BALLOON BARRAGE
TO GUARD CENTRAL LONDON
A net of cables suspended from high-flying kite balloons is one factor1 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 full 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 100-yard intervals, would protect an area within a radius of ten miles of Charing Cross.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19381007.2.84
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1938, Page 10
Word Count
203BALLOON BARRAGE Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 85, 7 October 1938, Page 10
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