Parachutes and Balloons

[centurion]

Thanks, this throws a lot of light on a neglected subject.

What I don't quite follow is how the French were able to start their balloon companies from scratch at the beginning of the war, and apparently overtake the British who had started manufacturing the Spencer/Drachen type before the war, to the extent that we had to borrow trained men from them. Was it simply a matter of having more resources made available? Did they have balloons left over from when the Corps d’Aerostatier was previously disbanded? Were spherical balloons ever used on the Western Front?

1. The French had disbanded the Corps d'Aerostatier but had also stored the balloons. I don't know if General French was short of trained balloonists or just balloons (or both)

2. Britain did not start manufacturing Drachen before the war - as I said they had the drawings etc available pre war to allow them to start manufacturing as soon as the go ahead was give which was not until after the war started. Again as I said there were production difficulties as material had to be obtained from France.

3. Yes Spherical balloons were in use on the WF 1914/15. There are photos of the Corps d’Aerostatier with them. The Germans also had fortress balloon companies with spherical balloons - I'll be covering this later. A very limited number of RE balloons were also used by Britain (at the beginning of the war Britain had fewer than 10 military observation balloons).

[bushfighter]

Well Done Centurion for sharing your research and knowledge with us in an interesting series of articles.

If only 33% more of the membership did that then the GWF would take off as a source of detailed information.

Harry

[centurion]

1. The French had disbanded the Corps d'Aerostatier but had also stored the balloons. I don't know if General French was short of trained balloonists or just balloons (or both)

2. Britain did not start manufacturing Drachen before the war - as I said they had the drawings etc available pre war to allow them to start manufacturing as soon as the go ahead was give which was not until after the war started. Again as I said there were production difficulties as material had to be obtained from France.

3. Yes Spherical balloons were in use on the WF 1914/15. There are photos of the Corps d’Aerostatier with them. The Germans also had fortress balloon companies with spherical balloons - I'll be covering this later. A very limited number of RE balloons were also used by Britain (at the beginning of the war Britain had fewer than 10 military observation balloons).

Further to this - looking at my notes for the next section (on naval balloons) I see that training for Kite balloons was underway in Britain in March 1915 but that the balloons and winches had not yet been delivered and a French Drachen had to be borrowed to equip HMS Mancia a balloon ship that was sent to Gallipoli. Given Spencer's initial production difficulties (due to lack of material) this might suggest that it was Balloons that were in short supply.

Britains first military balloon flight on the WF was on 14th October 1914 at Dunkirk by the Naval Balloon Section to spot for the guns of Monitors bombarding German positions. It was a spherical balloon and subject to all the problems of stability I've mentioned earlier. The Navy seems to have taken over most if not all of the RE's balloon stocks and this balloon is believed to have seen service against the Boers.

[centurion]

What I don't quite follow is how the French were able to start their balloon companies from scratch at the beginning of the war, and apparently overtake the British

I have more detail now - whilst France disbanded the Corps d'Aerostatier they didn't disband the balloon companies who reverted to control by various elements of the Engineers and specific fortresses. A bit like disbanding the RFC and allocating various squadrons to direct control by various divisions!

[centurion]

Part 4 - at sea

When one thinks of observation balloons and WW1 the mind tends to picture balloons tethered along a front and manned by army officers. However naval balloons also played a part and this is often overlooked. By 1914 there was already a history of naval ballooning. The US Navy made the world’s first ship borne balloon observation flight on August 3, 1861 off Confederate held Hampton Roads. The Confederates themselves only had two balloons and in order to maximise their use one was attached to the CSS Teaser, a tug turned gun boat and mine layer, so that it could be moved from position to position. This worked reasonably well until Teaser ran aground and it and the balloon were captured by a US Naval vessel. Teaser can reasonably be classed as the world’s first balloon ship.

Whilst the Royal Navy sometimes considered using balloons (for polar exploration for example) it was left to other nations to take naval ballooning forward until just before WW1. The balloon air bridge during the siege of Paris (September 19, 1870 – January 28, 1871) was organised by the French Navy with most balloons piloted by sailors. Experiments in the French Naval use of shipboard balloons began on the L’Indomptable in 1889 and by 1890 some French capital ships were being fitted with balloon handling facilities (the first to fly a balloon being the battleship Formidable). In 1898 the US Navy bought two French Naval balloons from the manufacturers in Paris for use in the Spanish American War (as contraband of war they had to be smuggled through Britain). I have not been able to discover whether they were actually used. The following year the French Navy began experiments with ship towed observation balloons for spotting mines. The torpedo boat tender Foudre being converted for the purpose (in 1911 the same ship became France’s first seaplane carrier). In 1902 The Foudre carried out exercises in submarine spotting for its accompanying torpedo boats in the Mediterranean near Toulon . Unfortunately the balloon used was spherical and round balloons do not tow well. The unfortunate observer Lieutenant Baudie fell into the sea and was killed. The same approach was however carried out in WW1 with more success using Caquot balloons. In 1910 a French Naval Corps d’ Aerostatier was formed de facto by 1912 it was official.

During the Russo Japanese War the Imperial Japanese Navy used a balloon for artillery spotting at the siege of Port Arthur. The Imperial Russian Navy had already established a series of coastal balloon stations providing support for Russian coastal defences. Captain Fyodor A. Postnikov, an army engineer who had had some success locating sunken wrecks from balloons, suggested using these techniques to locate minefields. Count S.A. Stroganov a wealthy ex naval officer who had visited the Foudre during its mine spotting exercises offered to supply the Imperial Russian Navy with a balloon ship for the same purpose. He purchased the elderly German liner Lahn which was converted to carry four Drachen type balloons and armed with four 3 inch and ten 6 pounders. She was then commissioned as the Imperial Russian cruiser Rus. Sailing for the Pacific in 1905 she never got further than Denmark as her basic machinery was, to use a technical term, knackered. She never got out of the Baltic (although over 180 training ascents were made!) The balloons and winches were off loaded and the ship sent to the scrap yard.

Germany carried out experiments with Naval balloons off Heligoland in 1890 using the SMS Mars. By 1908 drachen balloons towed by torpedo boats were being used to accompany the High Seas Fleet. However the German navy was taking the position that the roles carried out by balloons could be done better by Zeppelins in some instances and by kites in others. In WW1 there were 7 German Navy kite stations in the Baltic and North Sea. Balloons did not play a significant role.

Sweden commissioned a balloon carrier in 1902. Equipped with drachen balloons the Albatross formed part of Sweden’s coastal defences until the 1920s

In 1907 the Italians converted three vessels Elba, Etruria and Liguria into balloon ships but by WW1 had reconverted them to other uses. In 1912 the KuK submarine U5 conducted trials with a towed Drachen in order to determine the best colour to paint a submarine to avoid detection from the air when submerged. Having done this all further interest in naval ballooning vanished.

The Royal Navy had remained aloof from all of this although experiments with man lifting kites had been carried out. However in 1913 the army turned over almost all of its lighter than air inventory to the Navy (it would seem that, much like the French, they had assumed that the balloon had no future in modern warfare). The balloons were obsolete spherical types some of which had seen action in South Africa against the Boers. Whilst officers such as Wing Captain E. M. Maitland, of the R.N.A.S. struggled to find a use for the small airships not much was done with the balloons. However in October 1914 the Royal Naval Division was attempting to assist in the defence of Antwerp and a Naval Balloon Section was formed to support them. Antwerp fell before this section could arrive in Belgium but it was landed at Dunkirk on 14th October to spot for monitors bombarding German positions in Belgium and went into action on the 15th. The sand dunes had blinded the monitors view of their targets so that the balloon was a welcome asset but the spherical balloon proved very difficult to handle (especially by an inexperienced crew) and the intervention of a Belgian army drachen equipped balloon company became necessary. This was the nail in the coffin of the spherical balloon.

Drachen type balloons were ordered from Messrs. C. G. Spencer and Sons and an RN kite balloon training school was set up at Upper Grove House near Roehampton. Unfortunately whilst Spencers had all the design material necessary to start production there was a hiatus with the material necessary which had to be obtained in France (there may have been some international bureaucratic disagreements) so that when in March 1915 an order was received to send a balloon section to the Dardanelles there was no balloon to send. An officer was sent to Paris to try and wheedle one out from the French. He succeeded in obtaining a drachen and all the necessary winches. An Australian manure ship was pressed into service and transformed into the balloon carrier Manica. She arrived at Lemnos on the 16th April 1915. She provided artillery spotting support for a number of ships including the Triumph, Lord Nelson, and Prince George but is most associated with the Queen Elizabeth. Successful shoots were carried out against Turkish batteries, barracks and HQs; on one occasion a Turkish freighter was sunk with the Queen Elizabeth firing clear over the Gallipoli peninsular. Mancia was joined at Gallipoli by HMS Canning and HMS Hector each carrying a British built drachen.

The balloon carriers shared some common features. They had a capacious forward hold, lined with wood, into which an inflated balloon would fit. This was covered with a split hatch so that when open each half formed a wind break down the side of the ship. When no heavy seas were expected the balloon might be carried with its top half proud of the hatchway but protected by the hatch halves. The winch was located at the bottom of the hold and the observer could get in and out of the basket in the hold. Each ship was fitted with a gas generator.

Two more balloon ships were built, HMS City of Oxford and HMS Menelaus, and intended for operations off the Flanders coast. Although well equipped they were too large with too big a draught to operate safely in this environment and recourse was made to a barge (the Arctic) to hold the balloon and a trawler to tow it. Balloon based artillery spotting took place spasmodically (for example against Ostend) right into 1917 by which time aeroplanes did the job as and when needed.

The problem with the balloon ship was that once the action had moved inland there was nothing much for them to do and this was the case in most theatres by 1917. However a new job for the naval balloon was emerging –anti submarine work.

The French, as recounted earlier, had done preliminary work in this area and in WW1 had a number of vessels in the Mediterranean acting as sub chasers and towing balloons. One such ship was the gunboat Corneille armed with a 75mm gun and depth charges. This was the former British steam yacht Medea (and as Medea again she served as a barrage balloon ship in WW2, today she still takes charters out of San Diego). France probably had some 25 ships so equipped. Britain began to fit balloon winches to the sterns of some destroyers and used these in anti submarine sweeps, the Caquot balloon was relatively viceless when towed. In July 1917 U69 was spotted by HMS Patriot’s balloon and subsequently sunk by gunfire. However British tactics changed from trying to seek and destroy U boats to supressing and neutralising them by forcing them to stay submerged in daylight. As a result balloons were fitted to a host of convoy escort vessels and to patrol craft guarding approaches to ports, naval bases etc. Estimates suggest that apart from the fleet itself over 150 escort and patrol vessels were converted to carry or tow balloons. Typically an observer in such a balloon would be able to spot a U boat within a 30 mile diameter circle. Attacks on convoys escorted by balloon carrying ships dropped dramatically.

The US Navy expanded its balloon fleet dramatically from 2 at the beginning of the war to over 200 at the armistice. Unfortunately they drastically mismanaged fitting them to ships by changing the winch design in the middle of the programme so few ships received a winch in time (probably no more than eleven). The three battleships Utah, Nevada and Oklahoma stationed in Bantry Bay as precaution against German Battle Cruiser convoy raids were balloon equipped as an adjunct to their gunnery control (so they could see and hit the battlecruisers whilst they were still over the horizon). However the USN Kite Balloon base at Berehaven had no destroyers to tow their balloons and this work was taken over by RN destroyers from Queenstown. At least one US sailor, Ensign Charles E. Reed, was killed on this duty whilst his balloon was towed by HMS Springbok.

As an interesting end to this account it is worth noting that it was a balloon towing drifter patrolling the mouth of the Firth of Forth that first saw the light cruiser Cardiff, also towing a kite balloon and leading the German fleet to its surrender loom out of the mist.

[squirrel]

Splendid stuff Centurian.

[centurion]

5. Fortress Balloons

When war broke out in 1914 Kathe Paulus the famous German balloonist and parachute jumper donated her balloons to the Prussian Ministry for War which in turn allocated them to the free balloon companies assigned to fortresses. Austro Hungary, Germany and France had free/fortress balloon companies at the beginning of the war, relics of earlier military doctrines.

A free balloon is one that is not tethered and will go where the wind takes it. The pilot can only alter course by changing altitude and finding an air flow travelling in a different direction (if there is one). At the inception of military ballooning it was normal to use tethered balloons for observation purposes, however at least one free balloon reconnaissance was carried out by the Union forces launching a balloon into an airstream that would pass over a section of the Confederate lines and back over Federal territory. Until the development of the dirigible balloon the scope for this was, to say the least, limited. However a few years later the French Navy was to make considerable use of free balloons.

One of the problems that faced a besieged fortress or city before wireless telegraphy was getting information in and out. Courier pigeons could be used but to sustain any reasonable conversation it is necessary for both parties to have numbers of pigeons recently originating from the place they want to send a message to, normally pigeons are non returnable. In 1870 Paris was besieged and needed to communicate with the French armies still in the field and the wider world in general. The French Navy organised regular free balloon flights out of the capital – some 66 in total. Most attention has been focused on the 100 VIPs (such as the minister for war) who were evacuated this way but of possibly greater value was the mail (nine tons) and the four hundred carrier pigeons carried. Whilst only 57 of these made it back into Paris (some having to evade Prussian hawks) they carried over 100,000 messages on micro film (five courier dogs were also carried, on release they were never seen again, possibly illustrating how much more intelligent a dog is than a pigeon).

The Germans were much impressed by the success of the Paris balloon flights and free balloon companies were established and assigned to the garrisons of fortresses and fortified towns and cities to provide them with the means of communication in case of siege.

Kite balloons do not make good free balloons, as the former use the tension of the mooring rope as part of their stability mechanism. Free balloon companies were therefore not equipped with drachen type balloons but retained the round balloon http://www.earlyaeroplanes.com/archive/image5/Brockelmann.jpg Paulus’s balloons were all of this type hence their assignment to the free balloon companies. This required different ground handling and flying techniques. These were updated in formal drills and instructions issued in 1908 and still included in the German army balloon manual as late as 1917. However as well as being used for free ballooning such balloons might also be pressed into service as tethered observation balloons in time of need as was a balloon, assigned to the fortress of Tsing Tau, in September 1914 (becoming the first balloon to be attacked by an aircraft when a Japanese Maurice Farman forced a rapid winch down). In a tethered mode (with a single cable) these balloons would provide a very unstable observation platform. By 1914 Tsing Tau had both a Rumpler Taube monoplane and a wireless installation available for communication with the outside world thus obviating much of the need for a fortress balloon.(although the great distance from any other German held territory made this something of an irrelevance anyway). Many other large fortresses were similarly equipped.

Nevertheless fortress balloons lingered on, in October 1915 the KuK garrison of the naval fortress of Pola included the 4th Fortress Balloon Detachment. This implies that the KuK army had at least 3 other Fortress Balloon Detachments. One or more of these was at one time in Przemysl in Galicia. Przemysl had both a wireless installation and a landing strip for aircraft, both of which played an important role in maintaining communications when the fortress complex was besieged by the Russians, but manned free balloons were also used to carry mail (and carrier pigeons) for this purpose. These were supplemented by unmanned paper balloons (precursors of the Japanese FuGo paper balloons of 1945).

Apart from Tsing Tau, I have found no other case of German fortress balloons being used in a siege but some of the free balloons were used for weather flights over German territory.

Whilst a number of French fortress garrisons had balloon companies when war broke out I have not encountered any record of them being used.

The Fortress Balloon was a 19th century relic that lingered into WW1.

[David B]

Centurion,

One question please. Did the free balloons have any motive power ? If not they would have to travel only in the direction of

the prevailing wind and if the wind changed direction and put your balloon over enemy forces you would be up the creek without a paddle

so to speak.

[Capt_Starlight]

The fate of La Patriote and potentially of its balloon....

=> http://www.shipwrecksofegypt.com/northcoast/KL/patriote.html

[centurion]

Centurion,

One question please. Did the free balloons have any motive power ? If not they would have to travel only in the direction of

the prevailing wind and if the wind changed direction and put your balloon over enemy forces you would be up the creek without a paddle

so to speak.

See the 3rd line in my last post

In the Paris air bridge five balloons landed in Prussian held territory and 3 were blown out to sea and lost. One landed in Norway!

[bruce]

Bravo, Centurion!

Yet another area of the conflict about which I knew nothing, so I have read this thread all the way through with great interest.

Many thanks.

Bruce

[Capt_Starlight]

By the way - forgot to add my approbations to the posting thus far. Very interesting and little researched area of the Great War (and aeronautics in general), very well put together and well researched. Bravo indeed Centurion (and I was there when that was a tank not a rank!)

[David B]

I am sorry Cent. but my readout does not carry those words. However please take it as read and understood. I have found your series most

informative and on a subject which does not seem to be aired very often.

Thanks.

[centurion]

I am sorry Cent. but my readout does not carry those words. However please take it as read and understood. I have found your series most

informative and on a subject which does not seem to be aired very often.

Thanks.

"A free balloon is one that is not tethered and will go where the wind takes it. The pilot can only alter course by changing altitude and finding an air flow travelling in a different direction (if there is one)." are the words I was refering to. The other bits were corroborative extra detail but it's also worth noting that at least one balloon from Przemysl also fell into Russian hands. The Russians censored its mail and then forwarded the redacted letters on to the addressees!

[centurion]

The fate of La Patriote and potentially of its balloon....

=> http://www.shipwrecksofegypt.com/northcoast/KL/patriote.html

Thanks for this - so she wasn't sunk at the Battle of Nile but before then. This explains why she isn't listed in the roll of ships sunk, destroyed or taken in the battle (on which prize and head money alloted to Nelson's fleet was based and thus subject to extreme scrutiny). Many histories (including French ones) incorrectly attribute the loss to the battle. There is however an error in the material in the link you provide - Conte was not in command of the Corps D'Aerostatier but was commandant of the Meudon depot which handled manufacture, research, maintenance and training. He was a much under celebrated scientist, one of his inventions, lost in history, was a flexible varnish that made balloon fabric more impervious to Hydrogen loss than anything we have today and would be very valuable if rediscovered. Count Zeppelin would have found it very useful.

[osmposm]

Absolutely fascinating, Centurion: thank you.

Back to the Great War, a chance discovery (while researching something quite unconnected with warfare) that may be of interest.

It is from the autobiography of the great WWI artist, Christopher RW Nevinson, whose 1917 painting, Paths of Glory, showing two dead soldiers, was banned by the War Office from an exhibition in 1918. Nevinson famously refused to take it down (though he’d known of the decision for three months), and covered it with brown paper on which he wrote "Censored"!

One day I received a note: “I understand you know Robert Ross. Do come and dine with me. I am in the sausage balloons next to you at St. Nicolas. RICHMOND TEMPLE”

I went, to have a dinner and to meet a truly remarkable man. We had many things in common, and in the circumstances I was more than delighted to meet him. He is now an organizing genius of the Savoy, Claridge's, the Berkeley, and such places. After dinner we saw a concert-party performance of outstanding vulgarity. The lewd enjoyment of the audience, most of whom were back from the line for a short time only, made me sorry I did not see the end of it. An order was brought in for Temple. He was to go up in his balloon immediately, and he asked me to go with him.

Slightly bewildered, I demanded to know what he could see in the dark, and he explained that this was the best time for spotting gun flashes. Like ourselves, the Germans were continually altering the position of their guns. I was strapped to a parachute, given a knife to cut myself out of trees, and up we went.

It was a weird experience. After the aeroplanes I had been accustomed to, the silence was painful. I cannot say how far up we went, but it was a long way. The movement was like that of a small boat, an illusion which was heightened when I heard the sighing of the wind through our ropes. Above, the stars were blotted out by our sausage. Gradually the various sounds came to me from below; the hooves of the horses and mules, the engines of cars and lorries, the regimental band in Arras, and innumerable gramophones making an orchestra of the wildest modernism. Then came the crashes of the heavies behind us, the sharper banging of the Field Artillery ahead, and the stealthy sound of hostile shells slipping their way through the night to Arras, where they fell with a flash and then came the roar.

I was enthralled until a German plane saw us and zoomed down with a hail of bullets from his machine gun. So far my life had been varied, but never before had I been hung up in the sky for a foreign gentleman to exercise his skill on me. Fortunately he proved to be no crack shot, and after the first few bursts from his gun the anti-aircraft, or Archies, took up the cudgels on our behalf. Those well-meaning people brought me no consolation whatever. It was kind of them to put a barrage round us, but they seemed to forget that their shrapnel whistled all round us as well as the foreign gentleman's, and I expected the balloon to go up in flames.

Richmond Temple seemed to regard this state of imminent disaster as an incident comparable with a cut from a safety razor, but I was glad to realize that we were being hauled down. The barrage had its effect on the Boche, who turned away, but unaccountably he suddenly appeared from another quarter. That machine gun of his was wasted in his hands. Back came the Boche bungler and nearly got a bull's-eye; and at the same moment I was horrified to hear Temple telephone below to stop the descent. I inquired if he was partial to being used as live bait, but he only grinned and told me it would be unwise to drop lower as we should probably have to jump and we must leave a safety margin for the parachute to open.

Jump! Jump from that basket! I told Temple I couldn't jump, it was bad enough jumping into a swimming bath. But out into the void - well! However, all the world knows that the English are famous for compromise, and it was arranged that I should sit on the edge of the basket and Temple would push me over. While we were arguing we suddenly noticed that things had become quiet. The foreign gentleman had gone home to supper. The Archies ceased fire. Down we went, so very slowly that I was convinced they were not really trying below.

After this, I was able to spend a good deal of time in the balloons, and I did some drawings from the air. I also did a sketch for my lithograph, "Hauling Down a Sausage at Night".

The whole book can be read here http://www.archive.org/details/paintandprejudic027098mbp , and there is much of interest (though it is inaccurate and/or highly subjective in places!). Nevinson served in France in 1914-15 as a volunteer ambulance driver with the Red Cross, and later joined up as a private in the RAMC, but was invalided out. Subsequent attempts to get a commission foundered on his disability, but admirers in high places managed to pull strings, and he was appointed an (unpaid) official war artist. As such, he returned to France in 1917, attached to 4th Division under Lambton, and it was there that he encountered Temple and his balloon near Arras.

Richmond Temple (1893-1958) was commissioned as a 2nd Lt (on probation) in the RFC in Aug 1916, probably while up at Oxford. He went (presumably for training) to the Kite Balloon Station at Roehampton in Sept, before being posted as temp 2nd Lt to No 28 KB Section in November....thence (I think – NA scan is v hard to read) to the 10th Balloon Coy, initially on the Home Estab, but embarked for France on Boxing Day 1916 (as ??“Telephone Expert”). He was promoted temp Lt in Feb 1918, and (by now in the RAF) was posted back to the Home Establishment and 16th Wing in May, but grounded (unfit) in August. He was promoted Lt in Sept 1918, but much of the rest I can’t really read - ah, I think "Unemployed List" in March 1919 - is this the normal precursor to being demobbed? Back in civvy street, he became a highly-regarded pioneer PR guru for top London Hotels, and a director of the Savoy.

[osmposm]

To wander a little off-topic (balloons do have a tendency to drift a bit), some time later Nevinson drove in his car with another Balloons officer north to Passchendaele when he heard rumours of some “real fighting” being imminent there; some of the sketches he made formed the basis of his deeply moving 1919 painting, The Harvest of Battle (now, like many of his works, in the Imperial War Museum).

On his return an intelligence major was horrified to find out where he’d been, and suggested he should have known he wasn’t allowed in that section of the line. When Nevinson replied that nobody had told him, the major snapped, “Of course not. We were forbidden to tell you.”

Nevinson attributes his immediate despatch back home to his ill-concealed amusement at this priceless bit of army logic, as much as to the illicit excursion itself!

[osmposm]

Part 4 - at sea

.....Whilst officers such as Wing Captain E. M. Maitland, of the R.N.A.S. struggled to find a use for the small airships not much was done with the balloons..........Drachen type balloons were ordered from Messrs. C. G. Spencer and Sons and an RN kite balloon training school was set up at Upper Grove House near Roehampton........

Maitland (later Brig-Gen and Air-Commodore), a fine and brave man, was actually appointed the first commandant at Roehampton. There he apparently conducted - personally - many experiments on parachuting from balloons, having been an early strong proponent of their use for life-saving. It was he, too, that pushed hard for the extensive use of kite balloons as observation platforms, having been impressed by the French & Belgians' use of them on a visit to Belgium in Nov 1914. He even had himself deliberately cut adrift on a KB to see how it should be handled.

He died in the R38 airship disaster at Hull in Aug 1921 - perhaps it would have pleased him that it was parachutes that saved most of the five survivors of the 49 on board. His obituary, from which the details above (and many more) are taken, was in Flight Magazine on Sept 1st.

[centurion]

I'm intending to add more material on the use of balloons in WW1 but I have something with which I'd welcome help. It was sparked by a query about transport over in another forum. I looked at the photos of German balloons I have found so far and in all those with drachen (the original Parseval-Sigsmund sausage balloon) where the balloon ground crews transport is shown this appears to be horse drawn, its only the copies of the Caquot (blimp) that have motorised vehicles evident. Now this is perfectly logical in that by 1914 the German army (well certainly the Prussian army, I'm still investigating the Bavarian) had a well designed and integrated set of vehicles to support their balloons and the old "if it aint broke..." principle may have applied. Adopting a new balloon design with different handling characteristics may have required new vehicles. However this implies that the old drachen had man powered winches which must have made them very vulnerable to aircraft attack. Now its quite possible that I am drawing conclusions from an unrepresentative sample so does anyone have any evidence that would invalidate my theory?

[centurion]

Part 6 Principal tasks carried out by balloons

WW1 observation balloons had 3 main duties:

• Collection of tactical intelligence
  
• Assistance to artillery
  
• Aircraft spotting (including early warning of enemy activity and confirmation of aircraft brought down).
  

The first two of these were not, as is sometimes suggested, carried out as an alternative to the use of aeroplanes, the activities and strengths of the static balloon observer and those of his more mobile counterpart were, as we shall see, complementary. Before going into more detail on how the three duties were carried out it is worth looking at the general environment in which the balloon observer worked.

Balloons on both sides usually remained 3 or more miles behind the front line trenches. The reason for this can be summed up by one word – artillery. Various statistics suggest that for a balloon to be brought down by artillery was very rare, indeed Lt Black of the RAF claimed that no British balloon was so destroyed. Some German balloons are known to have been hit in this manner but this represented only 6% of German balloon losses (43% had to be scrapped because of wear and tear, bad weather accounted for 9%, the remaining 42% being due to aircraft attack). There are plenty of photos of field guns with their wheels mounted on frames or banked earth to provide a 30 – 45 degree elevation for anti-balloon work. Actually hitting a balloon was probably a bonus – their real task was forcing the balloons to be positioned to the rear of the line. The medium artillery was also tasked with anti balloon work striking at their support (winches, gas generators, switch boards etc). Photos of such support equipment in the field show a preference for locating them in large holes (quarries, clay or chalk pits, railway cuttings and the like) when these were available so that a howitzer was often the best weapon with which to strike at them. As well as keeping the balloons back, thus making observation more difficult, this could force the installation to have to be moved frequently and so disrupting the observation process.

The observer’s equipment

Let us look at the equipment the balloon observer used. The most important of these was the telephone. Balloon telephones were connected to their own controller, the appropriate HQ, artillery batteries, other balloons and local airfields. Indeed almost anywhere (there is one account of a British observer in a quiet moment ‘phoning his wife back home in England – well “I’m suspended over the Western front” certainly beats “I’m on the train”). To this end each balloon would have a switch board and operator as part of the ground support crew. The switchboard was connected to the wider telephone network by a twisted pair line rather than a ground return single line. Observers would be using plain voice for reporting rather than encoded Morse and this was intended to eliminate the possibility of enemy eavesdropping. A spare reel of telephone cable, capable of reaching the ground, along with replacement coils and magnets were usually carried (for French balloons these were included in the list of mandatory equipment). Without a working telephone an observation balloon’s usefulness plummeted as they could no longer be easily retasked (or warned of impending air attack) and artillery spotting became exceedingly slow and cumbersome.

The next most important equipment was the map, or rather the maps. Normally two maps were carried – one 1:20000 and one 1:10000 mounted on roller boards which enabled them to be handled in the confined and breezy environment of the balloon basket. In addition various calibrated scales, overlays etc. were carried to allow plotting and fixing of positions. Pencils were also carried to allow the observer to mark the maps as needed. One British set of instructions specifies that these pencils should be hard rather than soft to ensure a fine point enabling fine and precise marking on the maps.

Probably as important as the maps were the binoculars. Up to three different sets would be carried. There would certainly be a pair of general purpose glasses of moderate magnification but a good field of view and a pair of very powerful magnification but perforce a limited field of view. The first pair would be used for general scanning and identification of things to be looked at with the more powerful binoculars. (“Hallo something seems to have changed over by the old tile works, I‘d better take a closer look with the other glasses – aha that’s a new observation post at map reference …”). An essential accessory kept with the binoculars was a set of soft cloths to keep the lens clean and dry.

Other important items were notebooks, a compass with which bearings could be taken, a portable altimeter, an aerometer and a reliable watch.

Other items carried could include a booklet with signal codes to allow signal panels etc. to be read, weighted message bags with streamers for dropping notes and/or annotated maps etc., a large knife for the observer to cut his parachute rope on landing and a small pen knife to keep the pencils sharpened.

Collection of tactical intelligence

Observation balloons were regarded as one of the best and most reliable sources of tactical intelligence. The French specifically ordered that they were to be regarded as the first choice in that a heavier than air aircraft was not to be tasked if the information could be obtained by balloon observation. A balloon observer could keep a portion of the front under constant observation (in good weather) during day light hours whereas even with constant flights relieving each other (not something that could be done for long) this was impossible for aeroplanes (which have to keep moving and changing direction simply to stay aloft and so as not to provide an easy predictable target for AA fire and whose pilot and observer also had to keep a lookout for enemy fighters). The balloon observers were expected to be very familiar with the ground in front of them so as to instinctively detect that something had changed. Being in a relatively fixed and stable position it was easier for them to take accurate bearings and to use very powerful binoculars. With folding map tables on the basket rim they could handle maps more easily (it was not until the 1920s that some aircraft had a map table for the observer). They had good and secure voice communications via the telephone twisted pair system when not all aeroplanes had wireless and those that did were restricted to Morse that could be overheard by the enemy. In some circumstances balloon observers had delegated authority to call down artillery fire directly.

The balloons did have problems however. From their fixed viewpoint there would be hidden ground of which the enemy could be expected to take advantage. Indeed this could sometimes be created (canvas sheeting along roads for example). Balloons were increasingly operated in groups, so that with eyes in different positions some hidden ground was eliminated, but in the main cooperation with the Corps Reconnaissance Aircraft was essential to fill the gap. When the balloon observers’ maps were originally produced (see below) hidden ground was marked on them and they were sent to Corps Reconnaissance squadrons with a request to fill in the gaps. This made it easier for the aircrew as they had specific areas to concentrate on (for example “what’s in the sunken ground behind l’Eglise St Dupanloup ?”). Once the maps were re drawn with this additional data they would be regularly updated by regular recce flights to keep the gaps filled in. The distance that an observer could successfully make things out, even with very powerful binoculars, was limited. Before a major offensive the medium artillery would usually be requested to force the enemy’s balloons further back thus reducing their chance of spotting preparations going on in the back areas and aeroplanes would have to increase patrols of these areas to compensate.

Making and maintaining maps was a key role of the observation balloon. In doing this both the observer’s eyesight and photography was used. Existing maps could be reviewed and positions of features checked by taking bearings, often from more than one balloon. The diagonal view also helped to give some perspective on features only shown on the maps in plan view. Some huge cameras with lenses with focal lengths of over six feet were taken aloft resting across the basket. Aeroplane photos were normally taken pointing straight down giving an image showing two dimensions, the balloon photos were taken on the oblique which allowed an appreciation of the height of an object. Using both types of photo allowed a better assessment of what shape things were (which is why in WW2 PR Spitfires and Mustangs carried both vertical and oblique cameras). Photos from both balloons and aeroplanes would be used in the compiling of maps of the front.

The first action of an observer on going aloft would be to orientate his maps with his view and establishing his exact position. One might ask that given that balloons were flown from fixed positions why was this not known? However it was very rare that the balloon was vertically over the winch as, given the length of the tethering cable, even a light breeze could move it some distance horizontally from the launch site, sufficient to create significant error if bearings were taken.

Observers did most of their work sitting down. Indeed French and German observers were ordered to do observing seated. This allowed them to rest their arms on the edge of the basket and steady their binoculars (with powerful binoculars even a slight shake could create problems of focusing of objects and with shifts sometimes lasting over 12 hours an observer could become very weary). Allied observers used a canvas sling seat that ran sideways (from the viewing perspective) across the basket whilst German observers had a sling running front to back which they sat astride like a saddle.

Apart from map making what other tactical intelligence activities took place? Recognition and immediate reporting of change for one instance. “Jerry’s pushed forward a lot of saps last night and may be planning something immediate”, “Large body of troops moving Westward at coordinates …” “British tanks moving towards the front” and so on. There could be indications of a build-up (for this reason British policy was to coordinate the movement of tanks by rail to take place at night so that they could be unloaded and move forward to their jumping off points before day break) even an increase in railway activity to the front (revealed by increased observations of smoke from locomotives) could indicate a build-up prior to an attack. New or increased supply dumps would also be significant as would the construction of new roadways. If nothing else the existence of balloons hampered the enemy by forcing him to have to do more at night.

Assistance to artillery

This is often treated as being confined to spotting but was much more than this including target acquisition especially for counter battery work. Balloons were found to be useful platforms for flash spotting and night time sorties made for this purpose. Using a series of adjacent balloon stations provided a long base line and the height allowed flashes to be spotted that would be hidden from ground based spotters. Sound ranging was also applied, initially with British balloons with up to five microphones per balloon (mounted on a boom) and then with French balloons using three Tucker type microphones (platinum wires stretched across wooden boxes) to pick up low frequency sounds generated by the shock wave from the muzzle of the guns. Readings from both sets of devices would be noted by observers in the balloons. The Germans did not adopt such sophisticated sound ranging equipment (instead relying on the Mk 1 eardrum and stopwatches) until the closing weeks of the war and it is doubtful that this was installed in their balloons.

This is not the place to examine artillery spotting techniques in detail but balloons were found to have particular advantages for this in that with their telephone connections they could be in continuous two way conversation with the batteries over a relatively secure network and observations did not have to be relayed in Morse by (wireless or signal lamp) or through messages dropped by bag and there was usually no need for a third party to interpret, decode or even deliver the messages. This led to approaches to that perennial problem of detecting the fall of shell and distinguishing it from all the other explosions on the battlefield. The battery would tell the observers when they fired and then, using a timer, just before the shells were due to land. This allowed one observer to have his binoculars steadied and trained on the area where the shells were expected to impact and when they were expected to explode making spotting and correctly identifying them more likely. Particular balloons became associated with specific batteries and considerable trust was developed between individual batteries and ‘their’ observers.

Aeroplanes were of course used for directing fire on targets hidden from the balloons or too far away but it would be untrue to say that it was an either or situation as there are instances of an aeroplane beginning the process and then, once the guns were registered, handing over to the balloons. An aeroplane maintaining the usual figure of eight over a particular target for any time would be vulnerable to attack either by tracking AA fire or by fighters called up (possibly by the target).

Aircraft spotting (including early warning of enemy activity and confirmation of aircraft brought down).

The balloons could be a form of early EWACs, especially for low flying aircraft that they could see whilst these were still below the ground observers’ horizon. These would be reported by telephone, often directly to the local fighter airfield. Because of the balloon observer’s extensive and unencumbered view he could track enemy aircraft over a wider area and for longer than could ground observers, thus providing a better prediction of where they were heading. Naturally they had an incentive to do this – they could be the target the enemy was heading towards.

It was found that the balloon observers were far more accurate on the reporting of the results of an air combat than either ground observers or the fighting pilots themselves (who usually only had a fragmentary view of the overall picture). American analysis of reports from all sources as compared with the picture that emerged much later from going through reports of wreckage found or reported from recce flights, POWs registered (and interrogated), deaths and POW reports from the enemy and/or the Red Cross, injured and missing reports etc. the immediate reports from the balloon observers with their ringside seats were often over 90% accurate (and certainly close enough for government work). A pilot might well claim that his opponent had gone down in an uncontrollable dive with smoke coming from his engine but the balloon observer might report that he had straightened out near the ground and headed homeward at speed. Similarly the balloons might have noted the ‘plane that went down behind the German lines without anyone in the pilot’s flight seeing it. Balloon observers’ reports of combats were increasingly regarded as the best source of information.

[MikeMeech]

Hi Centurion

Just for your interest please find attached an image of an aircraft map board (improved) with an added aluminium sheet on the wood to allow a Hard Pencil to mark all the maps in a set of four (carbon paper inbetween). this is from 'Extracts from RFC Reports on the Second Army Offensive' AIR1/918/204/5/879.

Mike

[Adrian Roberts]

Centurion - can't think of any immediate comments, but read with interest. Thanks for all your work on this.

[zijde26]

An example ?

Gilbert Deraedt

[centurion]

An example ?

Gilbert Deraedt

A Drachen so pre 1916. It bears no nationality markings which would suggest either pre war (and therefore almost certainly German) or 1915 and probably Allied (German balloons had a cross pate)

[zijde26]

To Centurion,

See : http://www3.nfb.ca/ww1/wartime-film.php?id=531371

Gilbert Deraedt