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A barrage balloon is a type of airborne barrage, a large uncrewed tethered balloon used to defend ground targets against aircraft attack, by raising aloft steel cables which pose a severe risk of collision with hostile aircraft, making the attacker's approach difficult and hazardous. Early barrage balloons were often spherical.
German Ae 800 kite balloon, copy of Caquot design (c. 1917) British Navy soon realized the reduction of their ship losses using Caquot kites as a effective observational tool against German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats, in 1917 Caquots were adapted also by the French Navy, using types P, P2 and R. In July 1918 it has nearly 200 balloons and ...
These concerns were evidently borne out when early in 1940, the Air Vice Marshal Balloon Command, the organisation responsible for the barrage balloons, wrote that "Since the outbreak of the war, I have had constant complaints from the electricity distributors regarding the damage done in this country by [barrage] balloons that have broken away ...
Anti-aircraft warfare is the counter to aerial warfare [1] and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action". [2] It encompasses surface-based, subsurface (submarine-launched), and air-based weapon systems, in addition to associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements, and passive measures (e.g. barrage balloons).
Barrage balloons, widely known as "blimps," were used by the United Kingdom to intercept air attacks by German bombers and V-1 cruise missiles. Japan used recently discovered high-altitude air currents to send fire balloons (or Fu-Go balloon bomb ) carrying explosive payloads to the United States.
Not since a balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico have inflatable unmanned craft so dominated the American discourse. Alex Woodward and Andrew Feinberg sum up what we learned this week
During World War II, a large number of barrage balloons were inflated over the city of London in an effort to obstruct Luftwaffe air attacks during the Battle of Britain. Whatever their effectiveness, they were a cheap defense but did not stop heavy damage inflicted on Londoners during the Blitz , probably because the Heinkel He 111 bombers ...
The barrage follows a warning from North Korea’s vice defense minister about a “tit-for-tat action” after anti-Pyongyang leaflets were sent over the border recently by South Korean activists.