BALLOON BARRAGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 240, 11 October 1938, Page 7

BALLOON BARRAGE

EXERCISES IN LONDON ONE ADRIFT SIGHTED OVER DENMARK [By Telegraph—Prese Association—Copyright] LONDON, Oct. 9. A balloon barrage exercise in the London area was held yesterday and all aircraft were warned of the danger from balloons which might be flown to any height. It was the first opportunity the public had of seeing the balloon squadron at Work and great interest was shown, large crowds gathering and gazing up at the silver envelopes. Inflation began at 10 a.m. from winches on trailers, and an hour later one of the balloons from a group was released in Green Park and was soon flying over Piccadilly Circus, carried by a strong south-west wind. In addition to the Green Park, balloons were flown from Regent's Park, the Tower of London, Grosvenor Square, Clapham Common, the Temple Lawn, and the Canning Town recreation ground. The exercises were regarded as a success by the authorities, and it is understood that valuable lessons were obtained. . Five balloons broke adrift but four were recovered. The fifth was sighted over Denmark this morning. Improvements Made.

Some little time ago the Government had decided to extend the balloon defences, said the Air Minister, Sir Kingsley Wood, in Cambridge. Many improvements had been made recently and new devices tried out in the balloon defences. The disposition of these defences had been based on the consideration of the relative importance and vulnerability of objectives for air attack.

He could not be expected to say where the new barrages would be located, but depots would probably b.: formed for recruitment and the training of auxiliary personnel in certa.n towns, including Birmingham, Bristol Manchester, Liverpool, Hull, Newcastle, Plymouth, Southampton, Glasgow, and Cardiff. These new units would be administered by the territorial associations. London’s Protection. A net of cables suspended from high-flying kite balloons is one factor in the scheme of London’s protection from air attack. The first of the “balloon squadrons” recently demonstrated its ‘skill in the manipulation of eight balloons and their dependent network to form a curtain through which bombers “might not pass unharmed,” as a London writer put it. Each balloon is a separate entity, mounted on a mobile transport which enables it to be moved to any vulnerable point or disposed according to the requirements of weather or other local circumstances. Each unit consists of a lorry, a trailer, and a crew of ten men. Each balloon has a capacity of 20,000 cubic feet, and it can be stored, deflated, in a special compartment behind the seat of the lorry driver. In the lorry trailer hydrogen containers carry sufficient gas for lull inflation.

The equipment of the unit includes gear to enable the lorry to traverse ditches or bomb holes, a drum of cable, and a motor winch for rapid unreeling of cable. Estimates are that 600 of these balloons, tethered at 100yard intervals, would protect an area within a radius of ten miles of Charing Cross.