Balloon Bombing Campaign in World War Two

Well my copy of Pawle’s book The Secret War arrived a few days ago and it it is the most informative piece of comedy I have read in a long time. Thoroughly recommended. :highly_amused:

A really interesting story.

Around 50 years ago one of the two balloons seen here broke loose in a storm one night and drifted across the Oxfordshire countryside in the dark.

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It was so intriguing I snagged a copy of Pawle’s book The Secret War on Ebay today. Very cheap – obviously it’s s/hand.

Goldilocks. Watched that but having already read the book I felt that there were far more humorous episodes than the Great Panjandrum trials at Watchet – the book even has the name of the dog!
The one DMWD system I’d like to find more about was ‘Hajile’, although why the Royal Navy was experimenting with a retro rocket air drop system Lord alone knows.

aeronut – more years ago than I care to remember, there was a one-hour documentary on BBC1 about the Wheezers and Dodgers. The films had to be seen to be believed, and this was long before the days of CGI. Also one must remember that the well known author Nevil Shute Norway was one of the well known members of DMWD.

Goldilocks

Having read the Wheezers and Dodgers book I still can’t make my mind up if it was meant to be written as a comedy rather than a serious record of the RN DMWD. It remains the only military non fiction book that I’ve read with tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.

The balloons of operation Outward and the cable breaking trials are all well described in Gerald Pawles 1956 book “The Secret War” as cited as a reference in the Wikipedia description of Op Outward. I would thoroughly recommend this book (if you can get hold of a copy) to anyone interested in WW2 – some totally unbelievable inventions by a group of Naval Officers known as the “Wheezers and Dodgers”.

Goldilocks

During the Cold War, the US released recce balloons in Europe – to drift on the prevaling winds over the Soviet Union.

They were difficult to intercept – and even harder to shoot down – which is why the Soviets developed the Myasishchev M-17 ‘Stratosfera’ (which later evolved into the twin engined M-55 ‘Geophysika’ ……

Note that my model is without the twin 23mm cannon turret.

Ken

One of the most danger ridden series of trials took place near Bristol when a barrage balloon had assorted cables hung from it. Assorted aircraft then flew into the cables to test devices which were claimed to break the cable . I saw several accident record cards at AHB including a Battle written off.

More slightly potty ingenuity with Balloons was used during the development of the Rotachute. When the original inflatable design proved to be directionally unstable at slow speed Raoul Hafner and his team borrowed the balloon used at Ringway to train paratroops to suspend the Rotachute and hang it from the balloon like a 800 foot long pendulum, or as the team described it, the world’s largest swing.

Wonderful stuff and classic slightly potty British ingenuity, thanks for posting!

I recall my late Grandfather (Squadron Leader for 906 Barrage Balloon Squadron based at RAF Stanmore) telling me as a lad, that some of them had broken free during a storm.
He said the word on the ground was that we had sent over a secret weapon, because the cables had shorted out power lines over there.
This adds a very interesting dimension to his story.

It did occur to me that this had been relatively recently declassified?

Thanks for the link CD, I’d never heard of this campaign either. Perhaps the continued use of balloons for covert recce and other tasks in the Cold War era meant that nobody wanted to shout too much about it? Being pretty low-tech it would also probably be quite easy for potential enemies to copy the concept.

Me neither, what a fascinating story. Thanks for posting 🙂

That’s interesting – I’d never heard of it.