During
the early part of the war there was a Department in
Whitehall
that went under the name of D.M.W.D., the name stood for Royal Navy
Directorate
of Miscellaneous Weapon Development. The name was deliberately vague, within the
Department the people employed there were
referred to as the "Wheezers and
Dodgers. (W.D.)". It had no connection with the Royal Air Force or the
Royal Auxiliary Air Force. This lack of
connection was nothing new: in the Great
War the Navy had quarreled
over who should pilot and crew the airships in the sky and since there was
no
Royal air Force the Royal Naval Air Service was born. (R.N.A.S.). The birth of
the Royal Air Force as a separate service arm
in April 1918
caused considerable ruffling of sails in the Admiralty.
In early 1940 Churchill summoned a meeting to discuss the possibility of
firing into the sky a lethal curtain of wires on parachutes that
would tangle
around airscrews and bring the aircraft down. He told the meeting that a
minefield in the sky was just the thing to bring down
enemy aircraft. He told
the meeting that he wanted a, "square of wire in the sky as big as Horse
Guards Parade with parachutes to hold it in
place". On the night of 17-18
September, 1940, a number of British barrage balloons broke loose in a gale they
were whisked across the
North Sea
In
Sweden
and
Denmark
, they damaged power lines, disrupted railways and the antenna for the Swedish
International radio station was
knocked down, bearing out the findings of the
1937 report. Five balloons were reported to have reached
Finland
. A report on the damage and
confusion reached the British War Cabinet on 23
September, 1940. Winston Churchill then directed that the use of free-flying
balloons as weapons
against
Germany
was a matter for development.
The
Air Ministry initially poured cold water on the idea, as the Ministry of
Aircraft Production felt balloons would be ineffective weapons and
would need
much manpower and gas to deploy. However, their rivals in the Admiralty took up
the idea with more enthusiasm. They decided
balloons were low cost and were
likely be able to do their job without servicemen being at risk. The rivalry
between the two arms of the service
over free balloons continued throughout the
war with some very harsh comments made by both sides.
A certain Commander Fraser, who worked in the Admiralty Boom Defence,
supplying all grades of wire rope for Navy use, came up with an
idea to send a
cloud of wire skyward by attaching it to free floating balloons. He knew of a
device that had been invented known as the "long
aerial mine", that
would project a network of wire and bombs skyward by release from a bomber
flying some distance ahead of enemy aircraft. Dr
F. D. Richardson (who became
Director of the Nuffield Research Group post-war)
was given the task of looking at Fraser's idea. After some weeks
Richardson
found quarters at Cardington and step by step, began to make and modify the
first Free Balloon Barrage.
His concept was to produce hundreds of hydrogen filled rubber balloons,
to which was attached a yellow box, like a round biscuit tin, and a
wooden spool
with 2000 feet of wire to which a parachute was attached. He envisaged the
balloon being released with its 22lb payload. On the
top of the bomb was a
circular slow burning fuse that was ignited at the time of launch. As this
slowly burnt it caused one of seven bags of sand to
fall away allowing the
balloon more buoyancy and altitude.
In addition, after a certain time it would reach a specific altitude and
a atmospheric pressure switch on board would activate. This
switch would cause
two events: first cause the spool of wire to unravel with the parachute at the
bottom and secondly to arm the bomb on a
board underneath the balloon. When an
aircraft struck the cable it caused a shock wave that caused two other events:
the parachute opened and
was dragged under the wing and as the aircraft moved
forward the parachute and piano wire ran over the leading edge of the wing and
behind the
plane, at the same time the bomb began to descend until it came into
contact with the wing where a small spring rim on the bomb became
pressed over
and the bomb exploded.
But like many concepts and ideas, the practical testing of this idea was
fraught with problems. The behaviour of these balloons was quite
unpredictable .
After a certain time aloft it was built in to the design that a
"fail-safe" mechanism, a timer, would cause the bomb to explode, also
after one hour the fuse would reach the bomb detonator and ignite the bomb. Thus
destroying it and rendering it from descending to earth in an
unsafe
manner. However
theory and reality were as always not what one expected. The balloon might raise
up to its operating height become
armed and then descend to earth in a dangerous
state because the "fail-safe" timer had failed or the fuse had gone
out, the fuses were particularly
sensitive to rain and moisture. On contact with
the ground it might or might not explode dependent on what and how it struck the
ground. The
balloon might leak hydrogen, the "fail-safe" timer fail
and descend to the ground although unarmed it was still a dangerous unexploded
device.
One of the early problems was that the height adjusting mechanism made
up of seven small bags filled with sand failed to work. On the 24th March
1941
at a meeting of the Night Air Defence Committee, Winston Churchill insisted they
continue with trial of the Free Balloon Barrage.
An
interesting and secret memo dated 1st June 1941 shows the dismissive attitude to
the free balloon barrage adopted by J. Whitworth Jones
Director of Flying
Operations. He states "When the Free Balloon Barrage was first inflicted by
an enthusiastic Admiralty on a reluctant Air Ministry
with the connivance of a
cigar smoking Prime Minister, the latter said that great care was to be taken
that this brilliant weapon did not fall into
the hands of the enemy.", he
goes on to complain about the consistent failures of the balloons but that
"a suspicious Air Ministry felt that the spirit
of the Prime Ministers
original instructions must be observed." He then points out that following
a small scale trial of 220 balloons at Liverpool,
with fuses set to self destroy
after one hour, " The Germans were kind enough to inform us in their
communiqué that some of these units had been
picked up in Sweden." ! The
Air Ministry and The Admiralty were never going to agree over the Free Balloon
Barrage, a number of prominent Air
Force officers wanted it abandoned but seemed to feel that the Admiralty was
pushing on with it as they were wanting to please Churchill.
The piano wire was as much of a problem as the bomb. It was able to trail
over electric railway lines , overhead power cables and seemed
to delight in
short circuiting the countryside for miles around. The wire might drape over
30,000 volt overhead lines and cause the power to leak
to earth giving risk of
electrocution. The cable might just hang tantalisingly down from the overhead
lines attracting curious people to reach up
and grab it, with fatal results.
In
Wales, trials at the Experimental Establishment at Aberporth resulted in tragedy. On
30th September 1941, a 13 year old boy, John
Charles Butler of Owny Villa,
Aberporth, Cardiganshire was fatally electrocuted when he took hold of a piece
of Free Barrage Balloon wire that had
become draped over the high tension wires,
a passing soldier tried to help and was burnt and sent to hospital. Another
incident was of a children's
nurse who rushed to help the child she was looking
after when he had picked up a balloon wire that was connected to the mains. Due
to the
electricity the child could not let go and the nurse grabbed the child
and then she could not let go. Luckily for both of them the child's father
rushed to their help and knocked the
cable from their hands, saving both their lives. It was decided in January 1942
to put up notices within a 25
mile radius of the Aberporth Establishment
to warn people of the dangers of touching anything that came down from
the air.
The name "Albino" stemmed from the use of a large white rabbit
that would be pinned up on the notice board at D.M.W.D. offices by a civil
servant called Jamieson. The one individual who seemed to lead the Free Balloon
Trials was a tall South African, R.N.V.R. Lieutenant T.F.W.
Harris. On nights
when the Free Barrage Balloon trials were "on", Harris would recruit
volunteers from the D.M.W.D. to help out at the launch
sites. As the trials went
on a series of comical and tragic events took place.
The whole project was classically "Top Secret" and as a result
the public and indeed vast numbers of the military were kept in the dark. It
was
decided to let ARP wardens into the secret to some degree. They were vaguely
warned that a new form of night defence might be used and
advised not to touch
them if they came down in the hours of darkness. The mechanical failures of
these new balloon weapons were many. In
addition the paths these balloons took
on release was unpredictable despite the meteorologists giving confident
forecasts about the wind and
weather.
The balloons were supposed to go up and saturate a limited area of sky.
However once launched they were fortune to the elements and the
wind could
change resulting in balloons being launched in
London
ending up in
Devon
! The telephone calls from worried citizens were legend. It
was decided to form
a band of retrievers to travel far and wide to retrieve these devices when they
had been found. On one occasion they went
to Piddletrenthide, in
Dorset
where a police officer proudly showed them two Free Balloon units lying side by
side in his garden. Attached to each
one was only two feet of wire. The
retrievers were astounded when they were told that he had found them in a field
and not knowing what they
were had cut off the wire and tied the two, armed
bombs to his bike handlebars and cycled the mile home! Had the firing pin been
hit it would
have been fatal for the policeman.
They were called to a farm in Hampshire by a farmer who had found one of
the yellow bombs. On asking where it was to be found on the
farm, he told them
that it was now on his kitchen table, but it was quite safe as he had taken it
to pieces! He had dismantled it more by luck than
judgement.
On 29th December 1940 this entire trial was fraught with technical
difficulties but Churchill thought it could be made a winner. He ordered
a full
scale test against the enemy. D.M.W.D. were unhappy but they went ahead. That
night the Germans launched a massive fire raid on
London.
The RAF was given instructions to assemble several hundred men and 800 lorries
and trailers and other equipment across a two mile arc in
Hatfield. At each site
12 foot high tents were erected and in these the 10 foot balloons were inflated
with hydrogen.
They launched some 2000 free balloon units at the height of the German
raid. The statistics did not make for happy reading.
Over
three zones where the balloons were released some 30% failed near the launch
site due to problems with the wire spool, some 15% landed in
London
, one in
Buckingham
Palace
. In the last zone another 30% failed to perform as planned. Some were found on
the South Coats and
several made it over the English Channel to
France
.
The following dawn a massive retrieval operation began at first light.
Anyone who could walk and look for the bright yellow bombs was
commandeered, Boy
Scouts, Fireman, Policemen, and any spare service personnel the military could
spare.
The
bombs were clearly marked in large lettering: "DANGER - DO NOT TOUCH",
however this seemed to make the desire to pick them up almost
impossible to
ignore. One shop keeper was found cycling up the road with four of the armed
bombs tied by their wire to his handlebars! A number
of bombs were hung up in
trees and some had hit houses.
One farmer had fourteen land on his farm and he had dragged all of them
to a corner of one field, where he had then laboriously covered
the units in cow
dung because he thought that would stop them blowing up!
Later even though the results were not good it was decided to carry out a
small scale test in Bedfordshire, using 200 balloons. Despite
having some 50
sailors to help with recover it was impossible to see these devices easily on
foot. In desperation they hired fourteen horses and
carried out the search more
rapidly and successfully on horseback. This small scale trail showed that the
problems with the device centered
around, the wire on the spool not unreeling smoothly when the unit got to its
operating height. This was found to be due to the hole in the bomb
board not
being smooth enough and making the springy wire kink. The other problem was the
safety valve that prevented the balloon raising
above the operating height of
14,000 to 18,000 feet was jamming and the balloon would rise too high and burst
sending it lethal payload down to
earth.
The wind was so unpredictable that the balloons could travel miles across
the sea, ending up in
France
,
Ireland
,
Sweden
and
Holland
.
A Dutch Air Raid Warden reported in April 1942 of
the finding of one of the FBB units. The warden wrote that they had "found
a small yellow
parachute of 40 cm diameter with a wooden board on it. Connected
to the parachute was a thin steel cable.
On
the wooden board was glued a paper with the following text:
"F.B.B.
Assembly Sheet
Assembly
No. 24 D 53
Bomb
board No. A 4450
Bomb
No. 8432
Spool
No. 14997
Stabilising
parachute No. 411592
Drogue
Parachute No. 427382
Date
of assembly L H 9/6/41
B
M D no. 34234.
J.
Downes
On the centre of the board was mounted a 12 cm high cartridge with 4
small cylinders around it. One of these small cylinders had a lever on
it and
was marked with a label with the text "DANGER". A fifth cylinder was
filled with a small parachute made of white silk." The yellow
parachute
", was not a parachute, it was in fact a canopy that covered the delicate
surface of the bomb board to prevent damp and rain affecting
the slow burning
fuses from the weather.
The Germans were fully aware of the potential use and dangers from this
device and by the British stupidly ensuring that every one sent out
had an
explanatory label stuck to it, including the name of the assembly worker,
certainly did not help matters.
The
British public and most of the military did not know about the F.B.B. but it is
certain that Germans knew everything. It is interesting to see
that
far as I
am aware the Germans never redesigned this to attack the British raids later in
the war.
The D.M.W.D. team set up experiments to see what happened to the safety
valve and the buoyancy when the balloon was subjected to
colder and colder
temperatures. This they did by using a massive walk-in refrigerator on a fruit
farm.
Due
to the nature of the design it is not surprising that there were
several casualties from the free balloon units
The results of the work was that they felt that by making refinements to
the mechanical aspects of the balloon they could make it work.
London
area was chosen for more trial balloon launchings. It had been decided that the
task of launching and ensuring the movement of all the
necessary equipment was
to be given over to Balloon Command using Balloon Squadrons. This test again
showed a number of devices reaching
France
much to the puzzlement of the Resistance.
The next operational launching was to take place at
Liverpool
when during a raid some 150 balloons were released. The modifications
showed
some 80% success rate but none of them were known to have hit an enemy aircraft.
People in the area between
Warrington
and
Taporley were on the receiving end of the 20% of failures, putting the
telephone exchange out of action and causing a massive short circuit to
high
tension cables over farmland.
Just as the Barrage Balloon personnel were getting to grips with this new
weapon the Luftwaffe turned their attention to other fronts of
war and mass
bombing raids more or less ceased.
The
weapon was never given a chance to show what it could do.
It
has always puzzled me that the Germans never seemed to use this idea against our
mass bombing raids, the prevailing winds in
Germany
were
generally in the wrong direction. The concept and tactical value is good,
but I suspect that German engineers who were world class at the time
decided it
was a weapon that was too "fiddly" to mass produce and since they had
a few surprises such as the V1 and V2 on the drawing board
there was no point in
attempting this form of defence. In addition, in 1944 the British bombers were
all having the cable cutting devices
that
were designed to sever balloon cables as standard fitments and these would
have made the use of FBB by the Germans pointless.
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