Barrage Balloons - the nation's defender

Protection against dive bombers

A number of the types of aircraft used by Nazi Germany during its Blitzkrieg campaigns relied on diving to release bombs accurately. Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers even had special sirens fitted to their wings to increase the noise produced when diving to strike fear into those on the ground. To counter this low-flying threat, Balloons were raised with heavy cables designed to destroy low flying aircraft, forcing them up into the effective range of Anti-Aircraft Defences.

Mainly crewed by the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, these balloons were grouped into Squadrons like fighter aircraft. Described by one WAAF as ‘three times the size of a cricket pitch’, the balloons were simple to manufacture and operate, and were often anchored to trucks via a winch that could be used to control the balloon’s height. They were designed to hang in the sky, their anchoring cables and hydrogen filling designed to deter any low flying or attacks on the balloons themselves.

Although ineffective in stopping high level bombers like the He111 and the Do17, the Balloons did force the Stuka into higher flight patterns during the Battle of Britain, making it easier for the RAF and anti aircraft crews to shoot them down. An attempt by the Luftwaffe to break through defences at low level over Dover in 1940 was thwarted by balloons, and one source has Balloons responsible for “102 aircraft crashes in the cables, resulting in 66 crashed or forced landings.”

However, as use of the Stuka declined and the Germans switched to mainly night time raids, so the usefulness of the barrage balloon declined. The balloons did nevertheless find usefulness once again when the first German ‘Vengeance Weapons’, V-1 Rockets, began falling on the United Kingdom in 1944. Designed to fly low to avoid fighter detection, the pilotless V-1s would often blunder into barrage balloons and detonate before finding their target.

Main image: Royal Air Force Balloon Barrage at Cardington, Bedfordshire (note the distinctive airship hangars, which are still there today). Image: Mary Evans / Grenville Collins Postcard Collection