Creations of New York brought out a new game aimed at telling friend from foe called Spot-a-plane. The rules of the game said:
In these vital times with our country in a total war aimed directly at the civilian population as well as the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines of our Armed Forces, it is the duty of all citizens, together with the uniformed men, to become familiar with the identification of every type of aircraft, both friendly and hostile.
It is intended that Spot-a-plane should serve as an easy method for learning the important characteristics and general appearance of the major military planes of the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Netherlands, Germany, Japan and Italy, and at the same time serve as a relaxing yet stimulating game for these trying times.
The airplane drawings are authentic and are the result of careful research, using all material available. Of course, there are many additional types of planes that are not included in this game but whenever possible those used are of vital concern.
This game has been submitted and has been approved for release by the US Army and Navy Air Forces.
The box cover was illustrated with a dramatic head-on shot of a Boeing B-17 Fortress bomber being lit up by two searchlights and flying over a blacked-out city, two observers on the top of one building trying to identify the plane through their binoculars. Unlike British games which were subject to severe wartime shortages, Spot-a-plane came in a big colourful box, the board and cards being made from good quality paper and the eight aircraft playing pieces made of plastic. Each player in the game was a US pilot and was represented by a different playing piece from a P-51 Mustang fighter to a Lockheed P-38 bomber. The playing board consisted of a military strategy map of enemy territory with various hazards en route which were navigated by picking up cards. The aim of the game was to take off from your home airfield and move along the board bombing enemy positions before returning to base, ‘mission accomplished’, the first person back being the winner.
The players moved along the board by correctly spotting silhouettes of friendly and enemy planes, forty-eight silhouette cards being included together with a ‘Master Intelligence Chart’ so players could correctly identify the plane based on its shape. Successfully spotting a plane allowed the player to move forward the number of spaces listed on the card. A failed recognition meant the player had to move back the same number of spaces. While flying along the board players had to pick up other hazard cards represented by ‘army flash cards’ (blue spot on board) and ‘danger flash cards’ (red spot on board). These also allowed players to advance or retreat depending on the instruction, for example, ‘Joined Allied Fighter Squadron Advance 3’ or ‘Guns Jammed Retreat 2’. Other cards included a ‘Hangar Card’ which covered the silhouette cards and a ‘Blackout Card’ which was placed over the plane under observation.
The game was issued in two series with forty-eight different silhouette cards in each, the first series featured planes like the Messerschmitt Bf 109, P-51 Mustang and Spitfire while the second one featured planes like the Heinkel He 111K, Lockheed P-38, the Avro Lancaster and Mitsubishi 00 ‘Zero’. As the aim of the game was to enable observers to identify friend from foe, the manufacturers also included rules for a ‘semi-advanced’ and an ‘advanced’ game. The semi-advanced game gave double points for any observer who could identify their plane without reference to the Master Intelligence Chart (but if they misidentified the card, they had to go back double the number on the card). The advanced game dispensed with the Master Intelligence Chart all together, players having to identify planes from memory.
The rules said, ‘In these vital times with our country in a total war … it is the duty of all citizens, together with the uniformed men, to become familiar with the identification of every type of aircraft, both friendly and hostile.’
Despite all the effort put into educating US schoolchildren and civilians about enemy aircraft, none ever appeared over American air space during the war. However, Japanese balloon bombs were launched against the mainland United States (sadly pictures of these were not included in any war game). One of the most unusual military inventions of the war, Japanese unmanned balloon bombs or ‘Fugos’, started to appear from 1944. Loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives, they were launched from over 5,000 miles away on the Japanese homeland. The specially designed hydrogen balloons would rise to an altitude of 30,000 feet and then ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. The balloon bombs were designed to drop after the three-day journey, falling to the ground where they would explode, setting fire to their target.
In all, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons but only 342 actually made it all the way across the Pacific. Between 1944 and 1945 balloon bombs were spotted in more than fifteen states from Michigan to Iowa. Some were intercepted or shot down by the US air force but most were defused or landed harmlessly. The only fatalities came from a single bomb which dropped in Oregon on 5 May 1945 killing Elsie Mitchell, a clergyman’s pregnant wife, and five school children after they had investigated it and the balloon exploded. Their deaths were the only civilian casualties to be recorded on the US homeland during the war.67