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Aviation History
1937
1937 - 3425.PDF
DECEMBER 9, 1937. FLIGHT. 569 DIARY OF FORTHCOMING EVENTS- PAGE 574. pilots, at any rate Short Service officers and airmen, should ordinarily remain in one class of squadron through out their career in the Service, such a policy, we believe, would increase the efficiency of the R.A.F. and would ;ilso be popular with the flying personnel. It would, in fact, be best if men stayed with one squadron for the whole of their time ; but it would be an improvement if, ;it least, transfers were normally limited to squadrons within one Group. The Balloon Barrage THE Royal United Service Institution was treated yes terday to a lecture which would probably have filled the Queen's Hall had it been public and adequately advertised. Everyone, from the House of Commons down wards, has been wondering about the prospects of the bal loon barrage, what it will be like, and will it be effective. Hitherto the Air Ministry has acted Brer Rabbit. It has said nuffin', except to hold out threats of decapitation on Tower Hill to anyone who let any sort of balloon cat out of the secrecy bag. Yesterday, however, the A.O.C. No. 30 (Balloon Barrage) Group of the Fighter Command, namely, Air Commodore J. G. Hearson, C.B., C.B.E., D.S.O., R.A.F. (retd.), was permitted to tell the R.U.S.I. a great deal about the latest ideas on the subject, and what he said must have come as an absolute surprise to most of his hearers. There are to be no aprons in the future. The apron was a network of cross wire and hanging wires suspended from four or five balloons. It was so heavy that it could not be sent up very high, and the balloons bunched together from its weight. Against modern aeroplanes it would be useless. The latest idea is to use the tethering cables as the only ob struction to the passage of the raiding bomber, but to make the cables lethal in some way which the Air Commodore was not able to reveal. Reticence on that point can be understood, but it is just as well to let possible enemies know that John Bull has a few nasty surprises up his sleeve for them. Incidentally, Air Commodore Hearson t vidently did not mean filling the balloon basket with ex plosives and touching them off from the ground, for he mentioned that old device as one to be used if the enemy began to make a practice of sheeting the balloons down. Perimeter and Field Siting THE tactics of locating the balloons are also interest ing. That can be done in two ways. One is to place them round the perimeter of the defended area, and the other is to place them all over it. The lecturer con sidered the latter, which he called "field siting," much the better of the two, though he concluded by saying that a compromise would probably be the best. In anything aeronautical we are accustomed to being told that the com promise is the best. The Air Commodore refuted the idea that just a number of cables without an apron would be a diaphanous'' defence, and he worked things out like this: He assumed a bomber of 70ft. span, a defended area with a diameter of twenty miles, and balloons placed 100 yards apart. With perimeter siting, if the bomber flew into the area at a normal and out again at a normal, and while inside flew any distance necessary to find its objec tive, the chance of its hitting a cable would be one to four. But with field siting, if the bomber flew twenty miles on any course or courses within the area, the chances of its making contact with a lethal cable would be one in two. He called that " a pretty formidable risk, which no attacker could afford to continue taking." It would cer tainly make a bomber pilot think a bit when he set out on his raid. The Problem of Height AIR COMMODORE HEARSON admitted that at pre sent the balloons could not get up to 25,000ft., but he said that it took considerable effort for a bomber to take a useful load of bombs up to that height. A barrage of only 10,000ft. would help the defence a great deal. The fighters would not have to hunt for the raiders in the lower and murkier layers of the atmosphere. It would be something to the good to reduce their area of search by so much. Of course, in daylight and fine weather the balloons would be very vulnerable, but in those condi tions the guns and the fighters could work most effectively. In really thick weather and by night the barrage would be most useful. Balloons at a lower level would be sufficient to defeat the low-flying bomber, for they would force him up to a height at which the guns and fighters could get busy on him. They would also make dive-bombing a risky proceeding. As for the future, the lecturer hinted that considerable developments might be expected, especially in the way of height of the barrage. We hope to give considerable extracts from the paper in our next issue.
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